Cultural capital and cultural deprivation

[Pariswhenitdrizzles]

Disclaimer: I promise and solemnly swear that I'm not trying to be goady or trollish or anything like that. I'm just really interested.

this Wikipedia article on cultural capital and cultural deprivation says:

"Proponents of this theory argue that working class culture (regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or other factors) inherently differs from that of people in the middle class. This difference in culture means that while middle-class children can easily acquire cultural capital by observing their parents, working-class children cannot, and this deprivation is self-perpetuating."

Last week, I was talking to a school librarian who's based in London. Part of his job involves organising events such as free theatre trips for London schoolchildren. He's organised trips to places like the Royal Opera House, and said that some children and their families on one of the trips didn't actually end up going into the Royal Opera House because they felt like they shouldn't go in.

I really think that more should be done to help everyone feel that they're able to go anywhere that they'd like to and that they should never feel as if they don't belong somewhere or that they shouldn't go somewhere.

I know that a lot of work has already been done on social equality and cultural capital, but I really think that more needs to be done. What can we do? And AIBU?

Bumping.

I think the more important think is not using cultural capital as a shortcut to assessing someone's worth.

The books I can quote, the artworks I'm aware of, the countries I've visited - they're treated as signifiers of my background and education, but they don't have a lot to do with my skills.

Grew up working class Indian - going to the theatre to watch nataks or classical Indian concerts is part of ourculture. I don’t know any Indian from my background who hasn’t been to the theatre to watch a play or listen to classical Indian music (be it classic bollywood, sufi, or Qawali). Going to the cinema as a family is also something we do a lot - hence why Bollywood movies make more money in the UK on 10-20 screens than many Hollywood blockbusters. Just because we don’t have your cultural capital doesn’t mean to say we don’t have any!

Nataks are plays with Indian actors. Most in Gujarati, some in Hindi. They tackle social issues experienced within Indian families.

It's a major barrier to social mobility. The problem is that basically everything working class people do is seem as 'wrong' by the educated middle class - the food they eat, the lifestyle choices they make, the way they speak. Do we need to change the working classes as you suggest with the opera house visits, or educate he middle classes to be more open to difference? By saying that it's the working class who need to change then you're accepting that their culture is inferior.

Didn't know that class still existed in this day and age.

I grew up on a council estate and I go to classical music concerts. They really dont cost that much.

*The books I can quote, the artworks I'm aware of, the countries I've visited - they're treated as signifiers of my background and education, but they don't have a lot to do with my skills.

Thecatsthecats exactly. I was lucky to get a Cambridge interview but when I got there I was asked who my favourite artist was; had I read such a book, etc. I remember thinking "I'd get decked for having a favourite artist in my town" but mumbling something about a random artist I hoped was so obscure they wouldn't know enough about him to ask any further questions.

This is whether the question of being true working class arises. If your parents are university educated migrants who take you to the ballet and encourage you to apply for scholarships at private schools but work working class jobs are you still a working class family just because of your income bracket?

It's not about money as such, it's about growing up knowing how to be middle class, which is the class of the professions. You are going to find it much harder to access a profession if you cannot at least act the part of a middle class person.

I was a free school meals child until 13 when my DM remarried (that didn't make me feel culturally different as I continued to have a strong relationship with my DF and he was and remains the most working class of the two).

My relative academic success was a happy accident and I do believe I would have done a lot better if my DPs hadn't themselves felt excluded from education. My DM was bright but went to many different schools on the whims of her own parents and was bullied by teachers in most of them My dad left school at 14 to work. DM had 2 o levels to her name and DF has nothing.

I very, very rarely experienced live theatre, foreign travel, art, eating out etc. I was an avid reader but it wasn't until I was 16 that my English teacher began to guide me into literature. My maths and science teachers couldn't have given less of a shit and my form tutor turned her back on me after her husband tried to sexually assault me

I absolutely think PP is a great think and I hate to see it frittered and diverted by heads who seek to boost their mainstream budget.

One thing I did have, which has brought all this home to me recently, was music lessons. My DM always wanted to play my instrument but never had the opportunity, so she made sure I had it. She didn't have the musical training to help me with it and again my teacher was a duffer, and it's only taking it up again recently that's made me realise I wasn't useless at it, I just wasn't well taught or supported. In those days instrumental lessons were free and that is something PP could be offering.

Cultural capital makes a massive difference. I wouldn't change anything about my life because I adored my DM and if I'd been more successful in my career I wouldn't have my DCs, but I absolutely want better for them. Because I had the good fortune to do ok academically regardless, I can give them more opportunities that I and certainly more than my DPs had.

NatMatCat Not every working class person eats crap and has bad lifestyle choices I know plenty of MC people who are overweight and have unappealing habits. Why are the British so obsessed with class?

I know lots of Indians who have never been to a play or a concert. (Entirely non working class Indian). Plenty of the domestic staff who work in India have often been to neither.

This is such a thorny issue.

Partly, it's to do with power: the existence of features of working class culture(s) and the existence of features of middle class culture(s) wouldn't matter a jot if it weren't for the fact that being middle class generally correlates to having more power than being working class.

Iron out the power differentials and ... all would be jolly.

The most disputed terrain is that of "high culture". Generally, middle class people a. have more access to that b. it can be said that, to an extent, what is valorised as 'high culture' and 'valuable culture' is actually only the culture of a small fraction of the population and there is a class issue involved in that c. it can be said that working class culture(s) are generally not valued/valued less highly/are actually the thing that 'vauled culture(s)' are established to exclude.

There is a lot to be said for introducing working class children to valued culture/"high" culture. Not least: not knowing something about those cultures acts as a signifier that excludes children from life opportunities; in a real sense, not knowing about 'high' culture keeps people poor. It shouldn't, but it can.

'High' culture isn;t just about knowing Shakespeare, it's also about knowing how to book a seat for 'The Nutcracker' at Christmas, and about how to spell and pronounce complex words.

You can see how contentious all this is.

I'd be happy if we fought the war on other terrain, to be frank. Fight inequality on the economic ground.

It seems unfair on schools that the war is largely fought there.

I'm all for teaching everyone about high culture. I'd like to see it go hand in hand with a. teaching lots of cultures b. understanding why teaching culture is important c. changing the power differential - and that, I think, should be an open fight, not a proxy skirmish, where a lot of people are unclear what they are fighting.

You know, one of the issues with your OP, Paris, is that Bourdieu, for example, wouldn't see working class children's unfamiliarity with 'high' culture as a lack. He argued long and hard that everyone possessed a culture, lived in a culture, communicated through a culture.

What exists is a manufactured hierarchy between cultures.

The 'deprivation' (working class children are deprived of access to high culture) arises because there is a hieracrchy between the cultures working class children live in and embody and those of middle class or more valued cultures, and that hierarchy operates in a way that excludes working class children in a whole range of ways (eg. a CV full of non-standard spelling; a non-standard accent - to give 2 blunt examples).

People like Robert Young argue that the asnwer to all of this is to school children in the cultural forms of the classes with power. And there is a point in doing this.

On the other hand, it's bloody depressing, and pretty much a way of saying: "Well, I surrender. Nothing's going to change. We might as well just try and get enough of our working class kids trained as secret agents so that they can slip through the barriers. Maybe they'll try and work as a 5th column once they get near power."

This is, of course, a fairly grim view of the whole thing. There are lovely things to be seen in the Tate, etc.

Thanks so much everyone for your replies so far.

I completely agree with everyone who's said that it is a really complex issue.

I didn't bring up class in my OP (although a few posters are mentioning it), because the point that I was hoping to make in my OP was to ask if there's a way of helping everyone, no matter what their background is to feel as if they can go anywhere and do anything in Britain today.

However, the issue of 'class' and the fact that it is still discussed and brought up so much in Britain now is, I think, precisely one of the reasons why people feel unable to access certain experiences. As a PP pointed out, the idea of them having a 'favourite artist' was something that they would've been mocked for.

So I think 'class' (which I'm still trying to get my head around) and societal expectations (the expectations of your immediate social circle - family and friends - as well as the expectations of others outside your immediate social circle) are possibly the factors that are preventing people from feeling that they can freely access any opportunity or experience in society today.

I really think that the whole idea of class is ridiculous, and that it has a lot to answer for in limiting the opportunities that people can access.

My Dad is from a working-class background, and still thinks of himself as working-class even though he had a 'profession' when he was working (he's now retired). He thinks that anyone who has to work for a living (which is most people) could be described as working-class.

I think that this makes a lot of sense, and would actually simplify things a lot. If everyone was described as working-class apart from the Royal Family or aristocracy, for example, I feel that people would feel that there is a lot less 'separation' between them and others. This would perhaps help to improve equality of opportunity as well.

It doesn't simplify anything to pretend that class doesn't exist. Class is at the heart of your discussion. Cultural capital is knowledge of the culture of a particular group of people, who make up a class. Dancing around that just makes the subject impossible to talk about.

I think talking about class is always misleading as people have different ideas as to what it means. As a child I thought I was upper class - because I couldn't imagine anyone having more than we did! I later realised that I wasn't part of the aristocracy so I downgraded myself to middle-class. Going on a few years I realised that there were middle class people who did things we never did (go on skiing holidays, eat out a lot, go to private school, have parents who had been to uni, never used public transport). On the other hand, I didn't think I was working class because my dad had a "white collar" job. Whatever class I was /am, there are certain experiences that make me feel awkward because I feel like an outsider - I don't know the rules, the etiquette e.g. for a long time I didn't feel at home in church because my parents never took me and it felt weird. Ditto with going to the bingo, the opera, and the pub! Any opportunity to broaden children's experiences should be welcomed - nobody should feel like they don't belong or can't enjoy something just because they haven't experienced it before.

I agree. People don't have a good understanding of class, which is why on threads about it people always say it doesn't exist, or they're a surgeon but they still love weekends in Butlins (never seen that one actually....)

Paris, you can't keep class out of a discussion of 'cultural capital'.

The term is derived from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, and the whole point of his work is to show how cultural and symbolic capital interact with capital in the Marxian sense.

Sadly, the wikipedia site is a bit thin if it doesn't cover that. Which is a shame, because the internet is a great way of disseminating knowledge.

However, as Johnny Wales keeps telling us, Wikipedia relies on people putting the work in. Sadly, I know I'm not going to, so I can't complain.

I'm on two other threads at the moment, discussing this! - one about tube travel, one about Art - it must be something in the air!

Just to demonstrate how contested and conflicted it all is, on the tube thread, I'm arguing that tube travel, and school visits using the tube, are a great way to overcome exclusion from a 'cultural heritage' that should be available to all. though, to be fair, I also think that tube travel, and school visits, are a way of widening cultural participation so that all children can widen the materials from which they can make their own cultures and cultural life.

Working class people can and do appreciate culture. Just because you don't know any doesn't mean they don't exist. My comprehensive offered Latin, music lessons and trips to the theatre.

Latin is a fantastic example of cultural capital. Along with Greek.

There is almost no point in learning Latin other than as a class signifier. And, bizarrely, this has been recognised quite openly since early C19 definitely, mid Victorian period probably.

Actually, there has been, historically, a bit of jostling between Greek and Latin jostling for the position as useless signifier whose limited actual utility is actually the pointer to its usefulness for signifying purposes. but Latin won out in the late Victorian period.

And still it persists. One of Toby Young's big things was that his Free School would have Latin being taught.

A lot of you seem to have missed the point. The OP isn't questioning the (albeit very questionable) value of working class culture. She is asking my workingclass often feel light they do not have a right to experience high culture. When was the last time a middle class person felt like they couldn't go to the football because they weren't good enough?

Really interesting topic, thanks.

I sometimes wonder if I would have more of an appreciation of music if my parents had ever thought that "learning an instrument" was something to aspire to or put effort into or even consider doing.

Less cynically: What can you do? Well, I'd say that poor old teachers are bing asked to do a lot of work that, really, would be better done in the economic sphere.

But, do the work they do. So you will find teachers introducing Shakespeare to Yr 5 and relating iambic pentameter to rap, and getting children to notice the relationship between the plot and various stories they have either read or come across in RL, and getting them to re-write an episode as a play in their cultural dialect: making connections; teaching what is specific to Shakespeare; teaching what can be related to their experience; valuing the cultures that the children come from.

So, I would say that, actually, lots of people are already doing a lot.

Didn't know that class still existed in this day and age.

LOL - Good one