Page 60 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

CULTURAL CAPITAL

psychoanalysis was drawn upon to present a critique of the capitalist social order
and of the ‘culture industry’ in particular.
The notion of a ‘critique’ was familiar to the Frankfurt School through the
German philosophical tradition and especially Marxism, wherein it involves seeking 37
to find the contradictory tendencies of a theory. Here one seeks both to criticize but
also to retain that which remains valuable in a given tradition. Given that the
Frankfurt School was also highly critical of capitalism and the social order, it is a
short step from the notion of a critique to the idea of ‘critical’ theory.
Today the idea of critical theory is less obviously connected to the work of the
Frankfurt School, though its contemporary heir Habermas would still attract the
term, but it has also become associated more widely with contemporary cultural
and textual analysis that carries a critical edge. This would include structuralism,
poststructuralism and postmodernism. Used in this way, the idea of critical theory
has taken on a sense of being critical of the symbolic order and of the traditions of
Western philosophy rather more than of the capitalist order.
Links Culture industry, Marxism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, structuralism

Cultural capital A concept associated with Bourdieu, for whom cultural capital acts as
a social relation within a system of exchange that includes the accumulated cultural
knowledge that confers power and status. For example, education and/or the ability
to talk knowledgeably about high culture has traditionally been a form of cultural
capital associated with the middle classes. Cultural capital is distinguished from
economic capital (wealth) and social capital (whom you know). Here distinctions
of cultural taste are understood to be classifications based on lines of power rather
than being founded on either universal aesthetic criteria or individual choice. Thus
taste differentiation is never simply about differences that are of equal standing but
rather entails claims to authority and authenticity.
Thornton has applied the concepts of cultural capital and distinction to an
analysis of youth subcultures and to the dance cultures of the late 1980s and early
1990s in particular. She argues that club cultures are taste cultures marked by a
whole series of internal authenticity claims and distinctions. These include claims
regarding the authentic versus the phoney, the ‘hip’ versus the ‘mainstream’, and
the ‘underground’ versus ‘the media’. Here dance culture distinctions invoke
forms of ‘subcultural capital’ such as clothes, records, haircuts, dance styles and
knowledges to confer status and power on young people. Subcultural capital
involves distinctions between ‘us’ (alternative, cool, independent, authentic,
minority) and ‘them’ (mainstream, straight, commercial, false, majority). It also
involves distinctions within club culture: knowing the latest releases and dances,
wearing the most fashionable clothes, seeing the coolest DJs, and attending the
right clubs. So fast moving is contemporary club culture as it undergoes
metamorphosis after metamorphosis that maintaining subcultural capital is a
highly skilled task.
Links Authenticity, consumption, habitus, postmodernism, power, youth culture