Cultural Capital in Research: Issues of Operationalization, Measurement and Methodological Pitfalls

Monika Sirkovská
(Institute of Ethnology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia)

Abstract: In the 20th Century, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu was dealt with the relationship between the cultural activities of the family and school success of children, based on the concept of cultural capital which formulated himself. Cultural capital is generally understood as a set of organized social representations, knowledge and preferences, which are acquired on the basis of cultural quality of the family environment. The family is the pivotal institution of socialization and also the place where the lifestyle, tastes, values, norms and ambitions are constituted and intergenerationally transmitted. Interpretation of cultural capital also involves the ways of how the children are able to meet the demands of the school culture. The paper starts with a discussion of the definition and delineation of the term the “cultural capital”. Article continues by briefly examining the previous studies and researches in this area and focusing on the difficulty associated with defining and measuring cultural capital. These studies have been for a long time primarily the domain of sociologists. Although the use of quantitative methods in sociological research often is not able to capture adequately full extent of the social dynamics that they draw attention to, also the use of qualitative methods brings some limitations and pitfalls. In this paper, author introduces her long-term research of families and elementary schools in Czech Republic. Specifically, it examines the application of the concept in anthropological research seeking to provide explanations for parental involvement into the educational processes relating to the secondary school choice making. The particular attention is focused on the methodological problems encountered during the research of cultural capital. Author will deal with the application of selected research methods like participative observation, in-depth interviews and questionnaires. This paper aims to contribute to the debate of how and if ever is possible to capture all relevant aspects entering into the process of accumulation cultural capital through selected research methods.

Key words: family, school, education, cultural capital, emotional capital, methodology