Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-68ccn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T20:24:07.163Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Expectations and hopes for educational success

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Fiona Devine
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
Get access

Summary

This chapter and Chapter 5 focus on the mobilisation of cultural resources in the reproduction of advantage. In the introduction, I noted how Goldthorpe initially equated his notion of cultural resources to Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital to refer to the value attached to education within families. He also included issues of occupational inheritance and traditions of self-employment within families. Later, however, he rejected Bourdieu's culturalist explanation of class stability because of its inability to explain change: namely, the increasing participation of both middle-class and working-class children in higher education in the 1950s and 1960s. He also directed hostile criticism at Bourdieu's characterisation of a working class seemingly lacking in cultural capital and suffering from a ‘poverty of aspirations’. Now, as I have argued elsewhere, it is one thing to identify the shortcomings of Bourdieu's theory and another to deny the importance of cultural dispositions and practices in the reproduction of advantage altogether. Despite some of the problems with Bourdieu's work, which plenty of others besides Goldthorpe have noted, I think his ideas about the importance of cultural capital in the reproduction of privilege and power are worth considering further. After all, the previous two chapters illustrated how parents convert their economic capital into cultural capital by investing in a good education for their children so that they acquire the necessary credentials to gain access to desirable jobs. That they invested their financial resources in this way was influenced by the value attached to educational success.

Type
Chapter
Information
Class Practices
How Parents Help Their Children Get Good Jobs
, pp. 69 - 94
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×