Bourdieu also points to nuanced class differences in the interactions between actors and institutions. He notes that people have a wide array of resources, social networks, and cultural training, and that they do not always use all of these resources in all settings. This sensitivity to the complexity and fluidity of social life makes his theory significantly more persuasive than other theories of social inequality, such as a culture of poverty model.6
Bourdieu builds his model using a (cumbersome) specialized vocabulary. The central concepts are the three mentioned above: habitus, field, and capital. The notion of habitus stresses the set of dispositions toward culture, society, and one’s future that the individual generally learns at home and then takes for granted. Bourdieu suggests that differences in habitus give individuals varying cultural skills, social connections, educational practices, and other cultural resources, which then can be translated into different forms of value (i.e., capital) as individuals move out into the world. It is possible to adopt new habits later in life, but these late-acquired dispositions lack the comfortable (natural) feel associated with those learned in childhood.
The concept of field is crucial. It encompasses some of the same dynamics captured in terms such as market or social institution. But, as David Swartz points out, Bourdieu also seeks something broader with the idea of field: “Bourdieu . . . sees the image of ‘field’ as superior to that of ‘institution’ for two reasons: first, he wants to emphasize the conflictual character of social life where the idea of institution suggests consensus; second, he wants a concept that can cover social worlds where practices are only weakly institutionalized and boundaries are not well established.”7
Bourdieu argues that in key areas, social space is stratified—some groups will be excluded and others included (and some will exclude themselves). He draws an analogy with a card game: there are fields that provide both the “rules of the game” and the social space wherein variations in capital exist. Bourdieu focuses on the intersection of the cards being dealt and the skill with which players play.8 He emphasizes that the nature of the game is arbitrary and the slots at the top are limited. He would never suggest, for example, that more parents could improve their children’s school success by adopting particular practices. Instead, he would point out that the number of elite slots in society is limited. Thus, any effort to spread an elite practice to all members of the society would result in the practice being devalued and replaced by a different sorting mechanism. In this sense, his model suggests that inequality is a perpetual characteristic of social groups. In any given interaction, however, Bourdieu stresses that the outcome is uncertain. Strategies may not pay off. In addition, he notes that individuals with a similar set of resources may differ in the skill with which they use their capital.
Overall, Bourdieu’s work provides a dynamic model of structural inequality; it enables researchers to capture “moments” of cultural and social reproduction. To understand the character of these moments, researchers need to look at the contexts in which capital is situated, the efforts by individuals to activate their capital, the skill with which they do so, and the institutional response to the activation of resources. Unfortunately, Bourdieu’s empirical work has not paid sufficient attention to the difference between the possession of capital and the activation of capital.9 Nor has he focused attention on the crucial mediating role of individuals who serve as “gatekeepers” and decision makers in organizations. For example, in this book, in a few instances I have sought to show how parents transmitted different habitus in the home; how this habitus, in specific institutional encounters, functioned as a form of cultural capital; and how (depending on how it was activated) the cultural capital yielded (or didn’t yield) an educational profit. Ms. Marshall taught her daughter a set of dispositions in the home, including a disposition to challenge adults in positions of authority. Ms. Marshall drew on this disposition (habitus) and activated her cultural capital when Stacey was turned down from the gifted program. Through a shrewd activation of cultural capital, Ms. Marshall gained profits for her daughter, including access to the gifted program (which as an enriched curriculum might lead to higher test scores as well as more favorable placement in courses in the future). Ms. Marshall was able to obtain these results as a consequence of her disposition and capacity to intervene in institutional settings in which her daughters’ daily lives unfolded.
Overall, these moments of interaction between parents and key actors in institutions are the life blood of the stratification process and need to be examined more in the future. Bourdieu does not show empirically how individuals draw on class-based cultural resources in their moments of interaction with institutions. Parents appear to have an uneven ability to customize their interactions with such institutions. Similarly, they have an unequal ability to persuade professionals to comply with their wishes.
In sum, we need to understand the individually insignificant but cumulatively important ways in which parents from the dominant classes actually facilitate their children’s progress through key social settings. This book is one effort to do just that.
APPENDIX C
Supporting Tables
TABLE C1. DISTRIBUTION OF CHILDREN IN THE STUDY BY SOCIAL CLASS AND RACE
TABLE C2. SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF CATCHMENT AREAS OF SCHOOLS IN THE STUDY
TABLE C3. FAMILY STRUCTURE BY SOCIAL CLASS AND RACE
TABLE C4. AVERAGE NUMBER OF ORGANIZED ACTIVITIES BY SOCIAL CLASS, RACE, AND CHILD’S GENDER1
TABLE C5. PARTICIPATION IN ACTIVITIES OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL: BOYS
TABLE C6. PARTICIPATION IN ACTIVITIES OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL: GIRLS
TABLE C7. PROPORTION WHO HAVE REQUESTED A TEACHER BY SOCIAL CLASS1
TABLE C8. PROPORTION WHO KNOW PROFESSIONALS BY SOCIAL CLASS1
TABLE C9. OVERVIEW OF DATA COLLECTION PROCESS
1989–90
Observation in two third-grade classrooms in Lawrenceville (midwestern town of 25,000); in-depth interviews separately with mothers, fathers, and guardians of 31 children, approximately one-half white and one-half Black; one observation of one white middle-class family one day; interviews with professionals working with children; work done primarily by Lareau with some assistance from an African American graduate student
1992–93
Receive grant from the Spencer Foundation
Study of third-grade class in an integrated public school in large urban school district “Lower Richmond,” which draws mostly white working-class and African American children from a low-income housing project in a northeastern city. Participant observation by Lareau from December to June in Ms. Green’s classroom; an undergraduate African-American woman also visits the classroom