Introduction To Cultural Capital

Marxism considers that labor is the kind essence of human beings, and the practice of labor is the fundamental motive source for the development of history. We may know that cultural capital, one of the modern capital, is a special cultural resource through mental working and education imparting, when we discard the narrow idea on capital of economics and take as a conference the French Sociologist and Philosopher Pierre Bourdieu's concept that capital is accumulated labor. Cultural capital exists in self-motion of generation, accumulation, circulation and regeneration, and it can transform with economic capital, human capital, social capital, etc by the direct ratio. Cultural capital is tenable as a new category thereby. Cultural capital has threes forms, specific, objective and systematic. The specific one exists in individual subject that is reflected in intellectuals, who is the owner and operator of cultural capital and has a transformation of intellectual, man of knowledge and cultural people in order. The objective one goes with cultural industry, which is economic operation of cultural capital and produces products of cultural and economic value. The systematic one is to be recognized in cultural system, which helps the cultural capital realize its social value and in return pushes the reform of cultural system and configuration of cultural mode. The thesis in six chapters expounds the following issues: definition, operation, transformation of cultural capital and related cultural industrial development, the cultural system construction, and the transformation of educated people. It also discusses the issue of cultural construction. The first chapter elaborates the term of cultural capital. It defines the cultural capital by comparison between cultural resources and cultural capital, and expounds respectively the three forms of cultural capital proposed by Bourdieu, specific, objective and systematic. The chapter also raises and explains the six characteristics of cultural capital: realistic, suppositional, individual, mutual, exclusive and transformable. It also discusses the function and significance of cultural capital in human society, social modernization, cultural industrialization and intellectual stratum configuration. The second chapter studies the law of cultural capital operation. It analyzes the intension of labor, capital and culture and reveals the system and condition for cultural capital generation. The chapter points out the social condition and system requirements for the cultural capital accumulation by its social significance analysis. It also discusses the mobility of cultural capital in the modern society by the historic comparison on the motive sources, patterns and modes of cultural communication. The chapter investigates the ways and steps of the cultural capital regeneration for the need of itself. The third chapter discusses the transformation between cultural, economic, human, and social capital. In social modernization, the division of labor causes the capital differentiation. As all the different forms of capital are accumulated labor, they can be measured by the same criteria and turn into each other by the direct ratio in the different fields. The chapter puts forward the condition, ways and features of the transformation between the cultural capital and other capital, and builds up the fields and system of the capital transformation in modern times. The fourth chapter shows the cultural capital in economics and studies the relation between cultural capital and cultural industry. The thesis says that cultural industry is economic operation of cultural capital, on the grounds of the special characteristic of cultural capital and cultural commodities, that special requests are made in the operation and effect evaluation of cultural industry and in the value survey and exchange of cultural commodity. It talks about the theory on spiritual production of Marxism and discusses the condition and system of the emergence and development ofcultural industry, the achievement and con...