Towards a new quietism

The introduction stated that the book would present a sequence of objective textual presentations interspersed with accounts of the socio-intellectual contexts which generated them. It is clear now in retrospect that the posited dialectical relationship has not remained of the same kind over time, or that I have not presented it in the same way. I find it useful to clarify this by deploying the distinction Bourdieu made between three types of ‘cultural capital’. He distinguished between ‘incorporated capital’ which corresponds with the characteristics acquired in childhood, either by nature or by nurture, and ‘objectivated capital’ which is a kind of personal capital which is supported by adherence to cultures and values which are current in society at any time, whether modern or traditional. By attaching ourselves to these objective cultural values, whether, as Bourdieu analysed in La Distinction, these involve commitment, for instance, to football or to classical music, we construct our social identities in ways which are partly conditioned by our inherited dispositions but may diverge from them significantly. These affiliations may be transient. We may choose to redefine ourselves by giving up going to football matches and by going instead (or as well) to concerts of classical music. Bourdieu's third type is ‘instituted capital’ by which he meant that some affiliations become permanent in such a way that our identities become fixed by association with them. Educational and professional qualifications and associated employment positions are examples.

Bourdieu developed this tripartite definition of cultural capital in 1979 when he was realising that his earlier broad conception of ‘cultural capital’ was inadequate. His earlier assumption was that our life-choices are softly predetermined by our inheritance. This was a ‘traditional’ or ‘modernist’ assumption. The specification of ‘objectivated’ capital was a recognition that, with the decline of the traditional family unit, we construct our identities much more by reference to a constantly fluctuating market of attitudes and values. Bourdieu still wanted to ground the objectivated in the incorporated but this new recognition was an acknowledgement of the influence of ‘postmodernism’. Having released his tight grip on the influence of inherited dispositions, Bourdieu, however, sought some stability in positing the third category which depends on the recognition of institutionalised values which, therefore, still regulate the fluidity of the postmodern market of values and identities.