Cultural Capital at the University: The Structuration of the Cultural Space of Students of Charles University
Abstract
Cultural capital is an important part of the conceptual apparatus of research on inequalities and social reproduction. The putative transformation of cultural hierarchies in contemporary society, however, opens up the question of whether it still makes any sense to speak of 'legitimate taste' and eventually of what the nature this legitimate taste might be.
This article examines what constitutes legitimate culture in the context of university-level study. It focuses on the differentiation of taste and the way in which the space of cultural consumption is structured by academic disciplines and university faculties.
The article draws on data from a questionnaire survey of first- and second-year students at Charles University in 2017 (n = 5127) and conducts a multiple correspondence analysis. It shows that the first dimension of the cultural space of students can be interpreted as the axis of overall cultural capital without any specific differentiation.
The third dimension of cultural space, by contrast, convincingly captures a cleavage between traditional cultural capital and a new form of cultural capital. The amount of cultural capital accumulated depends on the kind of academic disciplines studied, but another significant structuring element of cultural capital is the environment of individual university faculties itself.