This paper attempts to explicate and locate the concept of 'cultural capital' in terms of Pierre Bourdieu's more general theory of the forms of capital and their transubstantiations. It examines the manner in which the relationship between the economic field, and its relations of inequality and power, and the cultural field involves a process of…

Pierre Bourdieu's writings provide us with a powerful vision of corporeal sociology (an approach towards human relationships and identities that has at its centre the socially shaped embodied subject), and an understanding of the body as a form of physical capital. Despite his protestations to the contrary, however, a reproductionist bias pervades…

Summarizes a longitudinal study that identifies a variety of mechanisms within the French school system that continue to generate social inequalities. These mechanisms include school status, parental choice, and economic status. Briefly reviews social inequality and French educational policy. (MJP)