Discuss how cultural capital can impact a college student’s ability to join a coveted organization such as a sorority.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Ans: Children from high-income families have access to aspects of culture and education that are not afforded to students from working-class families. Cultural capital is the wealth, knowledge, ideas, verbal skills, and ways of thinking and behaving. In sororities, there are specific cultural standards of class, gender, and femininity that are present and the norm, such as wearing a specific brand of makeup, carrying a certain designer handbag, or wearing a certain brand of clothes. Women who are from upper-class families typically make up the population of these organizations, therefore women from upper-class backgrounds already have the cultural capital that is required for participation in these organizations, compared to working-class women who do not have the cultural capital or the knowledge on these brands and cannot afford to buy them.
KEY: Learning Objective: 3.4: Explain how sociologists theorize the relationship between culture and social class.
REF: Cognitive Domain: Comprehension
Answer Location: Culture, Class, and Inequality
Difficulty Level: Hard