Cultural reproduction
Encyclopedia
Cultural reproduction is the transmission of existing cultural values and norms from generation to generation. Cultural reproduction refers to the mechanisms by which continuity of cultural experience is sustained across time. Cultural reproduction often results in social reproduction, or the process of transferring aspects of society (such as class) from generation to generation.
Reproduction as it is applied to culture, is the process by which aspects of culture are passed on from person to person or from society to society. There are a number of different ways in which this has happened. Historically, people have moved from different countries taking with them certain cultural norms and traditions. For centuries cultural reproduction has occurred in a profound way through a hidden agenda. Cultures transmit aspects of behavior which individuals learn in an informal way while they are out of the home. This interaction between individuals resulting in the transfer of accepted cultural norms, values, and information is accomplished through a process known as socialization
.
Enculturation
can be described as "a partly conscious and partly unconscious learning experience when the older generation invites, induces, and compels the younger generation to adopt traditional ways of thinking and behaving". Although, in many ways Enculturation
duplicates the norms and traditions of previous generations. The degree of similarity between the cultures of each successive generation through enculturation may vary. This concept could be demonstrated by the tendency of each successive generation to follow cultural norms such as transportation right of way. These expectations are set forth and replicated by the prior generation. There may be little if any empirical evidence supporting a choice of driving in one lane or another, yet with each new generation, the accepted norm of that individual’s culture is reinforced and perpetuated. Parents and educators prove to be two of the most influential enculturating forces of cultural reproduction.
Comparatively, diffusion
is the dispersion of cultural norms and behaviors between otherwise unrelated groups or individuals. The integration of Chinese food or French linguistics
into American culture represents this concept.
According to Sullivan (2001) , the theory of cultural reproduction entails three fundamental propositions:
1) parental cultural capital is inherited by children.
2) children’s cultural capital is converted into educational credentials.
3) educational credentials are a major mechanism of social reproduction in advanced
capitalist societies.
The concept of education as an agent of cultural reproduction is argued to be less directly explained by the material and a subject taught, but rather more so through what is known as the Hidden curriculum
. This refers to the socialization aspect of the education process. Through this, an adolescent acquires ‘appropriate attitudes and values’ needed to further succeed within the confines of education.
An adolescent’s success or failure within the formal education system is a function of both their ability to demonstrate both measures of formal educational qualifications, as well as the attainment of the aforementioned qualities acquired through socialization mechanisms. This nature of education is reproduced throughout all stages of the system; from primary to post secondary. The ability of a student to progress to each subsequent level requires mastery of the prior. One’s ability to successfully complete the process of educational attainment strongly correlates to the capacity to realize adequate pay, occupational prestige, social status, etc. upon workforce participation.
There is no clear consensus as the exact role of education within cultural reproduction; and further to what degree, if any, this system either encourages or discourages topics such as social stratification, resource inequality, and discrepancies in access to opportunities. It's believed, however, that the primary means in which education determines an individual’s social status, class, values, and hierarchy, is through the distribution of cultural capital. This notion of cultural capital accumulation, and the degree to which an individual attains cultural capital, determines the individual’s access to resources and opportunities. There are, however several competing ideologies and explanations that have been significantly discussed.
Education provides functional prerequisites – known as Parsonian Functionalism states that education’s function is to provide individuals with the necessary values and attitudes for future work. This forms the assumption that regardless of the trade an individual participates, they will all need a similar set of social skills for their day to day interactions. From this concept, the idea of education as an Ideological state apparatus emerged. This elaborated on the prior by continuing that both family and school work together to reproduce social classes, occupational hierarchy, value orientation, and ideology.
Education mirrors capitalism – Education mirrors the capitalistic system, in that it sorts individuals, and assigns them the skills necessary to fulfill their destined occupation. An individual is provided the appropriate attitude that should be observed within the labor force. Further it establishes an “acceptance to the reproduction of submissive attitude to the established order” With this, education’s primary role is believed to be as a method of sorting individuals rather than equally educating. Those with high levels of accumulated social capital from parents or other sources are more easily able to excel within the system of education. Thus, these individuals will continue on a track that places these them into specialized and comparatively highly prestigious occupations. In contrast, those with little social or cultural capital will maintain low levels throughout the process of education and be placed into occupations with little demand for cultural capital – significantly less specialized and prestigious occupation. With this occupational selection, both the individuals will maintain the cultural norms and social status associated with each outside of their occupations as well.
With any of the concepts, whether considering the intrinsic value of education or the externally perceived value, each unit of educational attainment requires forgone earnings to attain. Insomuch as an individual would have to sacrifice wages in order to gain an additional unit of education. Outside of forgone monetary earnings, there are also direct expenses such as tuition, supplies, books, etc. one must consider when acquiring education, as well as less direct psychic costs. With this there is an economic consideration and tradeoff an individual must consider in their further education aspirations. One who has resources and the desire to continue education has a significant comparative advantage to an individual who by comparison does not. This financial aspect of educational acquirement proves as yet another consideration in the reproductive nature of education.
One who successfully completes the process of educational attainment incurs a significant comparative advantage over a similar individual who does not. Thus the degree to which education reproduces cultural and social norms already present in the underlying society stands to prove a significant factor in the continued propagation of these established norms. With this harsh divide between individuals who do and do not complete the process of formal education, social stratification and inequality between the two groups emerges. This further confirms cultural norms and reproduces the same system upon each successive generation.
in the early 1970s. Initially, Bourdieu’s work was on education
in a modern society. He believed that the education system was used solely to ‘reproduce’ the culture of the dominant class in order for the dominant class to continue to hold and release power. Bourdieu’s ideas were similar to those of Louis Althusser
's notion of ‘ideological state apparatuses’ which had emerged around the same time. He began to study socialization
and how dominant culture and certain norms and traditions effected many social relations.
One of Pierre Bourdieu
and Jean-Claude Passeron main concepts on Cultural Reproduction was in their book Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. Bourdieu’s main focus was the structural reproduction of disadvantages and inequalities that are caused by cultural reproduction. According to Bourdieu, inequalities are recycled through the education system and other social institutions. Bourdieu believed that the prosperous and affluent societies of the west were becoming the “cultural capital”. High social class, familiarity with the bourgeois culture and educational credentials determined one’s life chances. It was biased towards those of higher social class and aided in conserving social hierarchies. This system concealed and neglected individual talent and academic meritocracy. Bourdieu demonstrated most of his known theories in his books The Inheritors and Reproduction in Education, Culture and Society. Both books established him as a progenitor of “Reproduction theory”
Bourdieu also pioneered many procedural frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social
, and symbolic capital
, and the concepts of habitus, field
, and symbolic violence
. Bourdieu's work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment in social dynamics. Bourdieu’s theories build upon the conjectures of Ludwig Wittgenstein
, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
, Edmund Husserl
, Georges Canguilhem
, Karl Marx
, Gaston Bachelard
, Max Weber
, Émile Durkheim
, and Norbert Elias
, among others.
, economic, and cultural capital
. Those cultures have gained cultural capital
and are considered the dominant group among the rest. However, in order to acquire cultural capital one must undergo indiscernible learning and these cultural norms must be used in the earliest days of life.
Through Cultural Reproduction, only those members of the dominant culture can acquire knowledge in relation to the way it is taught from within this cultural system. Therefore, those who are not members of the dominant culture are at a disadvantage to receive cultural information, and therefore will remain at a disadvantage. Capitalist societies depend on a stratified social system, where the working class has an education suited for manual labor: leveling out such inequalities would break down the system. Therefore, schools in capitalist societies require a method of stratification, and often choose to do so in a way in which the dominant culture will not lose its hegemony. One method of maintaining this stratification is through cultural reproduction.
- Groups of people, notably social classes, act to reproduce the existing social structureSocial structureSocial structure is a term used in the social sciences to refer to patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of the individuals. The usage of the term "social structure" has changed over time and may reflect the various levels of analysis...
to preserve their advantage - The processes of schooling in modern societies are among the main mechanisms of cultural reproduction, and do not operate solely through what is taught in courses of formal instruction.
Reproduction as it is applied to culture, is the process by which aspects of culture are passed on from person to person or from society to society. There are a number of different ways in which this has happened. Historically, people have moved from different countries taking with them certain cultural norms and traditions. For centuries cultural reproduction has occurred in a profound way through a hidden agenda. Cultures transmit aspects of behavior which individuals learn in an informal way while they are out of the home. This interaction between individuals resulting in the transfer of accepted cultural norms, values, and information is accomplished through a process known as socialization
Socialization
Socialization is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and educationalists to refer to the process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies...
.
Methods of Cultural Reproduction
The method through which cultural reproduction is perpetuated varies by the socializing agent’s relative location, awareness, and intention to reproduce social or cultural norms.Enculturation
Enculturation
Enculturation is the process by which a person learns the requirements of the culture by which he or she is surrounded, and acquires values and behaviours that are appropriate or necessary in that culture. As part of this process, the influences which limit, direct, or shape the individual include...
can be described as "a partly conscious and partly unconscious learning experience when the older generation invites, induces, and compels the younger generation to adopt traditional ways of thinking and behaving". Although, in many ways Enculturation
Enculturation
Enculturation is the process by which a person learns the requirements of the culture by which he or she is surrounded, and acquires values and behaviours that are appropriate or necessary in that culture. As part of this process, the influences which limit, direct, or shape the individual include...
duplicates the norms and traditions of previous generations. The degree of similarity between the cultures of each successive generation through enculturation may vary. This concept could be demonstrated by the tendency of each successive generation to follow cultural norms such as transportation right of way. These expectations are set forth and replicated by the prior generation. There may be little if any empirical evidence supporting a choice of driving in one lane or another, yet with each new generation, the accepted norm of that individual’s culture is reinforced and perpetuated. Parents and educators prove to be two of the most influential enculturating forces of cultural reproduction.
Comparatively, diffusion
Diffusion
Molecular diffusion, often called simply diffusion, is the thermal motion of all particles at temperatures above absolute zero. The rate of this movement is a function of temperature, viscosity of the fluid and the size of the particles...
is the dispersion of cultural norms and behaviors between otherwise unrelated groups or individuals. The integration of Chinese food or French linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
into American culture represents this concept.
Education as an agent of cultural reproduction
Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction is concerned with the link between original class membership and ultimate class membership, and how this link is mediated by the education system.According to Sullivan (2001) , the theory of cultural reproduction entails three fundamental propositions:
1) parental cultural capital is inherited by children.
2) children’s cultural capital is converted into educational credentials.
3) educational credentials are a major mechanism of social reproduction in advanced
capitalist societies.
The concept of education as an agent of cultural reproduction is argued to be less directly explained by the material and a subject taught, but rather more so through what is known as the Hidden curriculum
Hidden curriculum
Hidden curriculum, in general terms, is “some of the outcomes or by-products of schools or of non-school settings, particularly those states which are learned but not openly intended.” However, a variety of definitions have been developed based on the broad range of perspectives of those who study...
. This refers to the socialization aspect of the education process. Through this, an adolescent acquires ‘appropriate attitudes and values’ needed to further succeed within the confines of education.
An adolescent’s success or failure within the formal education system is a function of both their ability to demonstrate both measures of formal educational qualifications, as well as the attainment of the aforementioned qualities acquired through socialization mechanisms. This nature of education is reproduced throughout all stages of the system; from primary to post secondary. The ability of a student to progress to each subsequent level requires mastery of the prior. One’s ability to successfully complete the process of educational attainment strongly correlates to the capacity to realize adequate pay, occupational prestige, social status, etc. upon workforce participation.
There is no clear consensus as the exact role of education within cultural reproduction; and further to what degree, if any, this system either encourages or discourages topics such as social stratification, resource inequality, and discrepancies in access to opportunities. It's believed, however, that the primary means in which education determines an individual’s social status, class, values, and hierarchy, is through the distribution of cultural capital. This notion of cultural capital accumulation, and the degree to which an individual attains cultural capital, determines the individual’s access to resources and opportunities. There are, however several competing ideologies and explanations that have been significantly discussed.
Education provides functional prerequisites – known as Parsonian Functionalism states that education’s function is to provide individuals with the necessary values and attitudes for future work. This forms the assumption that regardless of the trade an individual participates, they will all need a similar set of social skills for their day to day interactions. From this concept, the idea of education as an Ideological state apparatus emerged. This elaborated on the prior by continuing that both family and school work together to reproduce social classes, occupational hierarchy, value orientation, and ideology.
Education mirrors capitalism – Education mirrors the capitalistic system, in that it sorts individuals, and assigns them the skills necessary to fulfill their destined occupation. An individual is provided the appropriate attitude that should be observed within the labor force. Further it establishes an “acceptance to the reproduction of submissive attitude to the established order” With this, education’s primary role is believed to be as a method of sorting individuals rather than equally educating. Those with high levels of accumulated social capital from parents or other sources are more easily able to excel within the system of education. Thus, these individuals will continue on a track that places these them into specialized and comparatively highly prestigious occupations. In contrast, those with little social or cultural capital will maintain low levels throughout the process of education and be placed into occupations with little demand for cultural capital – significantly less specialized and prestigious occupation. With this occupational selection, both the individuals will maintain the cultural norms and social status associated with each outside of their occupations as well.
With any of the concepts, whether considering the intrinsic value of education or the externally perceived value, each unit of educational attainment requires forgone earnings to attain. Insomuch as an individual would have to sacrifice wages in order to gain an additional unit of education. Outside of forgone monetary earnings, there are also direct expenses such as tuition, supplies, books, etc. one must consider when acquiring education, as well as less direct psychic costs. With this there is an economic consideration and tradeoff an individual must consider in their further education aspirations. One who has resources and the desire to continue education has a significant comparative advantage to an individual who by comparison does not. This financial aspect of educational acquirement proves as yet another consideration in the reproductive nature of education.
One who successfully completes the process of educational attainment incurs a significant comparative advantage over a similar individual who does not. Thus the degree to which education reproduces cultural and social norms already present in the underlying society stands to prove a significant factor in the continued propagation of these established norms. With this harsh divide between individuals who do and do not complete the process of formal education, social stratification and inequality between the two groups emerges. This further confirms cultural norms and reproduces the same system upon each successive generation.
History
The concept of cultural reproduction was first developed by the French sociologist and cultural theorist Pierre BourdieuPierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
in the early 1970s. Initially, Bourdieu’s work was on education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
in a modern society. He believed that the education system was used solely to ‘reproduce’ the culture of the dominant class in order for the dominant class to continue to hold and release power. Bourdieu’s ideas were similar to those of Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
's notion of ‘ideological state apparatuses’ which had emerged around the same time. He began to study socialization
Socialization
Socialization is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists and educationalists to refer to the process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs and ideologies...
and how dominant culture and certain norms and traditions effected many social relations.
One of Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
and Jean-Claude Passeron main concepts on Cultural Reproduction was in their book Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. Bourdieu’s main focus was the structural reproduction of disadvantages and inequalities that are caused by cultural reproduction. According to Bourdieu, inequalities are recycled through the education system and other social institutions. Bourdieu believed that the prosperous and affluent societies of the west were becoming the “cultural capital”. High social class, familiarity with the bourgeois culture and educational credentials determined one’s life chances. It was biased towards those of higher social class and aided in conserving social hierarchies. This system concealed and neglected individual talent and academic meritocracy. Bourdieu demonstrated most of his known theories in his books The Inheritors and Reproduction in Education, Culture and Society. Both books established him as a progenitor of “Reproduction theory”
Bourdieu also pioneered many procedural frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social
Social
The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...
, and symbolic capital
Symbolic capital
In sociology and anthropology, symbolic capital can be referred to as the resources available to an individual on the basis of honor, prestige or recognition, and functions as an authoritative embodiment of cultural value...
, and the concepts of habitus, field
Field (Bourdieu)
Field is one of the core concepts used by French social scientist Pierre Bourdieu. A field is a setting in which agents and their social positions are located. The position of each particular agent in the field is a result of interaction between the specific rules of the field, agent's habitus and...
, and symbolic violence
Symbolic violence
The concept of symbolic violence was first introduced by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to account for the tacit almost unconscious modes of cultural/social domination occurring within the every-day social habits maintained over conscious subjects....
. Bourdieu's work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment in social dynamics. Bourdieu’s theories build upon the conjectures of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...
, Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
, Georges Canguilhem
Georges Canguilhem
Georges Canguilhem was a French philosopher and physician who specialized in epistemology and the philosophy of science .-Life and work:...
, Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
, Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
, Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
, Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...
, and Norbert Elias
Norbert Elias
Norbert Elias was a German sociologist of Jewish descent, who later became a British citizen.-Biography:...
, among others.
Debate Over Cultural Reproduction
Bourdieu is best known for his theoretical principles, conceptual devices and political intentions. He theorizes that what is taught to younger generations is dependent on the varying degrees of socialSocial
The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...
, economic, and cultural capital
Cultural capital
The term cultural capital refers to non-financial social assets; they may be educational or intellectual, which might promote social mobility beyond economic means....
. Those cultures have gained cultural capital
Cultural capital
The term cultural capital refers to non-financial social assets; they may be educational or intellectual, which might promote social mobility beyond economic means....
and are considered the dominant group among the rest. However, in order to acquire cultural capital one must undergo indiscernible learning and these cultural norms must be used in the earliest days of life.
Through Cultural Reproduction, only those members of the dominant culture can acquire knowledge in relation to the way it is taught from within this cultural system. Therefore, those who are not members of the dominant culture are at a disadvantage to receive cultural information, and therefore will remain at a disadvantage. Capitalist societies depend on a stratified social system, where the working class has an education suited for manual labor: leveling out such inequalities would break down the system. Therefore, schools in capitalist societies require a method of stratification, and often choose to do so in a way in which the dominant culture will not lose its hegemony. One method of maintaining this stratification is through cultural reproduction.