CULTURAL CAPITAL: A KEYWORD OR A CATCHWORD?

The concept of cultural capital is highly popular in the social sciences and humanities. Yet, its usefulness as a research tool is often taken for granted. Meanwhile, the present paper attempts to show that if anything should be evident about the cultural capital, it is its negative, harmful rather than valuable character. The concept is under-specified- it overlaps related concepts denoting other forms of capital, such as social and human capital. The capital analogy is totally misplaced, since the concept, as it is commonly defined, does not meet any conditions of real, that is, economic capital. Cultural capital theory, as developed notably by Pierre Bourdieu, comprises also class theory, which, however, is of poor quality, mixing up some class, e.e. economic ownership, criteria with those pertinent to stratification, and adding insult to injury-not differentiating between those and social estates, i.e. units of social differentiation in the non-economic domain. As a result, the key thesis of theory regarding social reproduction is not supported by evidence. Finally, the term "cultural capital" upon scrutiny proves to be entangled in the fallacy of contradicto in terminis. Thus, though its unclear relationship to capital stricto sensu might suggest that the concept is something of a metaphor, in fact it is rather an oxymoron. Needless to say, just this feature-and there are a host of other flaws- causes that the concept should be discarded out of hand.