Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion: a Critical Investigation, 2003-2004

UK Data Archive Study Number 5832 -Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion: a Critical Investigation, 2003-2004 Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion: A Critical Investigation Research Report Background The primary point of theoretical and empirical reference for Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion: A Critical Investigation is Pierre Bourdieu’s study of the role of cultural practices in relationship to class-based processes of social distinction in 1960s France (Bourdieu, 1984). Debates generated by this study can be grouped into five types: Empirical 1. It has been questioned whether cultural practices are as centrally implicated in class practices of distinction in other countries as Bourdieu’s study suggested they were in France where the place accorded assessments of cultural competences has been accorded a particular significance in the French education system that is not matched elsewhere. 2. It has been argued that the significance of classed forms of cultural divisions has declined significantly since the 1960s owing to the levelling influence of television and the rise of new forms of cultural ‘omnivorousness’ which reduce any sense of clear separation of strongly differentiated class cultures. Theoretical 3. Bourdieu’s central, but not exclusive, concern with the relationships between culture and class have raised questions regarding the extent to which his theoretical categories might need to be revised in order to take account of the roles of gender and ethnicity in the relations between culture and social stratification. 4. The intervening period has witnessed considerable critical discussion of the three concepts governing the theoretical architecture of Bourdieu’s work: those of field, habitus and capital. His interpretation of Kantian aesthetics to provide a set of oppositions for the analysis of practices of cultural consumption has also been questioned. Policy 5. While the concept of cultural capital suggests that the connections between education and cultural policies are of crucial importance, the consequences of this insight vary depending on the overall policy parameters within which they are set. In the context of recent UK cultural policy debates these issues have been engaged with in the context of social exclusion policies 17 REFERENCE No. R000239801 Aims and Objectives Aims The project had four overarching aims: 1. To assess the degree to which Bourdieu’s concept of capital as applied to the relations between economic, social and cultural assets is able to describe and account for current patterns of class relationships in the UK. 2. To add to and qualify Bourdieu’s methodological procedures to give greater prominence to questions of gender and ethnicity in the analysis of the formation and transmission of cultural capital. 3. To take critical stock of Bourdieu’s key concepts in the light of both the current debates in the relevant scholarly literatures and the theoretical implications of our empirical findings. 4. To critically assess the use of cultural capital theory in the context of cultural policies concerned with combating social exclusion. Objectives These aims have been pursued via three main research questions as stated in the original application: 1. What is the nature of cultural capital in Britain? What kinds of social exclusion are generated by the differential distribution of cultural capital across class positions? 2. What are the relationships between economic capital, social capital and cultural capital, in particular how is cultural capital related to other forms of capital? 3. What role does cultural capital play in relation to existing patterns of social exclusion? These questions were to be explored via examination of a range of subsidiary issues concerning (i) the relationships between cultural knowledge, tastes and participation and occupational class, ethnic and gender divisions; (ii) claims that cultural distinctions have become less sharp in view of the rise of new forms of cultural omnivorousness; (iii) how cultural capital and economic capital interact in relation to different occupational class positions; (iv) the role of gendered divisions of labour in the household in the generational transmission of cultural capital; (v) the extent to which cultural capital takes specific national forms with consequences for the relations between majority and minority ethnic groups; and (vi) the extent to which the concept of social exclusion provides an adequate conceptualisation of the relations between economic, social and cultural inequalities and their consequences for cultural policy development, implementation and assessment. All of these aims and objectives were addressed with results that are reported below. 18 REFERENCE No. R000239801 Methods Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion was conceived and executed as a multi-method project with qualitative and quantitative methods contributing to the inquiry in a phased way as follows: (All phases of the investigation are detailed in the project’s web site: http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/sociology/research/ccse/) Field Code Changed Phase 1: Focus groups 25 focus groups were organised to gather evidence of the cultural tastes and participation of different sections of the population. Each group was constituted differently in order to gather information concerning the cultural practises of different social classes, of men and women, of different age groups, of gays and lesbians, and of representatives of the three main ethnic groups in the UK (Indian, Pakistani, and Afro-Caribbean). The groups were held in urban and rural contexts in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. They were conducted by one of the Research Fellows appointed to the project and by social science trained Open University Associate Lecturers. The focus group proceedings were transcribed and prepared for analysis via NVivo. The research team prepared summaries of each focus group report and of particular areas of cultural practice running across the focus group discussions (television preferences, musical tastes, etc). The results of these analyses informed the design of the questionnaire in Phase 2. Further details of the composition of the different groups and of the focus group discussion schedule can be found in Silva and Wright (2005). Phase 2: Survey design and administration The tendering process for the award of the contract for the administration of the survey was run concurrently with Phase 1. The contract was awarded to the National Centre for Social Research, largely on the basis of the sampling procedures they proposed for drawing both the main and the ethnic boost samples. The questionnaire design was based on (i) a careful examination of existing questionnaires concerned with cultural and social capital, and of national arts and cultural participation surveys, and (ii) the strategic use of different question formats in order to allow the data to be probed via different statistical techniques. The survey was piloted before being put into the field, and all of the interviewers (181) were trained at meetings attended by a member of the research team. The survey was put into the field – with the interviews being conducted via CAPI – in November 2003 and was completed in March 2004. The response rate was lower than expected, leading to some difficulties in meeting the target sample sizes finally agreed with the ESRC of 1500 (main sample) and 200 (ethnic boost sample). Inducements and a programme of re-contacts addressed these difficulties satisfactorily with final achieved sample sizes respectively of 1564 and 227. Further details of the sampling methods and the conduct of the survey are contained in the NCSR’s report (Appendix 1). Newspaper and magazine articles relating to different components of the cultural field were collected for one week during the period the survey was administered. 19 REFERENCE No. R000239801 Phase 3: Survey analysis This was conducted systematically through a number of clearly articulated stages. After a preliminary examination of the variable frequencies, our attention focused on the survey data relating to the three dimensions of cultural capital in the survey data: degree and kind of cultural participation, cultural tastes and cultural knowledge. Our primary concern at this stage was to identify significant correlations between these different aspects of cultural capital within and across the different areas of cultural practice covered in the questionnaire: music, reading, visual art, sport and embodiment, television and film. We have used factor and cluster analysis, correlations, logistic regression, and OLS regression as appropriate. In the second (and still ongoing) stage, we focused on identifying the positioning of these different aspects of cultural practice within a space of lifestyles constructed by means of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA). This work has been developed via a research collaboration with two French statisticians – Brigitte Le Roux and Herni Rouanet – who had worked on similar data with Bourdieu and who were attracted to our project in view of, in their assessment, the unparalleled richness of its survey data. By using 168 modalities from questions on visual art, eating out, film, TV, music, reading, and leisure we have constructed an unprecedented cultural map of contemporary Britain. The inductive procedures of multiple correspondence analysis have been of considerable advantage in allowing trends to emerge from the data in ways that have proved important in distinguishing

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