Chapter 5 Cultural Practices and Social Relations Aleksander Manterys Abstract In this chapter the author examines how the term “cultural capital” can be used in analysis and reflects upon possible methods of operationalizing the concept. The first step involves defining cultural capital and its dimensions. The concept is then applied to the class system and status groups. Subsequently, the author addresses the performative aspect of cultural capital, that is, cultural practices. The main objective is to clarify a conceptual “foreground” and define the meaning and potential of key analytical categories to help construct a “map” of cultural practices, with the simultaneous indication of their rank, importance, and applicability to classes and status groups. Keywords: cultural capital, cultural practice, distinction, taste, status group, social class, social networks, omnivorism, univorism, highbrow culture, popular culture Initial Remarks The term “cultural practices,” which denotes forms of human activity and ways to become part of social circles and networks, makes it possible to refer directly to the regularity of human behaviors. This does not mean ignoring causal mechanisms or the logic of systemic interdependencies. Such a step, in fact, would be pointless: most of these regularities constitute the “substance” of determination and interdependency. Using the term “practice” is intentional in the sense that this term draws attention to the circumstances or opportunities in which culturally defined forms of human activity are initiated. Social reality exists, to quote Simmel (1971) or Cooley (1902), both outside individuals and inside them. More precisely, it happens “in between,” so to speak, constituting a set of social relations ordered into structures, networks, or other aggregates, or specific patterns of coincidence. These patterns shape the actions of individuals in ways as simple as determining what is possible and sensible in a given situation and simultaneously 114 Aleksander Manterys indicating what is “better” or “worse” in that situation in one respect or another. Thus, entering particular orbits creates institutionalized and legitimized paths of access to highly valued positions, making it possible to better strategize action. The dynamics of relations are simultaneously extant and constructed; the point is to determine how individuals in a given environment can exploit the assets inherent in the positions they occupy, and whether and to what extent they can take advantage of the structural opportunities—especially interpersonal and network associations—to be included in what they consider beneficial, appropriate, or desirable. The normative overtones of human action—the references to values—are obvious in the sense that every culture is internalized. However, shaping relations with what constitutes a common, class, or status culture— what refers to a palette of unique choices and valuations—is a social fact in the Durkheimian sense. The ritualization of human behaviors, both festive and everyday ones, is indispensable. It economizes choice and allows us to better channel energy that enables us to achieve intended goals or (if one will) to maintain a favorable and consistent image in the eyes of significant others. It makes sense to speak of a culture of common values insofar as there are opportunities to put those values into practice within different types of relations, from the routines of everyday life to disinterested communing with objects of high culture. To understand this mystery, analysis in the categories of cultural capital must be undertaken. A key task is to determine how this capital should be defined. It is not one-dimensional, and even if we perceived it thus, a high level of such capital would be a static attribute, unrelated to other attributes of individuals. Cultural competence is something other than simple familiarity with what is considered privileged, highbrow, or better. It is the ability or art, confirmed in individual scenarios, of using “fragments” of culture to achieve and maintain positions that ensure the conversion of those fragments into other types of capital, and thus also a greater facility of transforming primary relations, that is, the power to shape their form and determine what is legitimized. In the broader perspective, it is the key component of social order understood as systems of superior and subordinate relations, vectors of human orientation toward oneself and others, one’s group and network milieu, a Cultural Practices and Social Relations 115 source of regularity and simultaneously an analytic key that makes it possible to reconstruct patterns of human behavior. Thus, the possible meanings of the term “cultural capital” for analysis should be carefully examined, along with possible scenarios for operationalizing the concept. This analysis is conducted in several steps. The first involves defining cultural capital and its dimensions. Then the concept is applied to the class system and status groups. Finally, the performative aspects of cultural capital, that is, cultural practices, are addressed. These stages of analysis lead us toward questions that will become the seeds of hypotheses. The first objective, however, is to clarify a conceptual “foreground”: to define the meaning and potential of key analytical categories in order to help construct a “map” of cultural practices, with the simultaneous indication of their rank, importance, and applicability to classes and status groups. Cultural Capital In the most general terms possible, cultural capital is a set of competences originally associated with participation in high culture, and thus allowing a clear distinction between those who are “above” and those who are “lower” and “unequal” in their knowledge of cultural achievements. Knowledge or competence in this regard translates into distinctive practices: visiting museums, galleries, and theaters, reading literature, and listening to classical music or jazz. All these practices signify competent participation in the consumption of high culture. Such participation is not only marked by pleasant feelings of cultural superiority but is above all a component of strategic advantage in the competition for better position in the social structure. Analyses conducted by Bourdieu ([1979] 1984, [1983] 1986; Bourdieu and Passeron [1970] 1990), as well as works by Bernstein ([1971] 2003), contain a convincing description of the advantages associated with the components of cultural capital and their strategic importance in the education system, which favors forms and practices of high culture learned at home. And this image, despite attempts to differentiate it according to the logic of conditions in different countries, and the authors’ insistence upon the special power of the French educational system (with its emphasis on art, the humanities, and social sciences), 116 Aleksander Manterys is not showing any signs of fading. The “charismatic” character of high culture, which is associated with perfecting cultural savoir faire along with disinterestedness and detachment, is above all a component, so to speak, of the primary cultural equipment of people who grow up in an environment that makes the forms and practices of high culture seem natural, and simultaneously ascribes a value of legitimate “superiority” or “dominance” to that which is expressed in abstract terms—transcendent and detached—over all that is mundane and associated with entertainment or with the basic realities of everyday life. It is, in a way, absolutely necessary to insist upon defining cultural capital in terms of competent consumption of high culture. Such a stance constitutes a good starting point from which to analyze how cultural capital changes in terms of content, meaning, and relationships with other forms of capital. In slightly old-fashioned terms, these changes concern processes of social adaptation to normative expectations contained in cultural patterns. The processes can be treated as actual practices, which show the dynamics of assigning and achieving, acceptance and rejection, or reproduction and transformation (see, e.g., Anheier et al. 1995, Bennett and Savage 2004, Bennett 2005, 2006, Goldthorpe 2007, Jæger and Breen 2016, Lareau and Weininger 2003, Lizardo 2016, Ostrower 1998, Silva 2015, Tramonte and Willms 2010). As Bourdieu explains ([1983] 1986: 46–47), it makes sense to use the term “capital” if we perceive the social world in terms of historical accumulation and continuity. Capital is the strength inherent in objective and subjective structures, the potential for mobilizing social energy made concrete in the activities of acting subjects, and the principle that determines the rules of the social game. Capital can be accumulated, and used to gain advantages; it is distributed throughout different segments of society and, in a way, reflects that society’s condition. It creates a network of coercion and opportunities, determines the orbits and trajectories of social practices, and defines the chances of carrying out ventures. It is not given once and for all, although it exhibits relative permanence, which is a function of its accumulation and reproduction, as well as of its possibilities of transformation, and thus the creation of new scenarios of social practices. Furthermore, although capital is significant in determining the possibilities of functioning Cultural Practices and Social Relations 117 in regard to material objects, including those that constitute valuable resources in economic