Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America

by Barbara Jensen

Dimaggio (1982) tested Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital with 2,900 eleventh-grade girls and boys (discussed in MacLeod 1995, 100). He included measures of cultural attitudes, information, and activities. He concluded the impact of cultural capital in high school was “very significant” and that his study “dramatically confirmed the utility” of Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction. Many others have also argued that the middle class bias of schools results in structural inequality (Bernstein 1971, 1972, 1977, 1990; Bowles and Gintis 1976; Willis 1977; Anyon 1980, 1981, 1997; Giroux 1983). But, of course, people experience their lives in intimate, personal terms, not in abstract statistics. People do not want to see themselves as “a pawn in a behavioral game of chess” because it violates and erases a dignified sense of self (Sennett and Cobb 1972).