Opportunity Differentials

Abstract

Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of “cultural capital” can help us understand the many ways that opportunity is routinely transmitted across generations in ways that produce significant impediments to upward mobility for those without wealth. Rather than theorizing a relatively level playing field in a free market economy where opportunities are available to all who want them, Bourdieu instead postulates a much more monolithic, impermeable social and economic landscape, where often invisible forms of social and cultural capital are reproduced across various highly stratified cohorts of citizens.