The Dictionary of Human Geography

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paid much attention to the spatialities implicit

in his formulations. Yet his work is, inevitably,

a situated knowledge: his writings have

been a response to the dilemmas of postwar

Germany seeking to come to terms with

the ghosts of its fascist past, and many of his

arguments are centred on a particular, even

privileged, view ofeurope. More than this,

however, the colonization of the lifeworld that

Habermas claims to identify mirrors, in a rad-

ically different register, Lefebvre’s account of

the superimposition of abstract space over

concrete space (Gregory, 1994: see alsopro-

duction of space), and may be glimpsed in an

earlier form in the spatial impress of European

colonial systems on the lifeworlds of native

peoples (Harris, 1991). Of all those who have

been associated with critical theory, however,

it has probably been the tragic figure of

Benjamin who has left the most enduring

mark onhuman geography: his experimental

renderings of the city, in text and as montage,

are powerful reminders thatmodernismwas

a critique of modernity and not merely a cele-

bration of it, and have inspired conceptual

elaborations (e.g. Latham, 1999) and eloquent

investigations (e.g. Pred, 1995). kb

Suggested reading

Bernstein (1995b); Rush (2004).

cultural capital A concept coined by the

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, cultural

capital is one among many forms ofcapital

that figure prominently in his intellectual pro-

ject; namely, to elaborate ‘a general science of

the economy of practices’ that would explain

the ‘economic logic’ behind apparently non-

economic and therefore disinterested practices

such as gift exchange or cultural consumption.

Cultural capital is closely linked to and func-

tions in conjunction witheconomic capital(the

conventional and most crudely material form

ofcapital that inhabits economic theory)

andsocial capital. The inter-convertibility

of various forms of capital is a critical rather

than incidental element in Bourdieu’s theory

of practice; but Bourdieu is careful to note that

the fungibility of cultural and social capital

into economic capital is conditional rather

than guaranteed, and frequently partial (in

short, not without risk). Two additional con-

cepts,symbolic capital andacademic capital,

which have close affinities with the concept

of cultural capital, also appear in Bourdieu’s

writings. That said, academic capital may be

regarded as a subset of cultural capital and

symbolic capital as a superset.

In his instructive treatise,Distinction: a social

critique of the judgment of taste(1984), Bourdieu

deploys the concept of cultural capital to great

effect to show how bourgeois practices of

culturalconsumption– via the arts, educa-

tion, cuisine, attire and so on – consolidate

an aesthetic that ‘consciously and deliberately

or not ... fulfill[s] a social function of legit-

imating social differences’. But his clearest

discussion of the concept is in a short, often-

overlooked essay called ‘The forms of capital’,

where Bourdieu identifies three states in which

cultural capital can exist: ‘in the embodied

state, i.e. in the form of long-lasting disposi-

tions of mind and body; in the objectified

state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures,

books, dictionaries, instruments, machines,

etc.) which are the trace or realization of the-

ories, problematics, etc.; and in theinstitution-

alizedstate [as educational qualifications]. .. ’

(1985, p. 243).

Key aspects of cultural capital differentiate

it from economic capital: principal among

these are its necessarily embodied form, which

makes it both less fungible and less easily

acquired than economic capital; and the more

overtly social and disguised conditions of its

transmission. Economic logic dictates the effi-

cacy of cultural capital: hence, the symbolic

profits of distinction (e.g. the ability to read

in a society of illiterates) that accrue from

cultural capital depend on the scarcity value

of that capital, which in turn depends on its

distribution within society. The more ill-

distributed a particular form of capital, the

greater is its value. In a circular argument,

Bourdieu maintains that inequalities in the

distribution of capital – in short,classdivi-

sions – are reproduced intergenerationally by

those very forms of capital that demarcate

class status in the first instance: ultimately,

he writes, ‘the means of appropriating the

product of accumulated labor in the objecti-

fied state which is held by a given agent [i.e.

various forms of capital], depends for its real

efficacy on the form of distribution of the

means of appropriating the accumulated and

objectively available resources. .. ’ (1985,

pp. 245–6). vg

Suggested reading

Guillory (1993); Lane (2000).

cultural ecology An important, if somewhat

under-appreciated, precursor to contemporary

political ecology. Cultural ecology has been

primarily concerned with the relationships

among the transformation ofnature, social

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CULTURAL ECOLOGY