‘You’re in the basement of this grand house…:’ habitus reformation and elite cultural capital acquisition among women of color

ABSTRACT

This study explores habitus (re)formation and elite cultural capital acquisition among 37 lower to middle-income women of color who accessed a high-income, predominantly white suburban public high school through one of three ways: as residents, as commuters, or as boarders, with the latter groups gaining access through two voluntary racial desegregation programs. The in-depth interviews reveal that women in all three groups discuss exposure to and comfort in diverse settings, but commuters and boarders are more likely to discuss habitus (re)formation than are residents. Women in all three groups discuss gaining dominant cultural capital in the form of speech and self-presentation skills, at times explicitly discussing the racialized nature of such forms of cultural capital. Commuters and boarders also discuss acquiring academic knowledge and travel opportunities, while residents and commuters discuss institutionalized cultural capital in the form of a diploma or a driver’s license with an elite town name.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural capital
• habitus
• race
• education
• schooling
• desegregation

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my research assistants, Laurie Paul and Marielle Peace, and the Department of Sociology at Harvard University for hosting me in the 2015-2016 academic year. My thanks to Teal Rothschild for her significant support, as well as to the feedback from anonymous reviewers who made this a much stronger work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Because there was very little discussion of objectified cultural capital in the interviews, I have focused on embodied and institutionalized forms.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spencer Foundation, Grant #201500090 and by Emmanuel College’s Office of Academic Affairs.