SANFORD: Cultural capital and style affect impressions of others

Good things never go out of style.

I was reminded of this when I chanced on "Carry On Wayward Son" recorded by the band Kansas in 1976.

A quick station addition to my Pandora playlist reminds me of how much I enjoy bands like Aerosmith, AC/DC and Bon Jovi despite having not heard them in years (let alone that most of them became popular before I was born).

At the same time, I'm watching freshmen walk around in tights and big sunglasses, reminiscent of the ‘80s. I remember the ‘80s.

The fashion was bad the first time around (with the exception of Princess Di's little black dress), so I can't imagine why anyone would want to resurrect it, but apparently the fashion industry has.

Another columnist once remarked that the band Nickelback is no longer cool.

In the meantime, salespeople try to sell me something on the advice that it's "in" this season.

Newspapers and magazines have lists of what's "in" and "out," which include everything from fashion trends to politicians. LOLcats are officially "out" — at least according to the Washington Post's culture writer, Hank Stuever, as of Jan. 1, 2009.

When does a funny cat with bad spelling ever go out of style?

It makes me wonder where all this "in" and "out" comes from, and I can only imagine that it has to do with "status." Social status specifically is the mechanism by which we place ourselves and others within the stratification system of society.

In order to be higher in the hierarchy, a position from which we can attain greater reward, we display more of the things that are "in," or accepted as "good" by critics and pundits.

Things that are "out" are perceived as being old, boring, annoying or in poor taste.

But just who dictates all of these things anyway? Who are these critics and pundits? What is taste?

According to the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, taste is what simultaneously indicates one's position in society and is dictated by that position in a kind of feedback loop.

"Cultured" individuals prefer foie gras to Spam, something they learn from others of their social status (i.e., their parents) and also use to demonstrate that status to others.

A billionaire who likes spam might still be seen as a billionaire, but her "cultural capital" would decrease.

Cultural capital, a term coined by Bourdieu, is a kind of symbolic wealth.

Symbols of cultural capital include education and intellectual knowledge, taste and fashion, and material goods that display these attributes, such as paintings, clothes, houses or cars.

Cultural capital helps create relationships of power from which people exert influence to achieve their own personal goals. In other words, it helps us get what we want.

For example, if someone stops you on the street and asks to borrow your cell phone, are you more likely to give it to them if they are well-dressed, speak in a well-educated manner and display symbols of belonging to your class or higher or if they are "poorly" dressed, sound uneducated and demonstrate symbols of being below your own social class?

Would you help the executive or the hoodlum?

What's to say Armani has greater cultural value than Hanes?

The value we place on things is entirely capricious, but we still use it to make judgments.

Culture itself is essentially arbitrary and subjective. In other words, it is what we say it is, and it could be anything other than what it is.

This arbitrariness allows us to fight over which cultural attributes should be valued over others. (Armani vs. Hanes)

All social groups want the products of their group, their "culture," to be valued above those of other groups in order to gain cultural capital for that group and all its members.

This is how sagging, a fashion trend reputedly evolved in prison, came to gain social prominence as "cool" via its adoption by hip-hop artists — those with higher social status — in the early ‘90s, leading to wide-scale imitation by any number of social groups.

Thus things come into style and go out of style as a product of this ongoing and largely unseen struggle.

Now, I don't know what the cultural capital of hair bands are, but it's probably fairly low on the totem pole.

Which is why starting off with the seemingly objective statement "Good things never go out of style" is something of an oxymoron because "good things" can only be dictated by culture, which is inherently arbitrary rather than objective.

However, once we realize the essential arbitrariness of culture (any culture, ours or others), we begin to free ourselves from its dictates.

Culture is basically a mechanism for perpetuating the status quo because it is continuously misperceived as being a "natural" state or order when it is anything but.

By liberating ourselves from this misperception, we can begin to make improvements.

One of those improvements should be the relaxing of relentless class struggles through the constant need to dictate what is currently "in" and what is "out."

This struggle creates social division (us vs. them) and leads to rampant consumerism a la keeping up with the Joneses.

Letting go of this struggle and realizing the arbitrary values we assign to such things as "taste" is what allows good things to never go out of style.

It removes the burden of "uncultured" guilt from people who like spam or hair metal or ‘80s fashion.

People are free to like what they like without recrimination.

We can stop perceiving others as above or below us in the social hierarchy because of how they speak or dress, accepting all people on a more equal footing.

If we can do this, in the immortal words of Kansas, maybe there really will be some small peace when we are done.

 

Monica Sanford is a graduate student in Architecture and Community and Regional Planning. Reach her at monicasanford@
dailynebraskan.com.