Compare and contrast concepts

In the same way that a qualified and experienced baseball player knows the time when they are supposed to swing a fastball without having to first think about it, every individual has got something that is embodied in them for ‘feeling’ for some situations in life or the games that individuals get themselves in. Habitus in most cases gets us to navigate through the social environments successfully when we are in the right situations (Bourdieu, 2018). For instance, if one was brought up in a neighbourhood that was full of crime and rough life, they are most likely to have street smarts that are needed for successful survival in violent confrontations, very committed to looking for money and employment and ability to avoid harassment and surveillance by the police.

, However, for a fellow who grew up and went to a college, this kind of life would be useless to them. A, In any case, it would be detrimental to their success in their new social set up. The cultural capital is the collection of the elements like clothing, skills, credentials, posture, tastes and mannerisms which an individual gets via their belonging into a certain social class. As the individuals share their cultural capital with other people, for example, as people together enjoy certain movies, they bond and become of one social class. This creates some sense of a collective group position and identity. However, he mentions that cultural capital brings about social inequality. There are certain forms of cultural capital which are valued over others, and this can hinder or assist one’s social mobility in a similar manner as wealth and income (Bourdieu, 2018).

The conventional wisdom redefines society’s social structure through cataloguing population in 3 different categories: the poor, middle class and the rich. In Italy this is greatly likely to be the case. Thus, it is because of income distribution that there exist these different classes through the purchasing and selling of labour. While in Italy, I would have rightly fitted the class of the poor. The country is characterized by a huge gulf between the underdeveloped regions of the peasant farming and the highly industrialized areas. When an individual comes out of their comfort zones, this is similar to a fish that is coming out of the water, because they feel a sense of inadequacy grasping their life. This new environment offered me new opportunities to expand my social networks and also improve my education.

A suggestion by Bourdieu is that it’s under hysteresis conditions- that is the time you become a fish out of the water- that you expect great changes to take place. This hysteresis effect can offer an explanation as to how I can make sense of my new conditions or environment by my habitus, and on my ability to decode parallels between these two contexts. The most crucial emphasis and contribution in Bourdieu’s capital awareness is the capacity to differentiate the capital that was not able to be captured by only economic capital in reproducing the social class mechanisms. That was my comfort zone, and it was the day to day experience. In the same way, the class that I was operating in at that period was satisfactory to the society.