Cultural Capital

Presence of Gangs

Poverty Cycle Causes Formation of Gangs

An individual’s cultural capital consists of the “styles, skills, and knowledge in which a they are able to obtain from their family background.” Cultural capital has three distinguishing forms: embodied, objectified, and institutionalized. The people who are born within these less stable and lower socioeconomic communities don’t usually possess those characteristics correlated with mainstream society. These individuals are typically raised with the parenting technique formally known as “natural growth.” This technique is associated with the working class and allows children almost complete autonomy and instills a sense of constraint within the child. This difference in parenting technique sets these children apart from their middle class peers, who are raised through the parenting technique deemed "concerted cultivation," and introduces the inequality that they experience throughout their entire lives. Their lack of economic resources, due to the lack of jobs available that pay a living wage, also limits the amount of material possessions in which they can attain. Material possessions are a major indication of cultural capital that this social class doesn’t have the privilege of having. This deficiency of material objects maintains their lower socioeconomic status and consequently ostracizes them from mainstream society. These two things combined, as well as the communities in which they reside, disallow these individuals to obtain substantial institutionalized cultural capital. Institutionalized cultural capital is a sign of a person’s intelligence and competence, and therefore correlates with the occupation an individual is able to acquire. Consequently, these children grow up lacking economic and educational resources, as well as confidence to stand up for themselves as individuals and recreate this never ending cycle of social class, which causes them to turn to gangs.

Lack of Institutionalized Cultural Capital: Job Insecurity

Locations of Gangs