A Review Of Cultural Capital´s Concept: Contributions To Educational Research

Abstract

The text presents the article “Cultural capital and school reproduction: a critical review”, by Hugues Draelants and Magali Ballatore, professors at the Catholic University of Louvain, in Belgium, translated by us. Its objective is to explain the reasons why we consider important its diffusion in Brazilian educational environment. The article makes a critical review of the contribution of the cultural capital´s concept, in order to assess its relevance for understanding contemporary processes of social reproduction throughout school education. For this, the authors propose a discussion on the definition of the cultural capital´s concept and on its current school profitability. They also discuss the growing importance of other capital´s types, such as economic and social, and highlight the issue of their conversion into cultural capital. Considering that as important as the conclusions reached by Draelants and Ballatore was the path taken to them, the text brings some highlights of the article with the intention not to summarize or simplify the richness of the discussion undertaken, but instead making an invitation to read it.