5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

There is a longstanding concern regarding the relationship between cultural knowledge and social stratification. Cultural knowledge has been an important factor in understanding how socioeconomic status determines life outcomes (Lareau 2015) and how individuals use cultural repertoires to make sense of inequalities and actions (Kuusela 2022). This session aims to bring together studies that discuss the relationships between cultural knowledge and stratification. By cultural knowledge, we refer to a broad array of cultural forms, such as beliefs, preferences, and endowments (Vaisey and Valentino 2018). We invite works covering but not restricted to the following topics:

• The use of cultural knowledge to navigate social inequalities.
• Cultural knowledge and the reproduction of social inequalities.
• The influence of social origin on cultural knowledge acquisition.
• Effects of cultural knowledge on status attainment processes.
• Cross-national studies on the perception and attitudes towards social inequalities.
• The role of different environments such as class, religion, schools, and social networks in the formation of perceptions and attitudes towards social inequalities.
• Representations of Social stratification in Media and Popular Culture.
• Gendered Dimensions of Cultural Knowledge and Social stratification.
• Digital divides and the reproduction of cultural knowledge

References

Kuusela, Hanna. 2022. “The Hyperopia of Wealth: The Cultural Legitimation of Economic Inequalities by Top Earners.” Socio-Economic Review 20 (2): 515–38.

Lareau, Annette. 2015. “Cultural Knowledge and Social Inequality.” American Sociological Review 80 (1): 1–27.

Vaisey, Stephen, and Lauren Valentino. 2018. “Culture and Choice: Toward Integrating Cultural Sociology with the Judgment and Decision-Making Sciences.” Poetics 68: 131–43.