Cultural Capital In Movement: On The Dissolution Of Traditional Educational Codes By Educational Policy and Social Movements Among First Generation Academics In Germany

Barriers to educational advancement are often described in the literature. In this connection, authors mainly refer to Bourdieu’s concept in which a lack of suitable cultural capital is often a barrier to the educational advancement of children from non-academic families. Acquiring such capital, in accordance with this theory, is an essential prerequisite for success in an advanced educational career. Bourdieu paints a rather pessimistic picture of the chances of acquiring such capital. Codes of the milieu of origin survive, mediated through habitus, and continue to hinder educational advancement.

In a research project comparing educational advancement in three generations in Eastern and Western Germany — that is, first-generation academics in the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s — a total of 89 biographical narrative interviews were conducted. Many cases were found to corroborate the Bourdieusian concept. At the same time, however, it was also apparent that there are also many kinds of mechanisms that contribute to the dissolution of culturally transmitted codes, and thus modify the “value” of the hereditary cultural capital in a given social stratum. To illustrate this, we will present a hermeneutic case reconstruction after Rosenthal that can be attributed to the type “social movements”. This case study will serve to illustrate the extent to which reforms in society and educational policy have led to a shift in cultural codes, and how such reforms can favor educational advancement.