Rethinking cultural capital and community-based arts

Rimi Khan.

Journal of Sociology, Vol 49(2-3), pp.357-372.

2013

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783313481745

This article examines the contemporary field of Australian community-based arts in light of Bourdieu’s work on cultural capital. It considers how questions of ethnicity have complicated the field of community-based arts and informed the experience of artists and participants. These questions have implications for what it is that these organisations seek to do; specifically, the sorts of ‘capital’ they impart to participants in their programs, and what the significance of such capital is. Articulating a critical notion of cultural capital – and one that can accommodate the knowledges and competences that are relevant to the contemporary Australian context – can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role such arts organisations have in redefining or contesting the hierarchies of value that inform the art field.

This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant (LP110100039).