Things That Come to Mind Because of 'Cultural Capital'

I recently learned about the term 'cultural capital' in the sociology of education. 'Cultural capital,' huh.... I have an awful lot of things you could call cultural capital. After learning about it, that's how it looks to me. The term 'cultural capital' taught in the sociology of education can be condensed into the following three kinds.

1) Objectified cultural capital

2) Institutionalized cultural capital

3) Habitus cultural capital

Of these, I have quite a lot of cultural capital acquired through habitus.

1) An interest in books

2) An interest in art

3) An interest in fashion

4) A moral interest

5) An interest in careers, in life

6) And the 'manner' in which I converse about my stories, including all these things

Lately I find myself wanting to meet someone whose 'cultural capital' is similar to mine, and I suppose it's because for roughly the past four years I've talked about fashion and art all by myself. Whatever exhibition I went to, about 90 percent of the time I was alone, and the few exhibitions I went to with someone would add up to about three times at most. The rest I went to alone. The Andy Warhol exhibition, the Rodin exhibition, the Chagall exhibition, the Gauguin exhibition, the Contemporary French Art Today exhibition, the Gods and Humans of Greece exhibition, the Goryeo Buddhist Painting exhibition, the National Geographic photo exhibition, the photojournalism exhibition, the Pulitzer Prize photo exhibition, the 300 Years of American Art exhibition, and so on—up to the most recent ones I attended, the Shirin Neshat exhibition and the Orsay exhibition (at the National Museum of Korea)—I went to most of them alone. This year marks the fifth year since I started thinking I wish I had even one person to go around with.

My interest in books is revealed through my blog, so there's really nothing to say about it, and I'd like to summarize my interest in fashion like this. I try to express the desire to dress in 'my own color.' I don't like going around looking the same as everyone else. Maybe it's because the university I currently attend has an especially strong psychology of 'fear of isolation,' but I want to be different from others all the more. When you look around, people are mostly uniform. That is, the vibes are all similar. Of course, I see other people too. But most are truly 'ordinary' people. Among them, I think I stand out a little. I've always stood out a little. Ah, of course, it might not be 'a little.' It might be quite a lot.

I agonized over my notion of morality for quite a long time, and I realized I'm someone who holds morality very high. From the most basic of basics, 'business ethics,' to just ordinary things, among people I always regard those with high morality highly. This school tends to have a rather 'passive' character of not wanting to participate much, and quite a lot of 'free-riding,' so it's hard to properly see morality manifest, and there even seem to be many cases of simply not being moral.... It really is a tough place, here.

The last thing I want to talk about is the sixth one, 'the manner of conversing.' I have a conversational style that layers a masculine way of thinking beneath a learned feminine mode of conversation. I came to recognize this in concrete terms because a junior and a peer told me about myself, and it's partly because the people I can talk to about the topics above are more often women than men, and partly because I feel my mother's conversational style remains in me from talking with her often since childhood.

I find myself thinking that if I meet someone with similar cultural capital, I should hold on to them.