Cultural Trends 

Abstract: The multiculturalism backlash: European discourses, policies and practices, edited by Steven Vertovec and Susanne Wessendorf, Abingdon, Oxon, Routledge 2010, 224 pp., £90.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-0-...

Abstract: Within the sociology of education most conceptualizations of cultural capital within empirical research focus on high status cultural participation. A smaller, parallel body of work emphasizes much broader understandings of cultural capital in relation to education. The first part of this article maps different conceptions of cultural capital across the field of educational research before developing a conceptualization that stresses the microinteractional processes through which individuals comply (or fail to comply) with the evaluative standards of schooling. The article also argues that the growth of policy initiatives that accentuate the role of parents in schooling have made the myriad workings of cultural capital in relation to education more visible. Within government policy parental involvement has become the means whereby schools can tap the cultural capital resources of parents in the drive to raise standards. Economic capital has always had a defining influence, but now it is increasingly possible to see the power of cultural capital especially in relation to the growing emphasis on parental involvement and parental choice, and programmes such as gifted and talented. The second part of the article draws on data from research projects that examine parental choice, gifted and talented programmes, and parental involvement more generally, to illustrate the many ways in which cultural capital operates to reproduce educational advantage. Most of the examples underscore the close relationship between cultural and economic capital and how they work to reinforce each other, but an example is also included to illustrate how cultural capital can operate independently of economic capital. The article concludes that the policy emphasis on parental involvement and initiatives to retain the middle classes within state schooling work to maximize the potential of the already advantaged and are exacerbating class inequalities in education.

Abstract: This paper examines the assumptions and structure of the concentric circles model of the cultural industries. Empirical data for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US are used to illustrate the model's key characteristic: the proposition that the cultural content of the output of the cultural industries declines as one moves outwards from the core. The test uses the proportion of creative labour employed in production as a proxy for cultural content. The results confirm the model's validity as a means of depicting the structural characteristics of the cultural industries and also enable some wider features of the cultural workforce in the five countries to be examined.

Abstract: The precarious nature of creative and cultural work is widely acknowledged in academic literature. However, it has often been invisible in the eyes of policy and policymaking. As soon as the spread...