How University Students form their Cultural Capital ?

Abstract

　 This paper aims to present, on the basis of a survey implemented by the author, an analysis of how university students create their own “distinctiveness” through the medium of their past experiences and their present college life from the standpoint of forming cultural capital. Previous studies have developed multifaceted approaches not only from the one-dimensional perspective of the reproduction of social classes, but in the context of grappling with many kinds of layered problems （gender, race, region, etc.） that have accompanied the diversification of social values. By means of research surveys conducted in universities in the Kansai and Hokuriku districts and in Joetsu University of Education, we were able to identify a tendency for students to form their cultural capital through pluralistic processes that anticipated socialization in terms of adapting to the various demands in their college life （work, search for employment, leisure...）, rather than using the cultural inheritance that they brought with them from their family homes. The crucial issue is that of reconsidering the question of how to build up variable cultural capital in today’s unstable changing society, which attaches a priority to individual flexibility and adaptability rather than to organizational structures.