Friday, November 30, 2007
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Back on the Wal-Mart trail...
Night camp: Wal-Mart at Dayton TN
The Credential of the Dominant
The general veneration that greets the academy is a sign of its near-sacred station and of the importance of its role in, as Bourdieu would view it, the reproduction of the dominant class and its habitus. Although the rewards of academics are middling in terms of financial capital, the cultural capital they accrue cannot be surpassed. To have a college degree -- only about one-quarter of American adults do -- is to have the credential of the dominant; not to have a college degree is to remain forever among the dominated.
The Whipping Boy, Jib Fowles, Reason magazine, March 2001