Dibattiti Comment on John Goldthorpe / 5 Three Cheers for Unoriginality

In this comment I review Goldthorpe’s recent portrayal of the substance ofBourdieu’s views on the issues of cultural capital, education and class reproduction, byfocusing on three major set of claims that Goldthorpe imputes to Bourdieu. Using morerecent and more representative examples of Bourdieu’s work on education and classreproduction, I show that Bourdieu did not hold the positions that Goldthorpe says heheld and that therefore whatever Bourdieu’s “overarching” theory of class reproductionis, it is not what Goldthorpe thinks it is. I conclude that Goldthorpe’s call for amoratorium on the use of the concept of cultural capital rests on fallacious views onthe role that of “originality” plays in social science and on an overly constrictive attitudetoward theoretical borrowing and adaptation in which concepts are seen as somehow“tainted” by the larger presuppositions of the theoretical systems in which they are firstembedded.