{"id":65392,"date":"2015-02-10T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T14:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=65392"},"modified":"2015-03-16T16:03:43","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T21:03:43","slug":"the-attribution-of-intelligence-the-privilege-of-institutional-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/02\/10\/the-attribution-of-intelligence-the-privilege-of-institutional-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"The Attribution of Intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

The day I defended my dissertation I watched Chaotic<\/em><\/a>, the Britney Spears\/Kevin Federline reality show, from beginning to end. True story. The next day I pulled all of the paperback classic novels from my bookshelves and donated them to Goodwill. They were mostly tattered Penguin copies of things like The Sun Also Rises<\/em> and The Stranger<\/em>. I was done with them.<\/p>\n

I was the first person in my family to get a traditional college degree and those books meant a lot to me for a long time. I was an insecure student; a sufferer of the famous imposter\u00a0syndrome<\/a>. \u00a0The books were a signal to myself — and perhaps others, too\u00a0—\u00a0that I was a Smart, Educated Person with Intelligent Tastes. They were what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would call cultural capital,\u00a0objects that\u00a0indicate my membership in a particular class. Both Chaotic<\/em> and the purging of the books were part of the same cathartic expression: relief, incredible relief, at having not-failed. I had a new form of cultural capital now, a more powerful\u00a0version of that message. I had a PhD.\u00a0I could afford to toss the paperbacks.<\/p>\n

Today, as someone who has officially “made it” in academia, I\u00a0need those books even less than I did on that transitional\u00a0day. And, as I’ve made the journey from nervous graduate student to tenured professor, I’ve slowly come to understand what an incredible privilege it is to carry the institutional capital\u00a0that I do.<\/p>\n

Every time\u00a0I have the opportunity to admit I was wrong or confess a lack of knowledge, for example,\u00a0I can do so without fear that anyone will think that I’m generally<\/em> stupid or ignorant. Others assume I’m smart and knowledgeable because of the pedigree, whether I am or not. People who aren’t as lucky as I — who have the wrong accent, the wrong teeth, or the wrong clothes, and who don’t have the right degrees, jobs, and colleagues — they are at risk of being labeled as generally stupid or ignorant whenever they make an intellectual misstep, whether they are or not.<\/p>\n

To them, that\u00a0used Penguin copy of The Stranger\u00a0<\/em>may be more valuable than the\u00a0$0.03<\/a> it costs on Amazon. In another part of the social strata, it might be worth it to pay $46 for that subscription to The New Yorker<\/em>. The subscriber\u00a0may only read the cartoons, but they don’t mind because, after all, that’s not really what they’re paying for.<\/p>\n

\"1a\"<\/a>Image via PostSecret<\/a>. Cross-posted at Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The day I defended my dissertation I watched Chaotic, the Britney Spears\/Kevin Federline reality show, from beginning to end. True story. The next day I pulled all of the paperback classic novels from my bookshelves and donated them to Goodwill. They were mostly tattered Penguin copies of things like The Sun Also Rises and The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":65393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[209,8070,15,34,2104,293],"class_list":["post-65392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-artliterature","tag-culture","tag-education","tag-knowledgeintelligence","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/12\/1a3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65392"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66102,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65392\/revisions\/66102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}