Emerging forms of cultural capital

This paper takes stock of recent research on patterns of cultural engagement in various European nations, with specific reference to British and Danish research. It argues that Bourdieu's original theorisation of cultural capital in ‘Distinction’ needs to be significantly updated to register the decline of ‘highbrow’ culture which these studies reveal. However, we argue that this shift does not entail the erosion of cultural capital itself, or the rise of the ‘cultural omnivore’, so much as the emergence of a form of ‘cosmopolitan cultural capital’. We argue that this emerging cultural capital can be associated with the partial creation of a European field and testifies to the continued stakes of cultural engagement today.