Objectified cultural capital and the tale of two students

Abstract

Almost a decade has passed since the participants of a the ESRC seminar series on the Implications of Networked Learning for Higher Education in the United Kingdom expressed a vision for a higher education where access and connection were championed. This chapter considers those issues of access and connection, through the lens of Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts, and argues that specific types of objectified capital can change students’ technological habitus, opening up the possibilities of increased access to higher education practices. In this chapter we report on the role of the objectified forms of cultural capital (specifically cell phones) and the ways these forms of capital inter-relate with other forms of cultural capital, shifting power relations and opening up access to the field of higher education. This is particularly pertinent in the South African context where increased demand and participation by a diverse range of students has resulted in massification of the sector: both student numbers overall and the number of black students in particular have grown substantially since the apartheid regime ended in 1994 (Council on Higher Education 2009, p 5). Indeed, the proportion of African students in the public higher education system as a whole increased from 49% in 1995 to 61% in the ten years post the apartheid government. And by 2007, African students made up 63% of the total enrollment in public higher education (Council on Higher Education 2009)...