Wine Tasting

             A few weekends ago, my father's friend was in Cambridge for a convention and invited me to go to dinner with him. The man, Jacob, has a high-paying job at Goldman-Sachs and comes from a wealthy family. As soon as I met him, I could tell he was used to getting what he wanted. He has the cultural capital to succeed in today's society. His original plan was for us to go see a new exhibit in the Harvard Art museum. Unfortunately, the museum had closed a hour before we arrived. Rather than give up, however, Jacob sweet-talked the museum attendant and convinced her to let us peek into the exhibit anyway. Because of his tactical rhetoric, we were able to view the display despite the fact that the museum was already closed. If Jacob had simply asked the attendant to let us in, we probably would have failed, but because he knew the right way to ask, and how to ask in a flattering way, we succeeded. This "right way" of asking is something Jacob has learned from his high-status family.  Pierre Bourdieu defines cultural capital as the general cultural background, knowledge, skills, and dispositions that are passed from one generation to the next. The cultural capital that Jacob has acquired from his family has given him leverage in both the social and market aspect of life.
              His powerful skills of persuasion are just one aspect of Jacob's cultural capital. After the museum, we dined at Sandrine's, an expensive French restaurant. Immediately, Jacob asked the waiter to bring over a wine list and starting asking questions about the various wines being offered. As Jacob and the waiter discussed the tastes and aromas of one wine over the other, I realized how little I know about wine. I could not even join in the conversation for fear of sounding silly! I did not know what they were talking about at all. From this conversation, I was able to understand how high status cultural signals like attitudes, preferences, formal knowledge, behaviors, goods, and credentials can contribute to social and cultural exclusion. Lamont and Lareau address this issue of social exclusion in their writings and even use wine tastings as an example. They say that the formal knowledge of knowing a good wine from a bad wine can distinguish a lower class person from an upper class one because the lower class lacks the knowledge.

             Wine tasting has been acknowledged as a high status symbol and Jacob took pleasure in talking intelligently about the fine distinctions between the different wines. He used his wine consumption as a way of expressing himself as a knowledgable person and the waiter recognized his high class position. After their wine discussion, the waiter was more willing to wait on us and help us with whatever was needed. I was interested by the interactions between both Jacob and the museum attendant and Jacob and the waiter. In both cases, the lower class worker was more willing to assist us once they recognized Jacob's cultural capital. Whether he was smoothly arguing his case or impressing the waiter with his knowledge, Jacob succeed in getting what he wanted by using what he knew best- the cultural background transmitted from his family to him.