Field theory in cultural capital studies of educational attainment

This article argues that there is a double problem in international research in cultural capital and educational attainment: an empirical problem, since few new insights have been gained within recent years; and a theoretical problem, since cultural capital is seen as a simple hypothesis about certain isolated individual resources, disregarding the structural vision and important related concepts such as field in Bourdieu’s sociology. We (re-)emphasize the role of field theory in cultural capital research in education, taking into consideration current concerns in international quantitative research.