Capitalizing on Cultural Capital

The knowledge, experience and heritage you bring to the table, in part, make up your cultural capital. In a recent workshop held for CSULB BUILD, Associates learned about how their cultural capital can help them become better researchers, bringing unique perspectives to health-related research.

Cultural capital is comprised of a wide variety of components:

1. Aspirational – One’s ability to maintain hopes and dreams, even when presented with real or perceived barriers.
2. Linguistic – Intellectual and social skills acquired through learning and communicating in more than one language or style
3. Familial – The cultural knowledge gained through family and community, including history, memory and cultural intuition.
4. Social – One’s social support network, providing instrumental and emotional support.
5. Resistant – The skills and knowledge gained by facing adversity and inequality.
6. Navigational – Skills learned by navigating through social institutions.

Through a variety of exercises and group activities, BUILD Associates shared their cultural capital and explored how cultural capital can affect their progress as nascent researchers.

Facilitated by Dr. Mara Bird with CSU STEM VISTA Members La Keisha Jeanmarie and Kimberly Torres, the purpose of the workshop was to illustrate how cultural capital can facilitate academic success. Bird also spoke about how the BUILD peer mentoring model, intends to reinforce cultural capital by providing student mentors who are similar in backgrounds to the participants in the program.