Considering genres in gendered and racialized cultural capital

Abstract

Despite their essential role in conceptualizing cultural capital, genres have been left out of most quantitative empirical studies in this research tradition. Based on data from the French Ministry of Education with measures of detailed genre consumption for reading and TV watching, this article uses multiple correspondence analysis to show differences in consumption by gender, race/ethnicity, and class, and uses Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions to explore how gender and ethnic/racial GPA gaps can be explained with attention to cultural genres. Findings suggest that variations in consumption can both play to the advantage or detriment of girls and minorities, with perhaps gendered practices having an exacerbated effect on grades in certain cases and conformity to school norms being particularly rewarded for children of immigrants. Ultimately, results call for attention to genres to nuance our understanding of all-encompassing indicators of cultural capital as also gendered and racialized.