Contemporary Crusaders and Timeless Elders: Building Cultural Capital through Alternative Media Texts

Abstract

The following research examines the role of cultural capital in the reading of alternative media texts. I interviewed leaders of small social justice organizations in the midwestern United States in order to discover the ways in which they developed cultural capital and read resistance within alternative media texts. From the interviews I found that the participants learned cultural capital from Timeless Elders and/or Contemporary Crusaders of activism. I also found that two types of resistance were read within the alternative media texts: a hegemonic form of resistance based on militant rejection of materials and an emanciapatory form of resistance based on adjustive rejection of materials. Through my analysis I found that the type of cultural capital that a participant had learned played an important role in the type of resistance that they read. The themes and concepts which emerged through the interviews hold significant implications for the conceptualization of modern social justice movements.