‘Some people may feel socially excluded and distressed’: finnish business students’ participation in extracurricular activities and the accumulation of cultural capital

Abstract

ABSTRACT A growing number of scholars have investigated how extracurricular activities (ECA) are intimately tied to graduates’ positional competition and enhancement of employability. Prior studies have shown that the strategic tendency towards ECA especially applies to privileged, high-achieving students from a high-status university. Yet studies considering ECA as a site of gendered practices have been scarce. We explore how graduates have accumulated cultural capital through their lived experiences in ECA and how ECA practices construct classed and gendered dispositions and distinctions among graduates. We draw on Bourdieu’s conception of cultural capital, as well as contemporary feminist debates over gender and capital. Analysing 32 graduate interviews from four business schools in Finland, we found that through participation in student associations’ ECA, our interviewees learned distinctive values, preferences and behaviours. In addition to ‘instrumental’ cultural capital, such as leadership skills that enhance CV, ECA provided opportunities to accumulate embedded cultural capital and confirm membership/learning to become a member in the professional middle class. Moreover, especially the female interviewees learned to adjust to masculine business culture and develop aspirations towards prestigious job positions.