College Financing as a Cultural Field: A Bourdiean Analysis of Money and Money Practices

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Financial Aid Across Policy, State, and Institutional Cultures

Abstract

This paper uses Bourdieu’s concept of “cultural fields of production” in order to reconsider the historical and contemporary aims of college affordability and financial aid policymaking. We argue that the last forty years of affordability and aid policy has amounted, in large part, to a steady accumulation of advantage by middle and upper income families. We also suggest that the “field of college financing”, encompassing such things as tuition pricing, FAFSA requirements, award offers, etc., reflects a set of money logics that are distinctly middle/upper class. Using Bourdieu’s cultural fields of production we use field analysis as strategy for understanding how seemingly innocuous policymaking privileges middle/upper class money logics, resulting in a structuring of disadvantage for low-income families.

Authors

• Shannon M. Calderone, University of California - Los Angeles

• Patricia M. McDonough, University of California - Los Angeles