Adaptive Cultural Capital Among High School Debaters in Chicago

• In Event: Cultural Capital

Abstract

Low-income racial/ethnic minority youth in disadvantaged school contexts have certain opportunities to acquire valuable cultural capital. Drawing on six months of observational data from two teams in the Chicago Debate League, and interviews with twelve debaters and two coaches, I show that competitive interscholastic debate can contribute to participants' acquisition of “adaptive cultural capital”: cultural capital which elites demand of them, but is not required of members of dominant social groups. Here, adaptive cultural capital is illustrated through debaters' ability to face failure with resilience.

Author

• Karlyn J Gorski, University of Chicago