capitalism

i'm sometimes so tired after work and school that all the things i wanted to write somewhere are forgotten. seeing as its a saturday night, i've done a little French homework, and my checkbook is balanced, i figured now's as good a time as any to solidify these thoughts.

plus its good review for my anthro midterm.

unlike most people, i didn't really know what capitalism was exactly. i had a vague idea of monopolizing certain markets, the systems large corporations use to sell, etc. even now i'm still not sure what capitalism means in the general sense and why people oppose it so much. but there are many facets to this word.

capital can be defined as money invested to make more money. anthropologists studying social hierarchies apply this definition of capital to their analysis of how people attain their certain social positions. they came up with three types of capital in an attempt to explain how people reach their positions in a social hierarchy.

the first is economic capital which is based on one's economic assets. each individual is only worth a certain amount of money (bill gates v. myself for instance) and people are systematically judged by the amount of economic assets they have.

the second is social capital based on one's connections. human resources, if you will. who you know and who knows you greatly influences your position in society. if you have friends in high places, you can tag along and perhaps surpass them.

the third is cultural capital based on style and taste: what you eat, watch, listen to, read affect what position you fill in the social hierarchy.

composition of capital is the sum of your economic, social and cultural capital. we were given the example of an oil tycoon in Texas. he has plenty of economic capital, but he drives around in a pink chevy with bull horns taped to the hood and his friends are as classy as he. this means he lacks cultural capital. the legendary bluebloods on the eastcoast most likely have all three: economic, social and cultural capital because of their affluence. now the oil tycoon with the pink chevy might decide to utilize his economic capital to gain cultural capital by sending himself to the male equivalent of finishing school or something ridiculous like that. at this male finishing school he'll learn to associate with high-class people, boosting his social capital. in just a little while, the pink chevy lies derelict while our oil tycoon rubs shoulders with the bluebloods along the eastcoast. this means that capital can be accumulated and transferred.

so now, capitalism has a different meaning for me than it probably does for anyone else. capitalism, for me, relates to what kind of friends i have, how much money i make, and whether or not i know what's fashionable.

but nothing is ever as clear-cut. all these forms of capital shift with perspectives, i think. Marxist class theory aside, i still think that people are divided into their own strata. have i ever spent a summer in the hamptons? have you? where i am, having two houses (not a timeshare) is pretty high-end. but elsewhere, that might not be the case. plus owning two houses in southern california is not exactly comparable to a house in martha's vineyard and vice versa. there's land to take into account, the expense of living in different regions. the tidy definition for economic capital goes down the drain when you look at housing here and housing in a place like wisconsin. social capital as well isn't such a neat theory. affluent people in the south don't exactly speak refined english because they have a certain dialect different from ours. just because they don't talk like us doesn't mean their underprivileged our touched in the head. just because we have friends or relatives who talk this way doesn't mean they'll bring us down in the eyes of our other friends. the same with cultural capital: in some places, the Bible is the book to be reading, in other places its The Devil Wears Prada. everything shifts, everything is relative, nothing is distinct. and no one seems to take into account behavior. what category of capital would that fall under? cultural capital? but what about an orphan who grew up on her own and became this poor excuse of a woman? what does that have to do with style and taste? there are things above this idea of social capitalism and while i am not wholly against, i don't believe that it is the answer to how people gain their social positions.

life isn't a bank. enough with investment. what are you saving yourself for? people don't gain interest like so many sacks of coin. if you want to be political, then make friends in high places and memorize how many courses a dinner with a Greek ambassador warrants. as for the rest of us, we have other things to do.

i want to earn money so i can live a good life, i don't want a good life earning money. i want to read what i want to read whether or not the critics like it. i don't know that person who just glanced at me across the street, but chances are, i'm never going to see him again, so what's the point of establishing a connection just to build my social capital?

my mother worked to get where she is. she didn't care whether people liked her or not, but she did such a good job at the things she was assigned to that they had to keep promoting her. that's what's important. she didn't hand out compliments, she didn't dress to impress. she worked and worked hard, and i will do the same thing because how can you live on something as insubstantial as pretty words and a nice wardrobe? favor is as fickle as anything else and winning it won't do you much good.