A Sociological Study of the Relationship between Cultural Capital and Social Identity of Youths

This paper studies the relationship between cultural capital and social identity of youths. The main purpose is to investigate the dimensions of the relationship and to explore such dimensions as the dependent and independent variables of the study. Cultural capital is a key sociological concept, which is of special interest to sociologists. Cultural capital refers to the concentration and/or possession of all different kinds of cultural commodities or tools and of peoples potentials for using such tools. To sociologists, cultural capital can be devided into three groups: internalized cultural capital, objective cultural capital and institutionalized cultural capital. Social identity can be interpreted differently including both similarity and distinction. Distinction Concerns the individual dimension of life whereas similarity relates to the social one. Social identity includes diverse diminsions such as religion, family, nationality, race and culture. The research population in the present study is the students at the university of Kashan in 2006. 350 participants selected from this population through Kocran sampling participated in this study. Data collected from this sample indicated highly significant correlation between cultural capital and social identity (95%)