Concepts of Capital

<p>Borrowing terminology from the economic discipline—specifically the concept of capital—has led to an abundance of new terms in the social sciences: human capital social capital and cultural capital to name the most prominent representatives on an ever-growing list. In this interdisciplinary transaction the concept is borrowed and the original meaning extended until the new concepts often have nothing left in common with their initial referents.</p><p>Here Jacek Tittenbrun offers a critical analysis of human social and cultural capital on the basis of their uses and misuses across a wide range of social sciences simultaneously revealing the source of conceptual diffusion in the real world. He presents a two-pronged analysis of an intellectual fashion popular in the social sciences and offers a critical analysis of a range of concepts constructed around the common core of capital. The analysis is innovative as it is underpinned by a theoretical framework rooted in economic sociology and the concept of ownership in particular. The approach is one of the sociology of knowledge coupled with a substantive critique-application of the given concepts.</p><p>The volume reveals a range of processes in the real world that account for the conceptual diffusion. The general reader will be drawn to the discussion in the second half of the book a study of a variety of relatable real life situations that illuminate privatization and commodification in our lives.</p>