Research on cultural capital in higher education has primarily focused on institutional knowledge and taste as stratified cultural resources. Through analysis of an interview study of 70 undergraduates and a year-long ethnographic study of 20 undergraduate extracurricular activities at an elite college, I explore a further form of cultural capital that I call narrative capital. Narrative capital consists of the library of a person’s experiences capable of being turned into interesting stories, and their skill at constructing and deploying these stories to signal social status. Narrative capital developed in college can be used to signal status in a variety of contexts both in and beyond college, such as within extracurricular status hierarchies and in evaluative settings such as job interviews. Access to the kinds of experiences that make for valuable stories, such as stories of leadership, international travel, and campus adventures, is not equally available to all students. Those from more privileged backgrounds have greater access to cultural experiences that can be narrativized usefully, compared to their less privileged peers. Such narrative inequalities suggest a further role elite colleges play in the reproduction of social class.

中文翻译：

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变得有趣：精英大学的叙事资本发展

高等教育中的文化资本研究主要集中在作为分层文化资源的制度知识和品味。通过对 70 名本科生的访谈研究和对一所精英大学 20 项本科生课外活动为期一年的民族志研究的分析，我探索了另一种文化资本形式，我称之为叙事资本。叙事资本包括一个人的经历库，能够变成有趣的故事，以及他们构建和部署这些故事以表明社会地位的技能。在大学发展的叙事资本可用于在大学内外的各种环境中表明地位，例如在课外地位等级和工作面试等评估环境中。并非所有学生都能平等地获得能够产生有价值故事的各种体验，例如领导力故事、国际旅行和校园冒险。与特权较低的同龄人相比，那些具有特权背景的人有更多的机会获得可以有效地叙述的文化体验。这种叙述上的不平等表明精英大学在社会阶层再生产中发挥了进一步的作用。