The Role of Bourdieu’s Cultural Capital in Landscape Architecture Education: A Conceptual Paper

Malaysia Education Blueprint for Higher Education 2015-2025 outlines the aspiration to assess the current performance of students and challenges towards improving the quality of higher education. Following that, there is a need to dissect the approach towards students’ quality enhancement. Pierre Bourdieu introduced the form of capital in 1986 to disseminate the cultural influence-factor in the education sector. The cultural capital interlinks with studies in the education context which varies in multiple disciplinary and sectorial reflected in the field of focus. This paper provides a conceptual narrative towards understanding the possible influence of Bourdieu’s cultural capital in landscape architecture education. The objective is to discover the link between cultural capital and landscape architecture education through extensive reviews of literature. Past studies on cultural capital showed a positive link in education measured through students’ academic performance. However, there was a lack of study focusing on landscape architecture field. Bourdieu theorised on the unique disposition of each field and the capitals that interact in that particular field. Following the reviews, a conceptual framework is developed to explain the interrelationships among the three mechanisms of cultural capital and the academic performance of landscape architecture students. The dissemination of cultural capital into three dimensions of embodied, institutionalised, and objectified capitals points to a possible interlink of influence that cultural capital exerts towards the academic performance of students in the landscape architecture education field. Malaysian higher education and universities benefit from this paper in knowledge generation regarding the possible impact of cultural capital in architecture education sector towards improving the students’ quality and academic experience.