ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to extend the macro cultural-psychological thrust of Vygotsky’s “classic” sociocultural theory (SCT), and to correct the popular recasting of Vygotsky as a “micro cultural psychologist.” A fruitful deepening of Vygotsky’s macro cultural approach is to construe psychological phenomena as “cultural capital” that have a capitalist form and content and a capitalist function of reproducing capitalist culture. This reveals the concrete cultural character of psychology, which is the goal of classic SCT and cultural psychology. I demonstrate how cultural capital is a psychological tool in Vygotsky’s sense. I explain the fruitful development of “cultural capital” in the work of Bourdieu. I also rebut criticisms of this concept as impersonal, mechanistic, static, and reified. On the contrary, I explain how cultural capital is both a scientific, cultural-psychological construct for explaining and describing psychological phenomena, and also an emancipatory construct that calls for the deepest social transformation, which is the means for the deepest psychological enrichment and fulfillment. Good science and good politics go hand in hand.
