Bourdieu

The Forms of Capital by Pierre Bourdieu
* existence of capital in various forms means that life is not random and prevents people from being able to dramatically change their social status instantly, it's not the case that "every soldier has a marshal's baton in his knapsack"
* cultural capital can exist in three forms - embodied (in "the form of longlasting dispositions of the mind and body"), objectified (cultural goods) and institutionalised (eg educational qualifications)
* he defines social capital as "the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition - or in other words, to membership in a group - which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital, a "credential" which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word.
* relationships may also "may also be socially instituted and guaranteed by the application of a common name (the name of a family, a class, or a tribe or of a school, a party, etc.) and by a whole set of instituting acts designed simultaneously to form and inform those who undergo them; in this case, they are more or less really enacted and so maintained and reinforced, in exchanges"
* "the network of relationships is the product of investment strategies, individual or collective, consciously or unconsciously aimed at establishing or reproducing social relationships that are directly usable in the short or long term, i.e., at transforming contingent relations, such as those of neighborhood, the workplace, or even kinship, into relationships that are at once necessary and elective, implying durable obligations subjectively felt (feelings of gratitude, respect, friendship, etc.) or institutionally guaranteed (rights)."
* social capital seems for Bourdieu to be consciously pursued, where those who are "richly endowed with capital" (of various forms) are sought after for their social capital
* he also points out the role of individuals or elites to speak and act for a group with joint social capital, and perhaps in policing the boundaries of that group.

He suggests that some of the value of cultural capital is its scarcity value. Is this true of social capital where it can be the number and quality of links and the ways in which those links can access other forms of capital and access to resources (Bourdieu says "the volume of social capital possessed by a given agent thus depends one the size of the network of connections he can effectively mobilize and on the volume of the capital (economic, cultural or symbolic) possessed in his own right by each of those to whom he is connected".) But is there also a scarcity value of social capital? Does someone with high social status benefit from limiting his or her links, or is there a benefit in extending them to all and sundry?