So, then, economic capital is to do with products of the economy (goods and money). Cultural capital is to do with the circulation of cultural products and the reproduction of cultural relations. Cultural capital comes from possessing the kind of knowledge and familiarity with cultural products which enable a person to know how they work, what to say about them and how to appreciate and evaluate them. In essence, how to consume them. Cultural capital is acquired through immersion in habitus; it can be accumulated during a lifetime and passed on from generation to generation in just the same way as economic capital. Cultural capital may come from the actual possession of certain culturally valued artefacts such as paintings. It may derive from activities such as going to the opera or from appreciating fine wine, or from knowledge about cultural products.

Bourdieu distinguishes between legitimate, middlebrow and working class culture and identifies the tastes associated with each of these categories, and for class fractions within them. While it is possible to acquire legitimate cultural capital (i.e. the definitions and judgements of taste possessed by the dominant classes) through individual effort or education, such expressions of learned tastes do not have the same status and social standing as tastes which appear to be natural or innate.

The myth of an innate taste ... is just one of the expressions of the recurrent illusion of a cultivated nature predating any education. (Bourdieu et al.,...