Scrapbooking: Family Capital and the Construction of Family Discourse

Through everyday activities, often performed by women, a version of family becomes reified for its members. Family discourse, linked to cultural capital via family capital, creates credentials and competence (family capital) in a particular family type and also a set of dispositions (family habitus) that inclines family members to act in ways consistent with normative standards of family. This article presents a holistic-content narrative analysis of one family's eleven-volume scrapbook collection that revealed the process and content of their construction of reality. The scrapbooking mother seems to be equipping her children with family-based cultural resources and personal dispositions to situate them in future social interactions.