Road capitals: Reconceptualising street capital, value production and exchange in the context of road life in the UK

Abstract

This article engages with existing applications of Bourdieusian (habitus, field and capitals) theory as applied to ‘street’ settings. It advocates for the recognition of strategies developed by those involved in road life, a UK variant form of street culture, to mobilise capital from the ‘street field’ in order to facilitate exchanges into less subordinate social fields/spaces. Drawing on Bourdieu’s three metaphors of social, economic and cultural capital, this article illustrates ways these forms of capital can and are being mobilised by youth engaged in ‘street’ settings (on road), in the hope of gaining advancement both in street spaces and beyond. This is in contrast with some criminological thinking which tends to take a ‘narrow’ focus on the criminogenic aspects of marginalised men’s lives, missing at times the full range of agency and expression of those affected by and/or involved in street value systems, as well as the wider struggles which take place over the value they create.