Emotional capital and professional socialization: The case of mortuary science students (and me)

This article is based on an ethnographic study of an accredited mortuary sc ience progam If describes a variety of ways in which this program and its s tudents' social lives normalize work with and around the dead It also draws contrasts between the successful mortuary science students' emotional reac tions to the work of funeral direction and those of unsuccessful students ( and my own), and explains those contrasts in terms of biographical backgrou nds. Drawing on these observations I introduce the concept of "emotional ca pital" and explore how it may be implicated in processes of professional so cialization and of occupational selection and exclusion, and in the social reproduction of status distinctions in general.