Advancing the conversion of cultural capital possessed by coconut producer groups into economic capital, Bourdieu introduces the core idea of ‘conversion-capacity’, which describes the ability to establish a monetary value on the labor market for which the holder’s institutional cultural capital can be exchanged. Analogous to academic qualifications and institutional memberships that guarantee material and symbolic profits to an individual, membership to a farming community can be thought of as a manifestation of such capital. Such membership immediately bestows a range of privileges in terms of access to land security and protection, financial credit and debt extension, shared farming resources, as well as farming oversight and community regulation. Institutional capital among labor groups can be estimated in terms the monetary savings and ‘equivalent cost of services’ that non-members are not afforded. A tangible example of this is the distributed waste collection and processing services provided to urban coconut traders (Figure 5) who are prohibited by law from disposing of husk waste at municipal garbage collection points. Not only can the cost of services for coconut traders be estimated in terms of providing costly waste collection, their low-energy preprocessing alleviates the environmental pollution caused by conventional open-combustion practices.
Fig.5: Urban Coconut Trader at work in Accra, Ghana. Photo Credit: Mae-ling Lokko.
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