Accumulation and Anticipation: A Temporal Reframing of Social and Cultural Capital

ABSTRACT This paper argues that social and cultural capital are not only accumulations of past ties, credentials, and dispositions but also temporally oriented resources aligned with anticipated futures. Although capital is theorized as generative and field‐dependent, empirical measures typically operationalize it retrospectively, tracking established networks and recognized identities rather than actors' positioning amid emerging social, economic, and ecological change. I introduce the concept of anticipatory capital to capture these temporal alignments, distinguishing between capital that reinforces inherited pathways and capital that repositions actors toward evolving fields. Integrating this perspective clarifies why individuals, households, and communities with comparable capital stocks experience divergent outcomes during periods of rapid transition. By making temporal alignment explicit, anticipatory capital clarifies how social and cultural assets fluctuate in value as fields evolve, sharpening analyses of inequality, resilience, and vulnerability and offering a framework for assessing how communities prepare for—or resist—structural transformation.