According to Bourdieu, cultural reproduction is the social process through which culture is reproduced across generations, especially through the socializing influence of major institutions. Bourdieu applied the concept in particular to the ways in which social institutions such as schools are used to pass along cultural ideas that underlie and support the privileged position of the dominant or upper class.

Cultural reproduction is part of a larger process of social reproduction through which entire societies and their cultural, structural, and ecological characteristics are reproduced through a process that invariably involves a certain amount of social change. From a Marxist perspective, social reproduction is primarily economic in scope. In a broader sense, however, social reproduction is much more than this, from the shape of religious institutions to language and varieties of music and other cultural products.