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This paper investigates cultural dimensions and processes of exclusion in rural Ireland and Russia that impact upon marginalised rural people by making them poor. It employs Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1977) concept of cultural capital, which provides understanding of both structural effects of cultural discrimination and individual strategies of cultural reproduction on well-being. First, it explores the function of cultural capital as a power resource that can be used to monopolise certain cultural preferences. Second, the paper studies the function of cultural capital to mark cultural distance and to put people with less-valued cultural resources in a disadvantaged position that can limit poor people’s access to social settings and resources. Third, the paper investigates the function of cultural capital to exclude individuals by means of regulating their aspirations and cultural dispositions, which degrade social bonds and limit people’s sources of economic growth. The results of this study reveal the complexity of classificatory effects of cultural practices on poverty and argue against treating culture as a residual category in poverty studies. It takes on board the findings from this study to critically re-evaluate certain stereotypes of hardship and to articulate the need for a broader understanding of rural poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]