Education and Urban Society Volume 39 Number 3 May 2007 349-369 © 2007 Corwin Press, Inc. 10.1177/0013124506298165 http://eus.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com 349 The Tenuous Role of Institutional Agents Parent Liaisons as Cultural Brokers Maria Martinez-Cosio University of Texas, Arlington Rosario Martinez Iannacone Claremont Graduate University and San Diego State University This article reports on the contradictory role of parent involvement coordina- tors charged with increasing participation of low-income immigrant parents. This urban ethnographic study investigates the success of one program that engages Latino, Asian, and African American parents in the governance of their Southern California urban elementary school. It illustrates the dilemmas and tensions that arise as institutional agents serve as cultural brokers, as a bridge between the dominant culture and parents’ diverse cultures while also serving as institutional agents. The authors use theories of social and cultural capital to examine the strategies used by a school-based cultural broker to provide bridging social capital to underserved agents seeking an equal role in policy making at their school. They provide examples of three tensions that block bridging social capital, including tension over resources, power shar- ing, and institutional decision making. Keywords: parent involvement; Latino immigrants; parent liaisons; cul- tural capital; cultural brokers S chool-parent liaisons play important roles as they negotiate their posi- tions as advocates for parents, as promoters of school initiatives, and as cultural brokers. As an institutional agent (Stanton-Salazar, 1997, 2000; Stanton-Salazar, Vasquez, & Mehan, 1999), the school-parent coordina- tor serves as an information bridge between schools and families. As a cultural broker, he or she may also act as an intermediary between the school and family, educating and helping each social system adapt to the other (Gentemann & Whitehead, 1983). He or she may also help interpret the school’s “culture of schooling” for parents who are unfamiliar with American education (Halford, 1996). Lopez and Stack (2001) describe the role of the cultural broker more fully: at University of Texas at Arlington on December 5, 2015 eus.sagepub.com Downloaded from