Bourdieu: “Structures, Habitus, Practices”
Social theory
Bourdieu: “Structures, Habitus, Practices”
Main idea: Bourdieu uses habitus as a concept for understanding society, and the process of social change or persistence. Social structures are produced and reproduced, thru the habitus. However, habitus, thru its capacity for incorporation and coordination, can also lead to mobilization.
• one has to return to practice, the site of the dialectic of the objectified products and the incorporated products of historical practice, of structures and habitus
• the possibilities and impossibilities inscribed by the objective conditions generate dispositions compatible w/ these conditions, and pre-adapted to their demands
• the anticipations of the habitus, practical hypotheses based on past experience, give disproportionate weight to early experience the habitus, a product of history, produces individual and collective practices in accordance with the schemes of history the habitus is the active presence of the whole past of which it is a product
• thru the habitus, a present past tends to perpetuate itself into the future by reactivation in similarly structured practices
• the habitus is not consciously mastered and contains an ‘objective intention’ which outruns the conscious intentions of its apparent author
• there is a dialectic b/w habitus and institutions, that is b/w 2 modes of objectification of past history the habitus, thru objectification, socialization, designation of institutionalized roles, and its capacity for incorporation, enables institutions to attain full realization
• the members of a same group or class, being products of the same objective conditions, share a habitus and the practices of these members are better harmonized than the agents know or wish
• the habitus is an imminent law, inscribed in bodies by identical histories, which is a precondition for coordination of practices, and mobilization
Big pic: Strat: habitus entails social reproduction. Social change:
Bourdieu: “Structures, Habitus, Practices”
Main idea: Bourdieu uses habitus as a concept for understanding society, and the process of social change or persistence. Social structures are produced and reproduced, thru the habitus. However, habitus, thru its capacity for incorporation and coordination, can also lead to mobilization.
• one has to return to practice, the site of the dialectic of the objectified products and the incorporated products of historical practice, of structures and habitus
• the possibilities and impossibilities inscribed by the objective conditions generate dispositions compatible w/ these conditions, and pre-adapted to their demands
• the anticipations of the habitus, practical hypotheses based on past experience, give disproportionate weight to early experience the habitus, a product of history, produces individual and collective practices in accordance with the schemes of history the habitus is the active presence of the whole past of which it is a product
• thru the habitus, a present past tends to perpetuate itself into the future by reactivation in similarly structured practices
• the habitus is not consciously mastered and contains an ‘objective intention’ which outruns the conscious intentions of its apparent author
• there is a dialectic b/w habitus and institutions, that is b/w 2 modes of objectification of past history the habitus, thru objectification, socialization, designation of institutionalized roles, and its capacity for incorporation, enables institutions to attain full realization
• the members of a same group or class, being products of the same objective conditions, share a habitus and the practices of these members are better harmonized than the agents know or wish
• the habitus is an imminent law, inscribed in bodies by identical histories, which is a precondition for coordination of practices, and mobilization
Big pic: Strat: habitus entails social reproduction. Social change: