Ideologies, Narrative, Stereotypes and Discourses
According to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, a habitus is referring to a person’s way of thinking, acting, and behaving. A habitus is a structure that helps a person comprehend and deal with society. It can be simply seen as a merger of society and the individual. (Wysocka, Paulina, 2013). Habitus is both a “structured structure”—the effect of the actions of, and our interactions with, others—and a “structuring structure”—it suggests and constrains our future actions (Bourdieu, 1992). In other words, habitus is both the “embodiment of our social location” (i.e., class, ethnicity, race, sexuality, gender, generation, and nationality) (Noble & Watkins, 2003) and “the structure of social relations that generate and give significance to individual likes (or taste) and dislikes with regard to practice and action” (Laberge, 1995). Critically, the habitus is embodied, that is, “located within the body and affects every aspect of human embodiment” (Shilling, 1993). Theorists believe that stereotypes, narratives, ideologies and discourses all attribute to the shaping on the individual habitus. In this essay I will discuss and argue how each concept works according to various theorists and how they work in shaping the individual habitus.
A stereotype is a group concept that is usually negative and judgmental in nature. A Stereotype describes a group with certain personality traits and inhibits a more open and reflective understanding about the diversity among any given social group (Perkins 1997). Stereotypes work because they re-present a view in reality that we all recognize, otherwise they would fail to work as stereotypes (Lacey 2009). In today’s society most people believe everything they hear, and categorize people based on false standards that religion, the media and the government have given them and told them is right. Gender and racial inequalities, for example, are socially constructed and it is something we are automatically born into. Breaking away
A stereotype is a group concept that is usually negative and judgmental in nature. A Stereotype describes a group with certain personality traits and inhibits a more open and reflective understanding about the diversity among any given social group (Perkins 1997). Stereotypes work because they re-present a view in reality that we all recognize, otherwise they would fail to work as stereotypes (Lacey 2009). In today’s society most people believe everything they hear, and categorize people based on false standards that religion, the media and the government have given them and told them is right. Gender and racial inequalities, for example, are socially constructed and it is something we are automatically born into. Breaking away
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