Transcript What Exactly Does Bourdieu Mean by Habitus?

Questions for Today
• 1. What exactly does Bourdieu mean by habitus?
• 2. What problems does the concept of habitus solve for
Bourdieu ?
• 3. How can we decide whether to use or discard the
concept of habitus ?
1. What exactly does Bourdieu mean by
habitus?
• Les conditionnements associes a une classe particuliere
de conditions d’existence produisent des habitus,
systemes de dispositions durables et transposables,
structures structurees predisposees a fonctionner
comme structures structurantes, c’est a dire en tant que
principes generateurs et organisateurs de pratiques et
de representations qui peuvent etre objectivement
adaptees a leur but sans supposer la visee consciente
de fins et la maitrise expresse des operations
necessaires pour les atteindre, objectivement *reglees*
et *regulieres* sans etre en rien le produit de l’obeisance
a des regles, et, etant tout cela, collectivement
orchestrees sans etre le produit de l’action organisatrice
d’un chef d’orchestre.
English translation on page 53.
• The conditionings associated with a particular class of
conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of
durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures
predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is,
as principles which generate and organize practices and
representations that can be objectively adapted to their
outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at
ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary
to attain them. Objectively *regulated* and *regular*
without being in any way the product of obedience to
rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being
the product of the organizing action of a conductor.
• Before we go looking
for an example of a
habitus, let us
examine the elements
of the definition so we
will know how to
recognize one if we
find one…….
Conditions of existence
• Les conditionnements
associes a une classe
particuliere des
conditions
d’existence,…..
• The conditions
associated with a
particular class of
conditions of
existence….
…produce dispositions…
• Produisent des
habitus, systemes
des dispositions….
• Produce habitus,
systems of ….
dispositions….
Durable and transposable
• Systemes de
dispositions durables
et transposables,…
• Systems of durable,
transposable
dispositions, …
structured structures
• …structures
structurees…
• …structured
structures…
structuring structures
• Predisposees a
• Predisposed to
fonctionner comme
function as structuring
structures structurantes structures
Functioning as principles
• …principes
generateurs et
organisateurs de
pratiques et de
representations…
• …as principles which
generate and
organize practices
and representations…

Don’t forget that it is systems of
DISPOSITIONS which are
supposed to be doing all this
stuff, organizing practices and
all the rest of it ……..
unconscious goal-seeking ?
 …qui peuvent etre
objectivement
adaptees a leur but
sans supposer la
visee consciente de
fins…
 …that can be
objectively adapted to
their outcomes
without presupposing
a conscious aiming at
ends…
“regulated” and “regular”
• …objectivement *reglees*
et *reguliers* sans etre en
rien le produit de
l’obeissance a des regles,
et, etant tout cela,
collectivement
orchestrees sans etre le
produit de l’action
organisatrice d’un chef
d’orchestre.
• …objectively
regulated and regular
without being in any
way the product of
obedience to rules,
they [habitus] can be
collectively
orchestrated without
being the product of
the organizing action
of a conductor.
2. What problems does the
concept of habitus solve for
Bourdieu?
“Of all the oppositions that artificially divide social
science, the most fundamental, and the most ruinous, is
the one that is set up between subjectivism and
objectivism.” p.25
Bourdieu invented the technical term, habitus for the
purpose of solving problems he believed to be caused by
this “ruinous opposition.”
Free Will



The concept of habitus resolves the conflict between the
objective principle of determination by environmental
conditions and the subjective principle of freedom.
“As an acquired system of generative schemes, the
habitus makes possible the free production of all the
thoughts, perceptions, and actions inherent in the
particular conditions of its production – and only those…
…This infinite yet strictly limited generative capacity is
difficult to understand only so long as one remains
locked in the usual antinomies …..” p.55
Social Reality
• Contrary to positivist materialism: the
objects of knowledge are constructed, not
passively recorded.
• Contrary to intellectualist idealism: the
principle of this construction is the system
of structured, structuring dispositions, the
habitus.
P. 52
Continuity in Social Life
• Habitus, a system of dispositions, is a present past that
tends to perpetuate itself into the future….
• It is the principle of the continuity and regularity in social
life,
• which objectivism sees in social life without being able to
account for it.
P. 54
Institutions
• Habitus makes it possible to inhabit institutions, to
appropriate them practically, and so to keep them in
activity….
• It is because the habitus exploits the body’s readiness to
take seriously the performative magic of the social …
• that the king, the banker, or the priest are able to be the
monarchy, financial capitalism, or the Church, made
flesh.
P. 57
Reinventing Economics
•
•
•
The absurdities of economic
theory flow from thinking of
practice in terms of the logic of
decisions of the will (i.e. from
subjectivism).
Habitus corrects economic theory
by starting from the premise that
decisions and the “systems of
preferences” that underlie them
depend not only on the previous
choices of the decider, but also on
the conditions in which the
“choices” have been made…
Habitus replaces the supposedly
self-transparent act of economic
choice with the real logic of action.
pp. 40-51, 56-57.
?????????
3. How can we decide
whether to use or
discard the concept
of habitus ?