“Structures, Habitus, Practices” Free Essay Example

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: habitus is both an obstacle and a prerequisite to social change.

Berg/Luck (and Lefebvre): habitus is both a product and a producer of the structure. Habitus — a set of dispositions which generate practices and perceptions; — original meaning: a habitual or typical condition, a state or appearance, particularly of the body.

1) Disposition

1. Habitus is “inside the heads” of actors  2. Only exists in, through and because of the practices of actors and their interaction with each other and with the rest of their environment 3. Signify the deportment, the manner and style in which actors ‘carry themselves’: stance, gait, gesture. 2) Generative classificatory schemes

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