Habitus

Category: Fields of research

The term habitus derives from Latin, where it referred to the typical state of the physical body. In modern usage, the concept of habitus was first used in philosophy and started being used extensively in the writings of Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu.

Elias, in the book On The Process of Civilization (1939), used the concept of habitus in his study of what he calls the process the "psychogenesis" of civilization. He starts his research by studying the historical development of the etiquette rules in Europe. He argues that rules of good behavior are adopted on the cognitive and behavioral levels by individuals. The main change on the individual level is an increase in the feelings of shame and anxiety concerning one's own body and satisfying the most basic biological needs. Behavioral changes are directly related to changes in the structure of the wider society. When the aristocracy became part of the court society, individuals from the aristocracy came to a state of greater physical closeness, but also greater interdependence. To avoid conflicts, rules of good behavior were created that controlled the behavior of the aristocracy. With the declining rigidity of class stratification, people from different strata increasingly came into close physical contact and interdependence. Thus, there was a need to extend the rules of good behavior to the lower strata of society; first to the bourgeoisie, and then to other strata. Behavioral rules become part of the "habitus" that individuals adopt from birth and throughout life. This shaping of the mentality and behavior of the individual is a process of "psychogenesis".

Bourdieu's theoretical approach introduces two key theoretical concepts: habitus and field. Habitus represents the mental and cognitive structure of every person, which enables people to act in society. Each person internalizes these mental structures by living in society. Habitus gives people rules for understanding, valuing, and classifying all aspects of society. On the other hand, the habitus gives people the ability to act in society, because it creates long-term predispositions to, more or less, instinctively react in a certain situation. Habitus is associated with social class, because individuals who are in the same class share a common culture and taste. Habitus is not adopted by simple internalization and acceptance of social norms, but cognitively, through daily action within the field. Habitus is adopted partly on a conscious level and partly on an unconscious level. Actors act pragmatically, but their goals and means, for the most part, are not determined consciously and rationally, but spring from a socially constructed "the feel for the game."

It is the concept of practice that theoretically connects habitus and field. Everyday practices of people, within some field, shape the habitus, but, at the same time, these practices contribute to maintaining or changing the very structure and rules of a field. According to Bourdieu, practice is crucial, so he puts much more emphasis on what people really do than on what they think or say should be done. Bourdieu also uses the metaphor of game, to explain habitus and practice, where habitus would represent knowledge of the rules and "the feel for the game", while practice would represent moves that players take in the game. A very important aspect of practice is the "strategy" that actors use to achieve their goals within a field. Most strategies are not the product of conscious planning, but they are, most often, unconscious rules that enable improvisation in everyday life. Of course, such improvised strategic activities must be effective to achieve the goals.

The class habitus of workers is shaped by the internalization of their own class position, and this internalization occurs during early socialization, primarily through the family and the school system. Accordingly, habitus acts as a socialized form of capital. Formal educational qualifications are a particularly important aspect of cultural capital. Habitus, inherent in different classes, is not directly a product of the position of these classes in production relations but is related to the size and composition of different types of capital, which condition the emergence of specific living conditions, thus creating a "class position" for a particular class. The living conditions of some class create a specific class habitus, for that class.

Ulf Hannerz studies the globalization of culture. Hannerz believes that a "global ecumene" is being created in the world through the processes of "Creolization". Creolization, in his opinion, is a process in which, more and more, the culture of the center and the periphery are coming closer. Global culture is always consumed at the local level and follows local patterns, so there is a mixture of the global and local culture at four organizational levels: state, market, social movements, and lifestyles. The complex relationships of global and local cultures create diverse "habitus of meaning".

References:

Bourdieu. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (1977, in French 1970);

- Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977, in French 1972);

- Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1984, in French 1979);

- The Logic of Practice (1990, in French 1980);

- State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power (1998, in French 1989);

- An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (1992);

- The Field of Cultural Production (1993);

- Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (1998);

- On Television and Journalism (1998, in French 1996);

- Homo academicus (1990, in French 1984);

Elias. On the Process of Civilisation (Volume 3) (The Collected Works of Norbert Elias) (2012);