Individualism, Holism and the Central Dilemma of Sociological Theory by Jiří Šubrt

Author:Jiří Šubrt [Šubrt, Jiří]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787690387
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2019-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

2.5.5. Habitus and the Social Field

Pierre Bourdieu’s structural-constructivist approach has become very popular in recent years. It is based on the premise that there is a bidirectional relationship between the objective structures of the social space and the subjective structures of habitus. Bourdieu rejects both major currents of French thought – structuralism and existentialism – as two extremes, and counters that there are objective and subjective sides to the social world, so sociology should lead to an analysis of the process through which objectivity is embedded in subjective experience. Sociology is not just about reconstructing objective relationships but the study of actors’ subjective experience and orientation.

Bourdieu (1930–2002) began his scientific career as an ethnologist in the second half of the 1950s while working in Algiers. In the 1960s, he returned to France and expanded his original ethnological orientation to the study of contemporary France. From the 1980s, he was active at the Collège de France in Paris, writing about three dozen books, most notably: Sociologie de l´Algérie (1961), Homo academicus (1984), La noblesse d´état (1989; State Nobility) and Raisons pratiques (1994; Practical Reason). His most important work is often considered to be the 600-page La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (1979; Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Bourdieu, 1984 [1979])).

Bourdieu’s conception is based on several fundamental terms, such as habitus, field and capital, linked by a two-way relationship between objective structures (structures of the social field) and adopted ones (structures of habitus) (Bourdieu, 1998, pp. 7–8).

Bourdieu set out his basic hypotheses about the fundamental characteristics of social actors in the concept of habitus. He relates habitus to schemas of human perception, thought and action. An important term in this context is disposition, which signifies tendencies towards certain behaviour. Bourdieu’s principal hypothesis is that social actors are endowed with systematically structured dispositions that are constitutive for their practices and how they reflect on them. Bourdieu identifies forms of habitus as systems of permanent dispositions, as structured structures suited to acting as structuring structures (Bourdieu, 1976, pp. 164–165). The habitus-disposition system contains: (1) schemes of perception (which create the structures of everyday perception in the social world) and (2) schemes of reflection (among which we can include ‘the theory of the ordinary day’, ethical norms, and aesthetic criteria). These schemes – by which people are able to orient themselves in the social world and develop ‘correct’ practices – are in reality interconnected and operate as a single unit.

Habitus comprises individual and collective experience (Bourdieu, 1987, p. 101). It is mainly formed in the course of socialisation and becomes in a sense ‘second nature’ for a person. In this sense, habitus constitutes a subjective – but not individual(!) – system of internal structures, which is not innate, but socially and historically determined and shaped. In the concept of habitus, every individual (actor) is socially predetermined, and this predetermination is reflected in an individual’s current and future actions. In this way, habitus serves as the connecting link between the social structure on the one hand and the individual (their thinking and behaviour) on the other.

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