Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 20:13:23 -0700
From: Hagen Finley <hagen-AT-violet.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: types of action


>Both normative and anticipatory types of action are still important?
>Or this other type of action, produced by habitus and practical knowledge,
>is the only one?
>Or maybe the other ones are inside this one?
>Or maybe the other ones are the product of a missed attempt to
>conceptualize social action?
>It is not a kind of action inside the continuum normative/anticipatory?

I won't attempt to address your entire posting, but I would venture that
the question of action ultimately is a question of the underlying basis of
action versus a question of one type of action versus another. With
habitus, Bourdieu grounds action in a non-rational, non-anticipatory
orientation which is acquired practically during the process of coping with
the social world. This practical orientation is not the result  of
acquiring of a  conceptual scheme or, in John Searle's sense, acquiring a
mental representation of the social world according to which one can form
intentions and act upon them. Instead, one learns to act within the
framework of other actors and their actions and those actions constrain the
way the individual acts and  imagines acting. 
	One could argue that the constraints of social interaction amount to a
normative orientation, and in a sense the conditions that  make up the
social landscape that the individual comes to terms with are normative.
However, we all know (from experience) that social structure is full of
cracks and weak timber that allow people, at times and in limited degrees,
to slip beyond the familiar normative corridors into acts which are
ab-normal. The way you raise the question implies that ab-normal behavior
must be intentional /anticipatory behavior as though normative behavior
rules out anticipation and internationality. Instead, Bourdieu argues that
individuals embrace the social game into which they are thrown, and in a
manner analogous to game play, they bring all of their capacities;
practical/somatic, anticipatory/ intentional to the realization of their
position within the field of play. 
	One way to illustrate this point is to think of the manner in which a
musician improvises during a performance. From one point of view, one could
explain this capacity in terms of the musician's mental representations of
her music and her intention to play her instrument according to those
mental images. In that view, one gets the sense that the mental imagery
would always be one step ahead of the actual play, that is, if it were not
for the time constraints, the musician could describe or write out all of
her inclinations prior to her actual performance. That highly implausible
account is the account Bourdieu seeks to discredit. From his perspective,
the musician is able to play on the basis of years of repetitive practices;
playing scales, learning musical script and theory, listening to historical
and contemporary music and musicians, etc.. Then, on the basis of all those
experiences, she leans into a particular form or style and strives to bring
those disparate elements together in a particular moment in time - physical
technique, emotional expression, intellectual sophistication, norm
transcending innovation all in one act. Her habitus which has been molded
by and has embraced the field of music now acts in and vies for position
within that field.
	Hence, the question is not whether action is normative or anticipatory,
nor is it to try and position action along a  normative - intentional
continuum. Action can be normative and intentional and ab-normal and
non-intentional all at the same time, as illustrated by the way musicians
perform music. What is really in question is the basis for action and
Bourdieu argues that the neither the normative or the intentional models
adequately account for the complexity of real activity. Although Bourdieu's
 conception of habitus can appear as though the explanation is harder to
grasp than the phenomena, it is clear that the complexity of human action
demands complex analysis and proper understanding of Bourdieu's use of
habitus is a important tool for explaining action.
Hagen Finley
Berkeley, CA
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