From: "George Free" <gfree-AT-linux.ca>
Subject: Re: habitus
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 10:31:28 -0500


Kim writes:

>In a habitus in B's terms and in Mauss's, we are unconscious of it.  We do
>make decisions etc. however we still remain unconscious of the habitus.
>Parts of it can be made clear to us by outsiders however they may use terms
>of reference from within our habitus to make us understand or 'see' what is
>happening. The habitus is perhaps a bit like the water in a fish tank.  The
>fish is only aware of it when he is no longer in it.
>


You might also become aware of your habitus through encounters with people
from other cultures as nowadays happens more and more in the major urban
centers.

Karl Mannheim had a theory that people became more aware of the social and
cultural conditions of their existence in times of political and social
upheaval, periods of class mobility and international migration.

cheers,
George


>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Deborah W Kilgore [mailto:dkilgore-AT-iastate.edu]
>Sent: Thursday, December 09, 1999 3:42 AM
>To: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: habitus
>
>Hello, all.  I appreciate the many comments made regarding my question on
>how to think about habitus & multiple (or non-unitary) subjectivity:
>
>I agree to some extent with Karl's comment: this is not something that
>seems to have been developed very well yet.  I did not develop it well in
>my own dissertation research, but am now looking to fix it.  As some of you
>know, I researched women in prison, and I discussed a certain aspect of the
>female "prisoner habitus" as distinct from the male prisoner habitus or a
>free person habitus.  I did not address differences that might be
>attributed to race and I to some extent folded in class with prisoner,
>since by far most U.S. prisoners are strikingly poor and ill-educated.  As
>Emrah noted, habitus is to some extent what you make of it, should you
>choose to study the practices of stockbrokers or prisoners or teachers or
>corporate executives.
>
>This works well in putting a boundary around a research project, but it
>doesn't seem to work so well in theory.  We may be satisfied that Bourdieu
>is necessarily vague about habitus, but sometimes we don't catch such
>breaks.  Being a learning theorist, I have been attempting to use B's
>theory to develop my own theory of group or collective learning.  So I'm
>writing along and I'm realizing that some reviewer is definitely going to
>say, "Look, all your class participants are not going to be of the same
>stripe. Where do you figure for diversity?"  And I put the theoretical
>paper aside for awhile, because my brain hurt thinking about it.
>
>Ultimately we theorists want to be able to *explain something*.  When I
>think of a group learning situation (where there is a collective identity
>or body of knowledge developed through collective action & reflection that
>is to some extent reciprocally related to individual habitus', at least in
>my thinking), I don't want to have to throw up my hands in despair because
>every person must be assumed to be significantly different, and every
>combination of persons must be assumed to be significantly different!  I
>want to be able to explain what it means to situate a learning process in a
>prison or in a corporation or in a school.  And B. gives us the hope that
>our theories can explain something about social life with the notion of
>habitus.  As Jon & S. Pines remind us, habitus is not originated within an
>individual, but rather is a concept that privileges objective
>structures.  (Aside: In the discipline of sociology, it is hip to privilege
>relatively enduring structures, but in the discipline of education and
>learning theory, the individual learner rules! I'm like the poor bohemian
>of my home discipline so I hold out hope that sociology will give me a
>publishing chance)
>
>Jon asks an intriguing question:  "How and when, then, does a person
>"choose" (consciously or otherwise) between specific habituses (in
>Deborah's example), between a response based upon habitus and a response
>based on rationality, or even between various possible rational thought
>processes?"  My initial reaction is that the choice comes upon
>reflection!  (And Jon alludes to this as well) Going back to the female
>corporate executive, expressing outrage at her sisters' treatment, yet also
>expressing loyalty to the corporation and the need for due process, etc.,
>the complexity of the situation and of her practices & thoughts is only
>illuminated in her narratives of past events offered to the researcher.
>
>And narratives are an epistemology unto themselves: it is not so much what
>you say, but how you say it that illuminates how you make sense of it.  And
>once again reflects the structuring structures of habitus: the habitus of
>the actor(s) in the previous situation, the habitus of the storyteller, and
>the habitus of the audience.  If the woman is testifying before a
>legislative body, her story and the way she tells it is likely to reveal as
>much (or more) about what it means to testify before a legislative body as
>it does about what it means to be a female corporate executive handling a
>sexual harrassment case.
>
>Let me toss that tangent aside for a moment: If a person is practicing and
>making decisions according to multiple and contradictory habituses (or
>aspects of one habitus, I don't think it matters) all the time, then we are
>not only interested the resulting creative practice (agency, if you will)
>that results when habitus and field collide, but also when habitus and
>habitus collide.  I think this is a step forward.
>
>What do you think?
>
>(sorry for length!)
>
>Debbie
>
>-----------------------
>Deborah Kilgore
>Assistant Professor, Educational Leadership & Policy Studies
>Iowa State University
>N232 Lagomarcino Hall
>Ames, IA  50011-3195
>office: 515-294-9121, fax: 515-294-4942, email: dkilgore-AT-iastate.edu
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