From: S.Pines-Martin-AT-iaea.org
Subject: RE: habitus
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 15:21:48 +0100 


	-----Original Message-----
	From:	SHANK [SMTP:aqbr96-AT-falcon.cc.ukans.edu]
	Sent:	Wednesday, 08. December 1999 14:47
	To:	bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
	Subject:	RE: habitus

	I just wrote something very brief about habitus, but I think I
disagree
	with the idea that an individual has multiple habituseseseses
(sorry).  It
	strikes me that the concept of habitus has to be singular for each
	individual, but even more thanthat, habitus is paradoxical in that
it its
	singularity for each individual can only really be grasped at the
	aggregate level that can be captured statistically.  Isn't that one
of the
	main methodological points of _Distinction_?  

I wonder what it means that "an individual" *has* a "habitus"... Or various
habitus? As you say, habitus is a conceptual construct, employed to
explicatively coordinate certain measurements --statistical regularities.
Then there is no 'paradox': we can tie in the "singular habitus" with the
"singular individual" only at the price of remaining tied to spontaneous
sociologies of the subject, the individual person, which take its causal
efficacy as primary for an understanding and explanation of the social
world. Habitus designates repeated experiences, adjustments, adaptations,
coordination of responses to a social world; and in the social theory
habitus is inseparable from the "social fields" that structure it, even as
"it" contributes to structure that by which it is structured. The relational
thinking involved here would dissolve the idea of a unitary person to whom a
singular form of habituation, a singular monolithic "habitus", a unique
history, corresponds. Which does not mean that the concept of "habitus"
merely refers to abstract ideations: it's all about "individuals", "people"
like you and me. As you say:

> Thus, habitus is a
> theoretical construct that seeks to explain a generative consistency
> of moves across fields, but this consistency rarely appears as such in the
> lives of individuals but can more easily be seen in the statistically
> measured actions of groups.  No?
> 
> Barry Shank
> American Studies
> University of Kansas
> 
So doesn't it make more sense not to confuse the phenomenological level of
"lives of individuals" ("persons") with objectivistically, "statistically
measured actions of groups" ("habitus")? The former invites notions of a
subject, an individual, a person, (and also makes possible the very basic
"understanding" that is an essential component of social theory, namely
interpretation); the latter suggests construction of relational concepts in
order to capture the structure of social fields that individual personality
and interpretations on that basis systematically make invisible,
unrecognizable, or at least very difficult to recognize.


**********************************************************************
Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu