File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_1999/bourdieu.9912, message 80


Date: Thu, 09 Dec 1999 21:29:51 +0100
From: Karl Maton <karl.maton-AT-dtn.ntl.com>
Subject: Re: habitus



> 
> > I think this might illustrate the circularity involved.  How do we know
> > Karl Maton's habitus?  Because he makes Karl Maton choices.
> 
> Hmm... I think we may be talking at cross-purposes at this point.  I see
> it this way:
> 
> You would like to discover the nature (structure?) of Karl Maton's
> habitus.  But that's not my desire; indeed, I suggest that the question is
> unhelpful at best, and it is the question that is producing the
> circularity, not the concept around which the question circles.
> 
> I'll say it again: I think that Karl Maton is a product of habitus; as
> such he cannot be said to possess a habitus; if anything, it possesses
> him.

Taking KM as an epistemic individual (allowing me to talk in the third
person), I cannot see how the question causes the circularity.  How can
asking what is the structure _exhibited_ by his habitus - i.e. the
structuring of his practices - cause circularity?  I think the important
thing to stress is that one cannot see habitus but one can examine this
hypothesised habitus through its empirical realisations.  

If the question of identify and defining KM's habitus is not Jon's
desire, then what is?  
 
> > Plus, although it's nice to be called a unique individual (thank you),
> > I'm not sure that the job of habitus is to just show we're all
> > different!
> 
> Well, I think the thing is that Bourdieu (and his concept of habitus
> especially) is often taken as a hyperfunctionalist determinism that does
> away with the notion of unique individuals.  My point was what I thought
> was the rather polemical one that habitus can also be used to point up
> personhood, to show that we are all different.  (For those who are worried
> about such things.)

A point well made.  Personally, in the British context, I find that the
opposite message is required.  Here, there is more focus on the
individual and unique than on the social.  But it's useful to highlight,
as you do, that they can retain this (emotional?) need whilst using
Bourdieu's approach.  

 > Plus, I still need to describe the 'regularities' you mention.
> 
> This need of yours I don't understand.  (Though perhaps it's part of what
> makes you different from me <insert cute smiley icon here>.)  

Ha ha!  

The 'need' is really one thing which is required in order to
operationalise the concept of habitus in empirical research.  If we're
happy with it being a metaphor, then fine; but if it is to be used in
empirical research in a non-tautological way we need to be able to say
what the structure of the habitus in question (as shown by its
realisations) is, as one possible structuring among a limited number of
potential structurings.  Otherwise it is simply a gloss on empirical
description.  And I think PB intends it to be more than that.  

More to the
> point, I don't understand exactly what you mean by "describing the
> 'regularities';" again, I think that's none too difficult: you observe
> things such as the various acts of curry-purchasing and try to correlate
> correlate them with (for example) among other things, the various
> declarations of support for Manchester United etc. etc.  This is the
> statistical analysis to which Ziggy points.  Regularities appear and are
> described in such statistical work.

Okay.  I don't think we actually need any of this statistical stuff
necessarily, and thus far it's simply served to redescribe the practices
to say that they are linked, that their apperance together isn't
happenchance.  We;ve not yet got any closer to saying what the structure
exhibited by these practices are.
 
> > I would suggest that the underlying rule (and please, people, don't
> > produce the pavlovian response to that word - I don't mean
> > rule-following) of the above practices is 'bringing things together'.
> 
> I don't see the problem here (though I'd add that in bringing (some)
> things together you also separate (other) things out).  I don't get either
> what you say about Bernstein: this is my ignorance, no doubt, so please
> explain further, and explain how you get away from descriptivism (as you
> might put it).

Oh, blimey.  Can I take a raincheck on this?  I'll be back (as Arnie
might say), but I'm half-asleep today.  I will reply.  

> 
> Essentially, I don't quite see what your problem is.  Though I get perhaps
> an inkling in your subsequent message (in reply to Ziggy's, with which I'm
> in broad agreement).
> 
> > Karl
> 
> [Ziggy's message snipped; on to Karl's subsequent missive...]
> 
> > Date: Thu, 09 Dec 1999 17:11:56 +0100
> > From: Karl Maton <karl.maton-AT-dtn.ntl.com>
> > Subject: Re: habitus
> >
> > at the end of the
> > day, practices are always attributed to field positions.  The field of
> > positions pretty much dictates the field of stances.  A very crude
> > summary is to say that those in dominated positions tend to subversive
> > strategies and those in dominant positions tend to conservative stances.
> 
> I understand still less of what you're saying in this post.  However, I
> have a moment in which I see blinding light (I feel).
> 
> I start by saying "no, no, no"  to the notion that "those in dominated
> positions tend to subversive strategies and those in dominant positions
> tend to conservative stances."  This is not simply crude, it is simply
> wrong.  I think one of the most useful aspects of Bourdieu's theory (and
> his notion of habitus) is the way in which he attempts to explain the
> collusion of the dominated in their own domination without recourse to the
> notion of ideology or to false consciousness.  I.e., people are not simply
> fooled into collusion with their dominated: they participate in their
> self-damnation for rather pragmatic reasons rooted in their life
> experiences of the life experiences and felt sense of options (i.e., their
> habitus) common to those of their particular group.

Ah, no.  I was in no way, not at all, talking about whether peoples'
practices are acts of resistance or conformity.  I wasn't talking about
whether the dominated collude in their own domination.  My fault ... I
was too short in what I said.  When I say that in the final analysis
PB's field approach holds that those in dominated/ dominant positions
tend towards subversive/conservative strategies, I mean that this is the
basic way in which he goes about a field analysis.  I'm not suggesting
this is his theory of how people come to be or remain dominated or
dominant.  The main point here really is that in a field analysis,
practices (or stances or position-takings) are not simply related to
field positions, but ultimately reduced to them.  I'm not talking about
his extremely useful and insightful discussion of how strategies can be
both 'subversive' yet also collusion in one's own domination.  (By the
way, I find this an excellent way of accounting for the confusion which
emerged in cultural studies accounts of youth subcultures which focused
on trying to identify resistence / conformity).  I'm really talking
about the approach, and the relation in this methodological and
theoretical approach between positions and stances in a field.  The
field of positions is held to overdetermine the field of stances.  My
point arose from your suggested answer to analysing Karl's practices,
which focused on Karl's position in the field (of cultural consumption,
in this case).  

> Herewith the flash of blinding light (perhaps): you are dissatisfied with
> current accounts of habitus in as much as they fail to reveal subversion;
> or, maybe, they fail to distinguish between the subversive and the
> conservative?

Er, no.  That flash must have been something else :-).  
I think his work on this is excellent.  It's not a substantive problem;
more a problem in the underlying approach.  

> Even if this is not your position, let's stay with this thought for the
> moment, by reference back to something Ziggy noted (to which your comments
> are a reaction, in part).  In Ziggy's description of Bourdieu's method
> (with which, as I say, I broadly agree), he pointed out that after
> observing certain statistical regularties, Bourdieu then "he then
> attempts to identify the underlying logics that explain the relations of
> such clusters to each other through the delineation of fields."
> 
> *Here* I think is the locus of your dissatisfaction (and, now I come to
> think of it, perhaps the stirrings of some dissatisfaction of my own): the
> "underlying logics" are always remarkably similar (and don't conform to a
> typology of subversion and/or conservatism).  Essentially, at the root of
> social practice (the logic of practice) for Bourdieu is always
> differentiation and/or agglutination (the two being inseparable moments).
> Put differently: the underlying structure (to take Karl's term) or logic
> (to take Ziggy's) of the habitus, for Bourdieu, is a market structure, or
> market logic.
> 
> Habitus, therefore, a concept designed (in part) to explain by individuals
> make choices that are apparently against their own best interests--i.e. a
> concept designed to explain why and how individuals buck the market model
> or market logic of maximising self-interest--is seen, finally, to be
> predicated on a (hysteresized, embodied, what have you) market model once
> again.  Full circle.

It's not what I had in mind, but it is a very interesting issue
nonetheless.  I won't comment here, but it reminds me of a thread a
while ago about the supply/demand model underlying Bourdieu's account of
fields.  
> 
> [snip some stuff I didn't quite get]
> 
> > If we take the practices I listed as those exhibited by a group, then we
> > still have the same problem: what is the structure exhibited by this
> > set?  Or are they simply all recflections of the dominated or dominant
> > position occupied by the Karlites (for want of a better term).
> 
> Finally, then, I'd suggest that the set of practices and attitudes
> exhibited by Karlites reflect nothing about domination (and would not in

I think I misled you somewhat by mentioning domination.  It was really
only to illustrate how the field of positions is really the focus of a
field analysis.  

> any case unless related to the practices of non-Karlites... ach but
> another tangent strikes me here, to which I may return later; note to
> self: talk about the relation between domination and the market).  They
> do, however, at first sight seem to define some kind of community or (at
> the extreme--in the case of Karl Maton himself, the exemplary Karlite)
> individual ethos.  Would this sense of communal or individual ethos,
> consistent over time, not seem to go against the grain of market logics
> and their disintegrating, differentiating chaos.  Ah but no, dixit
> Bourdieu, for just such ethos is produced--or even, to use a term Bourdieu
> might like, alchemically precipitated--from just such a market war of all
> against all.
> 
> Hmmm... more anon, no doubt.

Well, Jon, even though I sparked off something I didn't mean by
mentioning 'domination', it's great to read such interesting thoughts in
progress.  It's this kind of post that keeps me on listservs.  

Take care,

Karl

(It's nice to be the exemplary Karlite, but I have a sneaking suspicion
I may not be - the habit in these things would be for someone to do a
paper showing how in fact Karl was a Jonite, or Janeite, or Richardite
:-).  


> 
> Take care
> 
> Jon
> 
> Jon Beasley-Murray
> Hispanic Studies
> University of Aberdeen
> jbmurray-AT-abdn.ac.uk
> http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~spn037
> 
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-- 
With best wishes,

Karl 

Karl Maton
School of Education, University of Cambridge

Correspondence address:
108 Avenue Road Extension, Leicester LE2 3EH
Tel: 0116 220 1066
Email: karl.maton-AT-dtn.ntl.com

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and
the truth of the imagination
Keats
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