Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 09:44:52 +1000 (EST)
From: Ania Lian <ania-AT-lingua.arts.uq.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Habitus


On Sun, 13 Aug 2000, George Free wrote:
> >>>>> "Kem-Laurin" == Kem-Laurin Lubin <klubin-AT-itemus.com> writes:
>     Kem-Laurin> I am very interested if anyone has been able to apply
>     Kem-Laurin> Bourdieu's habitus to Information Management,
>     Kem-Laurin> Collaboration, Sharing and Exchange Systems etc.,.

I think that the problem you have stems from your misunderstanding of the
concept of habitus. Your question then is: how can we preserve the
dynamics of teh systems without reducing them into our concept. Now, I
think that anyone who cannot answer this question does not understand teh
concept of habitus not to mention the concept of method. This is a
challenge, I agree but what I cannot understand is that it is not made
fundamental at every level of education, university of school.

>     Kem-Laurin> skinning (allowing users custom control). The battle
>     Kem-Laurin> is between imposing order or allowing the chaotic
>     Kem-Laurin> structures of individual, remote actors to order
>     Kem-Laurin> themselves. I think the latter is possible. 

The battle is not between chaos and order; The battle is between your
understanding of the implications of habitus. It is you who reduced
dynamics to chaos and structure to some form of (inherent) order.

>     Our theory
>     Kem-Laurin> is that likeminded info seekers can collectively
>     Kem-Laurin> create a kind of natural taxonomy for their online
>     Kem-Laurin> community (info system) without " in anyway being the
>     Kem-Laurin> product of obedience to rules." I think P.B habitus
>     Kem-Laurin> could support our claim.

The assumption of teh nature of teh "likemindness" is teh first step to
terror. What you say is that you can understand the nature of
that likemindness and then provide a system that will propote further that
likemindnessness. If you want Bourdieu as your refrence, he also talks
about subversion vs received ideas. What is it that you offer: functioning
in received ideas or a way out of the loop?

> If I understand the problem, the challenge would be to discover the
> rules implicit in user choices and how these rules were organized into
> coherent perspectives representing socially real groups.

As for George's answer to the original mailer, teh challenge is not to
reduce dynamics to natural or selfevident rules. This is so anglosaxon
that it almost hurts.  The challenge is about preserving tehdynamics
through systems that make it ossible rather than impossible. The asnwer to
me is simple but I will let you work on it as, as usual, unless one works
it out for oneself, one will not understand teh argument anyhow. So, do
not give up and, the clue: where is teh critical element in all this to
come from?

Ania Lian
ania-AT-lingua.arts.uq.edu.au
http://comedu.canberra.edu.au/~ania/

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