Date: Wed, 07 May 2003 11:10:58 +0200
From: Anja =?iso-8859-1?Q?Wei=DF?= <anja.weiss-AT-unibw-muenchen.de>
Subject: Re: a bit of everything plus a question - is habitus reproduced 


I also liked Iva's ideas and Pam's response.

However I think that the historical process which Pam describes (e.g.
genius turning from a moment of inspiration to a commodity of/in a
person) should better be addressed under the header of
"individualization". Even though the concept of habitus refers to a
"body-person" it does not necessarily refer to the individualized
subject typical of late modernity. As far as I know Bourdieu developed
the concept in his first work "Outline of a Theory of Practice" (1977)
which deals with the not yet commodified Kabyle society.

The question of historical change remains important, however. One of the
main arguments against Bourdieu in German discourse concerns the
"determinism" of the "habitus". I find that critizism to simple.
Bourdieu emphasizes that the habitus is a result of social practice and
that it adapts to social practice. Bourdieu focuses on primary
socialization when explaining the habitus. Then a change of habitus
would be very slow in long-lived societies.

We need to elaborate more on how a habitus can change with historical
change. Possibly the problem can be solved, if we agree that the habitus
is rather stable, but that it is just a broad perspective on the world
that can be applied to many different situations. So it is possible that
a girl who grew up in a farm in the 1920ies can apply her habitus
successfully to factory work in the 1950ies. Historical change then
would be difficult only for specific habitus groups who have become
genuinely marginal (such as unqualified strong and unfriendly males in a
post-modern service economy). In "Misère du monde" a number of cases are
explored in which the habitus of sons and fathers diverges so strongly
that it causes "misère".

Best regards
Anja

--
Dr. Anja Weiß
DFG-Projekt
Hochqualifizierte
Migrant/innen.
Highly qualified migrants.
Zur Transnationalisierung sozialer Lagen.                   The
transnationalisation of social inequality.


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