Outlines of a Theory of Plural Habitus

Bourdieu Revisited

Miklós Hadas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000530711
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the thought of Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most influential sociologists of the twentieth century, proposing a modification and extension of his concept of habitus. Building on Bourdieu's notion of the translational reproduction of social structure – the idea that while social classes move in the same direction, dominant groups are able to preserve their relative power position, thus maintaining the structure of the gap – the author proposes that as social structures change, habitus change correspondingly, and thus become plural. Informed by Norbert Elias' process sociology, this volume offers examples of habitus pluralisation, arguing that this modification of Bourdieu's thought renders it more suitable for the study of social changes and represents the development of a path that Bourdieu himself had begun to explore in the later stages of his career. As such it will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory with interests in historical sociology, process sociology, social structures and the thought of Bourdieu.

1

The habitus concept in the Bourdieusian oeuvre

DOI: 10.4324/9781003179702-2

It is often mistakenly believed that the habitus concept was introduced into sociology by Pierre Bourdieu. In fact, among the antecedents of this notion, we find the Aristotelian category of hexis (meaning an acquired yet entrenched state of moral character that orients our feelings and desires, and thence our conduct), translated into Latin as habitus by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae (meaning durable disposition suspended midway between potency and purposeful action). In the early 20th century, the term was also applied – basically in the sense that was later developed by Bourdieu – by some of the classical authors of sociology, including Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Thornton Veblen, Max Weber, Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schütz, and Norbert Elias. As these names indicate, the term primarily appeared among German and German-oriented French authors and was re-introduced into English-language sociology mostly by Bourdieu’s translators in the 1980s (Wacquant 2016, 64–65).¹

By introducing this concept, Bourdieu aimed to transcend some of the conventional assumptions of the social sciences. First, he intended to take a stand against the structuralist anthropology of Lévi-Strauss and the “deterministic sociology” of Louis Althusser, claiming that they not only reduced “agents to simple carriers of the structure” but also confronted theory with social practice. He also wanted to surpass the phenomenology of Sartre, the orientalising perspective of the anthropological gaze, and the “atomistic approach of social psychology, which breaks the unity of practice” (Bourdieu 1992, 251–52). Likewise, he criticised economic theory, claiming that although it treats economic agents as interchangeable actors, it fails, paradoxically, “to take account of the economic dispositions, and is thereby prevented from really explaining the systems of preferences which define incommensurable and independent subjective use-values” (Bourdieu 1984, 573). Bourdieu argued that there are a number of beliefs, passions, and value-laden behavioural patterns, conditioned by group attachment, that can be considered as an “absolute challenge” to the utilitarian interpretation:

Among these things are all kinds of behaviours which the utilitarian tradition cannot account for, such as loyalties or commitments to people and groups, and, more generally, all the behaviours of disinterestedness, the limiting case of which is pro patria mori, analysed by Kantorowicz, the sacrifice of the egoistic ego, an absolute challenge to all utilitarian calculators.

(Bourdieu 2000, 146)

He also sought to go beyond the “individualist finalism” of economic approaches and Rational Choice Theory, which, based on the image of homo oeconomicus, interpreted social practice as a series of interest-driven, goal-oriented, profit-maximising actions (Bourdieu 1992, 165).²

Habitus as sense of the game

In a first approach, the habitus concept refers to a

system of durable and transposable dispositions which, integrating all past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions, and makes it possible to accomplish infinitely differentiated tasks, thanks to the analogical transfer of schemata acquired in prior practice.

(Bourdieu 1972, 261, quoted and translated by Wacquant 2016, 66)

The concept is identified metaphorically as “incorporated history”, “internal law”, “subjectivity made objective”/“objectivity made subjective”, “potential energy (vis insita)”, and “sleeping force”, while assuming that there is a “dialectical relationship” between dispositions, inclinations, urges, and the social positions occupied by agents (Bourdieu 1997, 202). The functioning of habitus is often explained by the metaphor of the “sense of the game” that comes into play through spontaneous improvisations during social interactions:

A particularly clear example of practical sense as a proleptic adjustment to the demands of a field is what is called, in the language of sport, a ‘sense of the game’.³ This phrase (like ‘investment sense’, the art of ‘anticipating’ events, etc.) gives a fairly accurate idea of the almost miraculous encounter between the habitus and a field, between incorporated history and an objectified history, which makes possible the near-perfect anticipation of the future inscribed in all the concrete configurations on the pitch or board. Produced by experience of the game, and therefore of the objective structures within which it is played out, the ‘sense of the game’ is what gives the game a subjective sense – a meaning and a raison d’être, but also a direction, an orientation, an impending outcome, for those who take part and therefore acknowledge what is at stake.

(Bourdieu 1990, 66. Emphasis added)

In order to illustrate how the sense of the game works, let us take two examples, those of football (soccer in the USA) and of music. The accumulation of the sense of football (the kernel of which is the sense of ball) begins when a parent (frequently the father) plays, weekly or even daily, with his child (mostly, but not necessarily, with his son), who thus comes into contact with the ball thousands or even tens of thousands of times in the first decade of his life. In doing so, while trying to kick the ball in the spirit of paternal instruction with his right or left leg, chest, or head, the child, almost imperceptibly, masters the science of football. Later, when he plays football with others, he will – again, almost unwittingly – gradually incorporate the components of dribbling, heading, “positioning”, and “defending”, etc. In this way, he will develop further his “weaker leg” or head performance, i.e. will be able to gain more and more complex bodily dispositions and acquire tactics and strategy. And when he starts playing in a squad under the guidance of a professional coach and incorporates the learned elements, there is a growing chance that, sooner or later, he will see football as an important and authentic activity with meaningful stakes. On the basis of this routine, football players, similarly to other sportsmen, will be able to improvise, against their opponents, the most appropriate and effective sequence of movements – be it a pitch, paste, ring, saddle, pool, or field, etc. – without having the time to think.

The accumulation of musical sense is similar, in that it is based on many tens of thousands of hours of training, during which the individual, under the guidance of a master, incorporates various forms of expression according to the expectations of different musical styles and genres. Without calculating in advance, and following the logic of musical cycles (periods), a musician is able to play in the right style, pace, and dynamics – sometimes faster, sometimes slower, intermittently or prolonged, louder or quieter – in harmony with fellow musicians. When a pianist invents a cadence (which was a common practice before the 19th century) or a jazz musician starts to improvise, they both automatically activate their incorporated musical dispositions within the framework of the specific stylistic conventions of the given piece of music. Like other senses, musical sense can be divided into a number of sub-senses, such as that of rhythm, tempo, period, style, and dynamic. The incorporation of musical sense, literally speaking, is most obvious in the case of singers, as they carry the instrument within their own bodies. This instrument consists not only of the vocal cords but also of the resonant surfaces of the body: the lung lobes; the cavities of the head and chest; the abdominal, pectoral, and shoulder muscles; and so on. And since singers, unlike the vast majority of instrumental musicians, mostly perform music while standing, their bones and muscles are also under constant pressure while singing.

As these two examples show, the sense of the game is the outcome of a decades-long cycle of repeated routine movements resulting in the incorporated bodily dispositions that are necessary for the practice of a given activity. These dispositions are manifested, first, in an incorporated form (in the aforementioned two cases, sight, hearing, and touch play a major role).⁴ Second, senses produce classifiable practices in an interactive way, through improvisations. Third, these routinely incorporated, improvised actions are non-conscious and non-intentional forms of social action (or “strategies”, to apply the Bourdieusian terminology). If, following Bourdieu, we use this concept metaphorically, we can identify many other forms of senses, such as the aesthetic sense (which may include the sense of beauty, style, proportion, space, etc.), the moral sense or the sense of investment.⁵ We can also include laughter, which is, again literally speaking, an incorporated physical manifestation of the sense of humour that comes into play when someone “understands” a joke – i.e. demonstrates that s/he belongs to the same cultural community as the joke-teller.

The homogenous habitus: the “principle of the conductorless orchestration”

Bourdieu’s opus magnum is the Distinction, published in French at the peak of his academic career (Bourdieu 1979). In this book, habitus is one of the most often used concepts. It applies both to systems of classifications (judgements) and to practices (strategies). These durable dispositions “harmonise” the behaviour of agents belonging to the same group of people without any conscious effort:

The habitus is not only a structuring structure, which organizes practices and the perception of practices, but also a structured structure: the principle of division into logical classes which organizes the perception of the social world is itself the product of internalization of the division into social classes…. As structured products (opus operatum) which a structuring structure (modus operandi) produces through retranslations according to the specific logic of the different fields, all the practices and products of the given class are objectively harmonized among themselves, without any deliberate pursuit of coherence and objectively orchestrated, without any conscious concertation.

(Bourdieu 1984, 170–73. Emphasis added)

When Bourdieu interprets habitus as a structured structure, he means that the practice is conditioned (“structured”) by social embeddedness or social position. (To put it simply, it matters whether someone is born into a middle-class family or a peasant family.) When he writes that habitus is a structuring structure, he intends to indicate that different practices, lifestyles, or tastes are conditioned (“structured”) by dispositions. An agent’s “whole set of practices … are both systematic, inasmuch as they are the products of the applications of identical (or interchangeable) schemes, and systematically distinct from the practices constituting another life-style” (Bourdieu 1984, 170). In other words, the “objectively classifiable conditions of existence” produce different types of habitus, determining (1) what dispositions the agents in a given class may/will acquire; (2) what classifiable practices may/will be produced by them; (3) what positions they may/will occupy in the social space; i.e. (4) how steep their social trajectory may/will be. Bourdieu’s axiomatic proposition is that the structures of existence condition what positions and dispositions agents of a given social class may acquire: The children of peasants internalise peasant dispositions, the offspring of petty bourgeois adopt petty bourgeois dispositions, and the descendants of the upper middle classes incorporate upper-middle-class dispositions. These dispositions “generate” “objectively homogenized” practices in all areas of social practice and thus structure the characteristics of the various lifestyles.⁶

He introduces the concept of “conductorless orchestration”, by which he means that the practices of

the members of the same group or, in a differentiated society, the same class, are always more and better harmonized than the agents know or wish…. The habitus is precisely this immanent law, lex insita, inscribed in bodies by identical histories, which is the precondition not only for the co-ordination of practices but also for practices of co-ordination”.

(1984, 59)

Another frequently recurring Bourdieusian concept is amor fati, the forced choice of destiny. A form par excellence of amor fati is the taste (the subtitle of Distinctions is “a social critique of the judgement of taste”). The conditions of existence leave agents with no choice but to have a taste for the necessary, which can be fulfilled since “the agents are inclined to fulfil it, because they have a taste for what they are anyway condemned to” (Bourdieu 1984, 178). In other words, “an agent has what he likes because he likes what he has” (ibid., 175). By defining taste as “class culture turned into nature”, Bourdieu states that similar preferences can be identified as far as eating, clothing, or the universe of sporting practices, etc., are concerned. The schemes of this “generative grammar” are applied, by simple transfer, to the different aspects of practice” (ibid., 175), because the “generative formula of the habitus” retranslates the homogeneous conditions of existence into a particular lifestyle (ibid., 208).

In this book, he uses complex mathematical-statistical techniques to identify different taste universes. For example, the “taste of luxury”, which is recognised mainly at the highest social levels, can be associated with a “new ethic of sobriety for the sake of slimness”, a “breadth of gestures and postures”, or with a restrained, self-assured tempo of speaking, eating, and walking. The “aristocratic” image of certain sports – like tennis, riding, or golf – may also persist in affinities and dispositions concerning flying: The “chivalrous ethic of the Prussian aristocrats and French nobles who joined the Air Forces from cavalry schools … are implied in the very activity of flying which are associated with elevated society and high mindedness” (ibid., 218). The members of the lower classes represent another taste of the universe, namely that of the “taste of necessity”. Peasants and industrial workers are more attentive to the “strength of the body than its shape”; they prefer to eat cheap and nutritious products and to play pétanque (a form of bowls), which is “doubly stigmatized by being not only popular among the lowest social strata but also coming from the South of France” (ibid., 209). Rugby could also be mentioned in this context because it has affinities with “the cult of manliness and the taste for a fight, toughness in...