Bourdieu's Habitus

The history of sociology shows it to be a discipline that focuses on both macro and micro issues. Theorists and practitioners of sociology tend to focus either social structures (such as capitalism) or social action (such as symbolic interaction) in their work. However, some sociologists have made it their mission to finds ways of bridging structure and action. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is one of these, and in his book, “Outline of the Theory of Practice” (1977), he revived the concept of habitus to the sociological lexicon. Habitus refers to the apparently durable patterns of thought, behavior (or practice) and taste that people acquire and that link social structures (like class position) to action (like choices people make). While habitus is seen as a somewhat elusive concept to define, sociologists of culture and of the body have used it, nonetheless, to explore how social location (not only class, but also gender and ethnicity) is linked to cultural patterns and choices. In recent years, the concept of habitus has been applied to studies of how people in different social positions live out their routine, bodily experiences and how these in turn, reinforce social position. These studies draw not only on the work of Bourdieu, but also of the anthropologist Mary Douglas, who also uses the concept of habitus, or rather, bodily practice, to explore links between people's everyday routine practices and the cosmologies they inhabit.

Keywords Bodily Hexis; Bourdieu, Pierre; Cosmology; Habitus; Matter-out-of-place; Profane; Sacred; Social Position; Social Practice

Bourdieu's Habitus

Overview

The history of sociology shows it to be a discipline that focuses on both macro and micro issues. Theorists and practitioners of sociology tend to focus either social structures (such as capitalism) or social action (such as face-to-face interaction) in their work. However, some sociologists have made it their mission to finds ways of bridging structure and action. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is one of these, and in his book, Outline of the Theory of Practice (1977), he revived the concept of habitus. Initially used in the phrase "social habitus" by Norbert Elias (Mennell, 1989), habitus refers to the apparently durable patterns of thought, behavior (or practice) and taste that people acquire and that link social structures (like class position) to action (like choices people make). While habitus is seen as a somewhat elusive concept to define, sociologists of culture and of the body have used it, nonetheless, to explore how social location (not only class, but also gender and ethnicity) is linked to cultural patterns and choices. In recent years, the concept of habitus has been applied to studies of how people in different social positions live out their routine, bodily experiences and how these in turn, reinforce social position. These studies draw not only on the work of Bourdieu, but also of the anthropologist Mary Douglas, who emphasizes how bodily practice links between people's everyday routine practices with the cosmologies they inhabit.

Defining Habitus

According to Dorland's Medical Dictionary (2007), in medical culture, the term habitus refers to "1. posture or position of the body. 2. Physique; body build and constitution" (p. 826). It is this meaning that sociologists have developed in order to examine how the human body is shaped by the social and physical environment in which it is located. For Pierre Bourdieu, habitus refers to the apparently durable patterns of thought, behavior (or practice) and taste that people acquire and that link social structures (like class position) to action (like the choices people make or the beliefs they hold that are tied to particular cultural practices). He defines habitus as a:

…system of practice-generating schemes which expresses systematically the necessity and freedom inherent in [a]…class condition and the difference [from other classes and fractions] constituting that condition (Bourdieu, 1992, p. 172).

Put simply, habitus is the internalization and enacting of social structures through movements and gestures; bodily shape, physique, movement in space and size which reveals the social location of people and the values that are generated from that location. For instance, the wiry, athletic, and graceful "balletic body" tells us something about the aesthetic and cultural values associated with the world of classical ballet (Wainwright, 2007).

However, Bourdieu's use of habitus is part of an attempt to move away from the determinism of rules and regulations associated with the systems approach of Talcott Parsons and instead, to account for the messiness of social life, the ways in which rules are applied and with what consequences (Crossley, 2001).

Social Practice

On the one hand, Bourdieu argues that the things people do (e.g. the gestures they make) are not wholly determined by social structures (people are not automatons), nor on the other hand, are they wholly guided by rational choices (people don't think consciously about all the moves and gestures they make). Rather, social practice (as the manifestation of the habitus) occurs and involves movement in time and space (Jenkins, 1992) and the characteristics of physical environments make demands on people to move in particular ways. For instance, buildings associated with formal, civic institutions (e.g. city hall or the courthouse) are characterized by a focus on civility and constraint. Therefore, people who work there generally walk sedately and talk quietly in such buildings without really thinking about what they are doing because they occupy the habitus that such an environment requires. That is, they have developed a "learned disposition" and practical sense of what is expected of them in line with the kind of work done in civic buildings.

Thus, social practice is largely not consciously organized. People move through their everyday routines without being wholly aware of how those routines are organized. They may carry a sense of the presence of past in the present (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 210) and maintain what Bourdieu refers to as a "feel for the game"-a sensory and embodied taken-for-granted connection with movements and gestures. This constitutes a "logic of practice" that is "intentionality without intention" (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 19) or as Giddens (1984) puts it, a "practical consciousness" that enables people to go about their daily routine without thinking about it too much. In this schema, the logic of practice that shapes everyday movements and gestures is not necessarily a rational, well thought out set of principles or responses to rules and regulations: rather, it is a fuzzy logic that is tacit in nature.

Applications

Body Techniques

The habitus then, involves not only bodily physique, as in medical culture, but also a practical sense of moving and using our bodies in ways that are expected of us, a sense of knowing what is expected without really thinking about it. Bourdieu refers to forms of posture, gait, deportment, and style that people do without thinking as bodily hexis: forms of bodily movement that are ingrained, difficult to consciously alter and that literally reveal our background.

This idea has been explored by other social scientists, and indeed, Bourdieu develops his concept of habitus by building on some of this other work. In particular, he drew on research by Marcel Mauss, who examined the body techniques associated with different societies and who argued that people use, and learn how to use, their bodies differently in different societies. For instance, he shows how English soldiers during the First World War did not know how to use French spades (with the consequence that thousands of spades had to be substituted); how he taught the members of one society he encountered how to spit; and Maori women he met in New Zealand, are taught by their mothers to walk by swinging their hips, which looked ungainly to Western eyes but was admired by the Maori (Williams & Bendelow, 1992).

For Mauss, as for Bourdieu, the habitus reveals the "deepest dispositions" of people and their associated body techniques have three characteristics. They are technical and involve specific movements oriented to tasks (for instance, swimming); they are traditional because they are tied to particular contexts, relationships and cultures and have to be taught and learned; and they are efficient because they are oriented to a clear goal or purpose (Williams & Bendelow, 1992).

In addition to building on Mauss's work on body techniques, Bourdieu refers to the "practical taxonomies" that structure people's perception and classification of the social world (such as male/female, inside/outside, hot/cold) which, he argues, are rooted in and only make sense from the point of view of the body (Jenkins, 1992, p. 74-5). On this issue, Bourdieu shares a similar position to that of Merleau-Ponty (1962), who emphasized that perception is grounded in the body.

Habitus provides people with naturalized ways of being that are suffused with the trappings of their social location; moreover, these ways of being inform how people think and feel about and classify the worlds they occupy. The concept provides a way of exploring how constant exposure to particular socioeconomic circumstances produces an orientation toward the body and its place in the world that is the product of and that corresponds to one's social position (Allen, 2004). However, while the habitus is manifested through body techniques and bodily hexis, Bourdieu develops the concept of habitus within a much wider framework that examines struggle and conflict between various classes and class fractions.

Habitus & Social Class

The habitus is a set of learned dispositions that provide an orientation to the world and are acquired through childhood training. They become "durable" and therefore difficult to change, even when people become conscious of them (Burkitt, 1999). Dispositions are structured because they reflect the relations and material contexts that they are developed in and that they reproduce. Such dispositions are not inevitable but develop through interaction within contexts (or fields).

As Bourdieu makes clear, a given society is not homogeneous but is rather a system of interrelated fields with distinct orientations such as power, lifestyle, or education. Each field or social context (this could be an institution such as the family, or entail a set of structured relationships such as modern science) has its own internal logic and represents a structured system of social positions that produce and are the product of a specific habitus. These positions stand in relation to each other based on their relative access to capital, or to the goods or resources at stake (Williams, 1995). For instance, science as a field is characterized by honors, titles and other distinctions that scientists compete for (Crossley, 2001). Hence, habitus is central to the struggles and conflicts associated with social class or between the dominant and the dominated in both material and symbolic terms, since the aim of the dominant class in any society is to reproduce its means of symbolic domination in order to reproduce the conditions of its material domination (Bourdieu, 1992).

The Body as Capital

The establishment and maintenance of distinction is critical to the production and reproduction of habitus and involves a constant process of refinement, at the core of which are bodily practices. This process of refinement involving the human body and bodily practices can be seen in relation to dress, speech, sport and other lifestyle issues.

For instance, people with a privileged habitus typically move into occupations that involve self-presentation and representation, and in which body image is important (this represents a field). Therefore, they work their unfinished physical capital—via exercise, diet and aesthetics techniques that include dress, make-up and cosmetic surgery—to create a self-identity that is consistent with the field they occupy and to transform this capital into expanded economic and cultural possibilities. People with middle class habituses have tended to protect their bodies from pain and danger and instead engage in activities that create "physique," an idealized physical appearance that can be exchanged for material or symbolic profit (Williams, 1992). In contrast, for people with a non-privileged habitus, the body is functional and is experienced as more of a "given, " not as something that can be modified or transformed and used as "capital" (Allen, 2004).

Viewpoints

Habitus & Taste

For Bourdieu, the human body is a bearer of social value (Shilling, 2003) and its management is central to acquiring social status and distinction; in this sense the body is a form of physical capital that can enable people to accumulate resources through body labor, play or other embodied practices, and be converted to power, status and symbolic forms. The habitus (or social locations/class dispositions) is therefore embodied, and how people treat or move their bodies reveals a lot about their habitus. Even mundane activities such as walking, talking or how people blow their noses say something about how they construct and evaluate the world (Bourdieu, 1984).

Habitus is embodied in three main senses. First, it implies the unreflexive or automatic movements and gestures that people make, and what they take for granted about their physical and social environments. For instance, people may stand up, sit down, and use hand gestures freely without explicitly having to think about what they are doing. Second, the concrete practices of people, who are situated in time and space and who interact with each other and their physical environments, are what enact and realize habitus. In this sense, we can "see" social class (or class dispositions) through what people say and do and the tastes they develop preferences for.

Perhaps we think of taste as being individual, voluntary—something we choose-and highly personal. Bourdieu shows that this is not necessarily the case. Tastes develop in response to and as a consequence of material conditions; simply, people develop tastes for things that are available to them and therefore taste is "class culture turned into nature" (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 177). A child brought up in an art-loving household may develop a "love of art" and acquire the dispositions and know-how proper to "appreciation" and criticism. Children who go on in later life to appreciate and criticize art, on the basis of their childhood learning, actively reproduce the artistic field (Crossley, 2001, p. 84).

While taste is socially produced through class positions and is linked to processes of refinement that create distinctions between social groups, it reflects habitus and as such comes to be seen as a natural dimension of particular groups. People in dominant classes come to be perceived as "cultured" because they confer value on particular bodily practices (such as forms of expression, words, gestures) that preserve distance between themselves and other classes. For instance, food preferences (or dietary taste) can be linked to the ideas that social classes hold about the effect that food has on the human body in terms of health, strength and beauty. For people used to physical labor, "filling" foods are necessary to build up strength and stamina and thus food consumption is instrumental. For dominant classes oriented to white-collar labor, physical strength is less important; rather ideas about food tend toward its aesthetic value.

Habitus & Cosmology

For Bourdieu, the materially dominant class is also symbolically dominant (Inglis, 2000), and members of the dominant habitus create classification systems for both themselves and other classes, in ways that set up distinctions between superiority and inferiority (or in Bourdieu's terms, between bourgeois and proletariat). Other social scientists have examined how social structures create classification or belief systems, or cosmologies. In particular, the anthropologist Mary Douglas has shown how societies create symbolic systems that are analogous to the social structures and relations of which they are part. The human body is central to the formation of such cosmologies since it acts as a "map" of the social, providing a rich resource that people across different cultures have used to classify and categorize the good and the bad, the safe and the dangerous, the pure and the unclean.

Bourdieu and Douglas differ in the emphasis that the former gives to class and the latter gives to general processes that produce belief systems shared by all members of a society, because the human body is a resource that all human beings understand. The body is a natural symbol that is common to all and that people use as a classification system to express ideas about the social order. In particular, the kinds of beliefs that people of a given society hold about the body reveal something about what is deemed important in that society, or rather, what is considered sacred or profane. All societies make distinctions between objects and ideas that are special and require protection, and objects or ideas that are profane, which are categorically distinct from the sacred, and therefore must be kept at a physical distance (Durkheim, 1976). While for Durkheim, religious ceremonies establish and maintain these distinctions, in a secular context, Douglas suggests that beliefs and rituals about the human body play a part in upholding such distinctions.

The Social Body

In Douglas's schema, the human body is a metaphor for the social body and as such, the metaphors and symbols that people generate from the human body reflect habitus (Inglis, 2000). Following Durkheim, Douglas suggests that the structures of a given society produce a particular belief system, or cosmology, in which the human body is used as a metaphor for distinctions between good and bad or clean and dirty (Douglas, 1970). In particular she draws attention to dirt. Not all societies define dirt in quite the same way and Douglas shows how in Western societies, dirt has been historically associated with medico-scientific theories of hygiene and germs. In contrast, she argues that dirt is "matter-out-of-place"; what people define as "dirty" represents a boundary transgression, a crossing from the body to society or vice versa. She says:

The social body constrains the way in which the physical body is perceived. The physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society. There is a continual exchange of meanings between the two forms of bodily experience so that each reinforces the categories of the other. As a result of this interaction the body itself is a highly restricted form of expression. The forms it adopts in movement and repose express social pressures in manifold ways…all the cultural categories in which it is perceived, must correlate closely with the categories in which society is seen in so far as they also draw upon the same culturally processed ideas of the body (Douglas, 1970, p. xiii).

Hence the bodily practices that people engage in (such as washing their bodies in particular ways or using deodorant) help to maintain boundaries between good/bad, clean/dirty and in so doing, protect social classifications about the people associated with particular bodily practices. For instance, in many societies, blood that breaches the body's skin symbolizes pain and disorder and menstrual blood in particular, is an anxiety-provoking fluid. Concomitantly, many cultures have established pollution beliefs and taboos that associate menstrual blood with shame and uphold rituals of physical segregation for women who are menstruating (Thurren, 1994). In doing so, such beliefs and rituals reveal the subordinate position of women.

While Bourdieu emphasizes that bodily practices are generated through social dispositions and therefore as habitus, represent class location, Douglas argues that bodily practices are "the product of a symbolic ordering of the world in line with the social structures of a given society" (Inglis, 2000, p. 31).

Conclusion

Although the concept of habitus has been important as a way of incorporating analysis of the human body's social significance into the discipline of sociology, and although it is offered as a mechanism that links macro structures with micro issues, it has been criticized for a number of reasons. First, like many sociological concepts, its emphasis on the importance of social structures, whether these are class positions and relations or symbolic-classificatory schemas, makes it difficult to examine the role of reflexivity and choice in relation to social and bodily practices, though many sociologists are engaged in this work (e.g. Crossley, 2001). Second, the difficulties in establishing precisely what habitus is, without resorting to conceptual abstractions, makes it difficult to distinguish from psychological concepts such as instinct, habit, or behavior. Habitus, in the wrong hands, can become simply another form of determinism from which people struggle to escape but cannot. Third, if habitus is structurally determined, it is difficult to see how people can change their bodily practices in pursuit for instance, of better health or of improving their class positions.

Terms & Concepts

Bodily Hexis: Forms of bodily movement (e.g. posture, gait, deportment and style) that are ingrained, difficult to consciously alter, and that literally reveal people's background (or habitus).

Cosmology: Belief system shared by members of a given society.

Habitus: The apparently durable patterns of thought, behavior (or practice), and taste that people acquire and that link social structures (like class position) to action.

Matter-out-of-place: What people define as "dirty" in a given society represents a boundary transgression, a crossing of matter from the body to society or vice versa.

Profane: Categorically distinct from the sacred and kept apart through religious ceremony (in traditional societies) or pollution beliefs and taboos (in secular societies).

Sacred: Ideas, events or objects that are considered special and beyond the ordinary. They are treated differently and kept physically separate from the profane through ritual enactments and ceremonies.

Social Position: An individual's position in society, may be determined by class, gender, ethnicity, or role.

Social Practice: Movements, gestures and actions that occur in time and space and manifest the habitus.

Bibliography

Allen, C. (2004). Bourdieu's habitus, social class and the spatial worlds of visually impaired children. Urban Studies, 41 : 487-506. Retrieved June 16, 2008 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=12844486&site=ehost-live

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge.

Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1992). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Burkitt, I. (1999). Bodies of thought . London: Sage.

Crossley, N. (2001). The phenomenological habitus and its construction. Theory & Society . 30:81. Retrieved June 16, 2008 from EBSCO online database, Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=11308801&site=ehost-live

Crossley, N. (2013). Habit and habitus. Body & Society, 19(2/3), 136–161. Retrieved October 22, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=87713452

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Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Inglis, D. (2000). A sociological history of excretory experience: Defecatory manners and toiletry techniques. Lampeter, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press.

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Shilling, C. (2003). The body and social theory. London: Sage.

Thurren, B. (1994). Opening doors and getting rid of shame. Women's Studies International Forum. 17 . 217-27.

Wainwright, S., Williams, C. & Turner, B. S. (2007). Globalization, habitus, and the balletic body. Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies. 7 . 308-325.

Williams, S. J. (1995). Theorising class, health and lifestyles: Can Bourdieu help us? Sociology of Health & Illness, 17 . 577-604. Retrieved June 16, 2008 from EBSCO online database, SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=10932093&site=ehost-live

Williams, S. J. & Bendelow, G. (1992). The lived body. London: Routledge.

Suggested Reading

Atkinson, W. (2011). From sociological fictions to social fictions: Some Bourdieusian reflections on the concepts of 'institutional habitus' and 'family habitus'. British Journal Of Sociology Of Education, 32, 331-347. Retrieved October 22, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=60610091

Caputo-Levine, D. (2013). The yard face: The contributions of inmate interpersonal violence to the carceral habitus. Ethnography, 14, 165-185. Retrieved October 22, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=87909144

Lawler, S. (2005). Rules of engagement: Habitus, power and resistance. Sociological Review. 53 :110-128.

Pickel, A. (2005). The Habitus Process: A biopsychosocial conception. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 35 :438-461. Retrieved June 19, 2008 from EBSCO online database, SocINDEX http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=19091676&site=ehost-live

Vitellone, N. (2005). Habitus and suffering: Culture, addiction and the syringe. Sociological Review. 53 :129-147.