Talk:Habitus (sociology)

What ?
DO you think Wikipedia a good place for academic exchange? How is it different from reading academic journals?

Does anyone else feel like this article is very difficult to read. I think it probably makes sense to those who already understand it, but IMO it could use some re-writing to make it more clear.

I didn't find this usefull at all. After reading it, I know about the history of the idea and nothing about the idea itself.

''"The concept of habitus is foundational to Bourdieu’s theory of social research. Bourdieu combined a structuralist framework with close attention to subjectivity in social context. A key relationship in bridging objectivism and subjectivism in social research, for Bourdieu, is that between habitus and field via practices." ''

What on earth are you talking about? This is the most intelligible sentence in the article and it is meaningless. What is a habitus? That's the question the title of article is supposed to answer. Give us some examples of habituses (habiti?). How many kinds are there? Where do they occur? How does one kind change into another kind? Bourdieu is a very famous professor. Don't shroud his work in jargon. - Pepper 150.203.227.130 09:31, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

For a paper on the use of the term 'habitus' in Aristotle & Aquinas see http://www.ul.ie/~philos/vol7/moral.html The simplest definition of the term from Bourdieu's work is 'system of dispositions'. (Interestingly, the term 'dispositions' is also discussed in the paper mentioned above.) Bourdieu intended to use dispositions to indicate mental objects which are neither wholly voluntary nor wholly involuntary, for which both subject and world are sine qua non. The term allows the user to talk of the mind in a language that is at ease with the idea that individual agency may exist while constrained by habit. He felt the need to do this because the French sociological tradition was bedevilled by the twin pitfalls expressed by Sartre and Althusser. For Sartre, the mind was a realm of absolute freedom with no constraints. For Althusser, the mental life of individuals was no more than the result of social structures - all constraint, no freedom. (I simplify, of course - see Bourdieu, the Logic of Practice, Stanford University Press, 1980 for detail) In many ways it is tempting to see this dispute as a 20th century version of the traditional free will/determinism argument. Bourdieu uses a particular lexicon (habitus, disposition, field, etc) in an attempt to resolve the dispute. I hope this is helpful.Ianb3019 19:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I'll just also add that if you click on my username, you will find an article I wrote to clarify a definition of habitus which had caused some bewilderment amongst users of the Bourdieu discussion page. It is perhaps too long to copy straight onto the main article, but I hope it helps explain habitus to those unfamiliar with sociological language.Ianb3019 (talk) 11:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

origin of term
This particular nuance of the usage for the term may be recent, but the term is common in Thomas Aquinas and may, for all I know about the history of philosophy, be all over the place much earlier. I am fairly sure that Aquinas's usage is a Latin translation (all the word literally means is "habit") from an Aristotelian term from the ethical works. --MichaelTinkler


 * Do you have any references for this? If so we can put it in the article. JenLouise 00:03, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

--- Hi. Are you sure mauss coined the concept in the gift. I believe it may have been first in the techniques of the body, though I'm not entirly sure. I can't find it in the gift. Also, I must say that the article seems somewhat critical towards Bourdieu Pete--Pertn 16:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

--- The article has a sentence saying Loic Waquant wrote that the term was retrieved by Bourdie, but then says in the paragraph immediately below it that the concept is sometimes incorrectly said to originate with Bourdieu.

Loic Wacquant wrote that habitus is an old philosophical notion, originating in the thought of Aristotle and of the medieval Scholastics, that was retrieved and reworked after the 1960s by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to forge a dispositional theory of action suited to reintroducing the inventive capacity of agents within structuralist anthropology. ''Habitus in Bourdieu's social theory The concept is sometimes (incorrectly) said to originate in the "genetic" structuralist theory of Pierre Bourdieu, who adopted the concept and considerably expanded its meaning. Bourdieu extended the scope of the term to include a person's beliefs and dispositions.''

I think this could be worded better to seem less contradictory. JenLouise 23:47, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Reworking article
Based on some of the comments above, and my own knowledge of the concept (which is yes primarily from Bourdieu) I am going to try and work on this article a bit. I'd welcome any suggestions or help. JenLouise 23:56, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I have taken out a number of paragraphs that don't deal directly with or explain the concept of habitus to make the article more readable and concise. These paragraphs can be viewed by visiting the previous version of the article. JenLouise 00:49, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Added the Technical flag. I know that Bourdieu did not do much to make habitus an accessible concept, but we should. The article begins with the phrase "Habitus is a complex concept..." and doesn't do much to alleviate that sense. I'd help if I understood it, but came to the page to try to find a more accessible summary and didn't find much help.74.85.71.248 (talk) 04:49, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Quick note on term Habitus: Agree with statement that the term has much wider use in social philosophy than is described here. There seems to be an imnportant gap here. In French phenomenology (that has informed Bourdieu's work to a great extent) the term was already fully in use: see for instance Deleuze: difference and repetition and Bergson: Matter and memory)- J.Springford — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.52.177.48 (talk) 12:58, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Simple English
Could some kind soul please do a Simple English version of this page? This article is really esoteric crap at the moment and I say that as a guy with a PhD in a waffly Arts subject. It needs to be explained to us, simply. 86.44.43.208 (talk) 04:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this will help or even if it's now way too late, but after looking up a passage attempting to define 'habitus' that caused some disgreement on the Bourdieu talk page, I analysed the passage trying to put it in plain words. It's a bit too long to dump here and it doesn't read right for the habitus page itself. You can get to it by clicking on my username here. Ianb3019 (talk) 17:46, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Deleting Habitus and economic success
Just for the record, I am deleting the section titled "Habitus and economic success." It's terribly written, contains incomplete sentences and incomplete thoughts, and the original version defined "inhomogeneous" as "having lots of similarities." I think it was a subtle bit of vandalism, but even if not, it should be deleted. If you want to restore it, check the source and rewrite it in complete sentences! 24.238.113.245 (talk) 16:38, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

body habitus
'Body habitus can be understood ...' implies that there is a choice, as if it were possible, for example, to understand 'body habitus' as a double-decker bus. If modal verb is required here, then 'must'. In fact, the sentence is much better off without one. 'Body habitus is understood, scil. by all who deal with and have knowledge of the subject, ... ' Pamour (talk) 08:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Critics
As for the rest of Bourdieu's vocabulary, habitus is not a "given" but a "constructed" concept, dependent on a certain cultural context and personal issues of the author, i.e. the "rebellion" and "revisionist" and "neo-marxist" era of the 1960s, his split with Aron, etc. To put it simply, habitus is not a scientific concept proven right, but a hypothesis based on Bourdieu's deterministic vision of society, something to take with extreme care. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.66.207.6 (talk) 06:36, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Simplified first paragraph
Often really intellegent people cannot write simplified explanations for complex ideas. Very excellent introduction, but unduly complex. I simplified the first paragraph to appeal to a larger lay audience.


 * Habitus is ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions. It is the way that individuals perceive the social world around them and react to it. These dispositions are usually shared by people with similar backgrounds (such as social class, religion, nationality, ethnicity, education, profession etc.). The habitus is acquired through imitation (mimesis) and is the reality that individuals are socialized which includes their individual experience and opportunities. Thus, the habitus represents the way group culture and personal history shape the body and the mind, and as a result, shape present social actions of an individual.



Moscowdreams (talk) 08:46, 28 September 2018 (UTC)