Theory of Practice - Structure and Habitus

Pierre Bourdieu, one of the foremost social philosophers of the 20^th century, in his book Outline of a Theory of Practice examined the social conditions that make objective knowledge. Bourdieu delineates a three-tiered framework of theoretical knowledge. The first element of this framework is ‘primary experience’ or what Bourdieu also calls the ‘phenomenological’ level. This level is known to all researchers in the field because it is the source of their basic descriptive data about the familiar either of their own society or another. The second level, almost as familiar, is the ‘model’ or ‘objectivist’ knowledge. Here, knowledge ‘constructs the objective relations (eg. economic or linguistic) which structure practice and representations of practice.’ In the third level, Bourdieu outlines the theory of practice. Bourdieu proposes that a theory of objectivist knowledge will be a more rigorous and illuminating theory of practice. He claims that a truly rigorous theory of practice is accomplished by taking up the position of the realism of practice. Practice can be understood solely in terms of individual decision-making. Structure and habitus are part of Bourdieu’s theory of practice as the articulation of disposition in social space.

The key concept of Bourdieu’s formulation of a theory of practice is ‘habitus’. He defines habitus as a deep structure generative of all thought and behavior, one that orients practice without producing it. In the Outline of the Theory of Practice, he defines habitus as composed of systems of durable, transposable dispositions, “an acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the particular conditions in which it is constituted; the habitus engenders all the thoughts, all the perceptions, and all the actions consistent with those conditions, and no others.” Bourdieu emphasizes the unconscious nature of such schemes, which are subjective but not individual. Rather, the cultural schemes installed by the habitus are laid down in the earliest stages of life as basic dispositions, or orientations, and operate equally as bodily dispositions and mental operations that function, according to his metaphor, as “maps” of the individual’s social worlds, generating thoughts, perceptions, expressions, and actions limited by the historically and socially existing conditions under which they are produced

‘Habitus’ is derived from 16^th century Latin, where it means ‘a way of being’. Bourdieu considered habitus as a structured notion related to the way individuals and classes inhabit the world. Habitus is a product of history, and produces the ‘collective practices and hence, in accordance with schemes engendered by that history’. Habitus is almost like a kind of ‘practice – generating grammar’ – a grammar that includes psychological disposition. Through habitus, one internalizes the legitimacy of one’s inclusion or exclusion from privileges. Acquiring habitus is perhaps like acquiring a first language; no one can choose in the matter. With a given habitus, there is a wide range of possibilities, just as grammar enables a wide range of possibilities in a natural language. Habitus, then, is a kind of grammar of actions that serves to differentiate one class (eg. dominant) from another (eg. the dominated) in the social field. The boundaries between one habitus and another are always contested because of its fluid nature. A habitus allows for a certain degree of spontaneity, initiative and improvisation. Hence, habitus makes social action and interactions possible without making them predictable.

Habitus is connected, then to Bourdieu’s view (or empirical discovery) that modern capitalist societies are societies of inequality. Class conflict means that certain people receive a disproportionate share of cultural, economic, and symbolic capital. Privileges thus exist, and privileges generate privileges. Here, privilege should be grasped as being manifest not only at the level of economic capital (level of wealth) but also at the level of the symbolic (eg. education, language, acquisition, aesthetic appreciation).

If habitus exists beyond the consciousness of the individual, access to it can be gained only by collecting a wide range of statistical and other data relating to the social life of the individual. A specific habitus becomes evident when a range of variables (occupation, education, income, taste in food, artistic performance etc.) are shown, statistically to correlate with each other. Studies of parents’ occupation and educational attainment demonstrate that privilege is passed on (children of doctors and highly professionals also tend to get into the medical field). Studies of taste tend to suggest that privilege and the dominant paradigms of taste are connected. Studies of academic institutions suggest that, in the humanities and social sciences, a particular faculty with language relates again to economic and social privilege. In effect, Bourdieu’s claim is that once the objective data have been gathered across the board, it is possible to construct a map of social privilege. A habitus is connected to a lifestyle to the extent that it enables this lifestyle to be reproduced (which means: enabling the same inequalities to be reproduced). Habitus, then, consists of the transposable dispositions (transferable to a range of contexts), perceptions and appreciation an individual acquires through being a member of a given class, as this is articulated in a given set of material circumstances.

Structures constitute a particular type of environment (eg. the material conditions of existence characteristic of a class condition produce habitus, system durable, transposable dispositions. Structured structures are predisposed to function as structuring structures. It is necessary to abandon all theories which explicitly or implicitly treat conditions and are entirely reducible to the mechanical functionary of pre-established assemblies, ‘model’ or ‘roles’. Bourdieu argues that ‘power’ is imbricated throughout society’s institutions and practices and reproduced by these very institutions and practices.

The importance of Bourdieu’s project lies in his attempt to construct a theoretical model of social practice. To him, all social life is essentially practical. Practice is located in space and more significantly in time. Practice, according to Bourdieu is not consciously or not wholly consciously organised and orchestrated. He metaphorically considered social life as a game. All games have rules, the same is true of social life. Games are learned through explicit teaching as well as experientially in practice, the same is social competence. Social life cannot be understood as simply the aggregate of individual behaviour.