Habitus is one of the main concepts used by Pierre Bourdieu. He defines habitus as a “subjective but not individual system of internalized structures, schemes of perception, conception, and action common to all members of the same group or class and constituting the precondition for all objectification and apperception” (Bourdieu 1972:86).
Personally, I understand habitus as an internalized perception of reality shared by a group of people who have been taught to perceive the world in the same way. To me it is almost the same as "culture", but culture is mostly about what people create and how they communicate symbolically. It can be defined simply as "the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning" (Bates and Plog, 1990). Habitus is more about how people perceive and structure the world in their minds, and how they act according to these internalized structures.
Habitus is produced by the past; as the product of history, it produces individual and collective practices in accordance with the past practices. Habitus plays a big role in social reproduction; it is both the product and the producer of social structure. Products of collective history, for example language or economy, reproduce themselves through habitus and exist in (or are enacted by) individuals who have been influenced by similar historical/material conditions of existence.
In the habitus, material conditions of existence determine various practices (for example, ritual ones), and schemes of perceptions of the individuals are in turn determined by those material conditions. It seems that according to Bourdieu, habitus is determined by the very things it determines and reproduces.
Habitus reproduces social order and causes members of the group to conform to it because not only group’s view of the world is structured by it, but also the group itself is structured by “the temporal forms or the spatial structures” which it reproduces, thus making them a reality (Bourdieu 1972:163). Members of the group and various institutions constantly reinforce order of things through practice, and so this order becomes self-evident, seems natural, and is unquestioned. Falling out of the established, realized rhythm of things, not conforming to the social order would mean defying social solidarity.
Bourdieu distinguishes between practical and logical relations; for example, if an ethnographer sees kinship in terms of a closed system of logical relationships, practical functions of its terms and relations might be misunderstood or even remain unseen. It is because representational kinship (or official kinship) is a self-representation of a group acted out according to the group’s scheme of perception. The author compares logical relationships as seen by an anthropologist to a map, and practical ones, which practically exist in a society – to “the network of beaten tracks, of path made ever more practicable by constant use” (Bourdieu 1972:38). This difference between theory and practice presents certain difficulties for the observers who search for the truth in native accounts.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1972) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press.
Personally, I understand habitus as an internalized perception of reality shared by a group of people who have been taught to perceive the world in the same way. To me it is almost the same as "culture", but culture is mostly about what people create and how they communicate symbolically. It can be defined simply as "the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and artifacts that the members of society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning" (Bates and Plog, 1990). Habitus is more about how people perceive and structure the world in their minds, and how they act according to these internalized structures.
Habitus is produced by the past; as the product of history, it produces individual and collective practices in accordance with the past practices. Habitus plays a big role in social reproduction; it is both the product and the producer of social structure. Products of collective history, for example language or economy, reproduce themselves through habitus and exist in (or are enacted by) individuals who have been influenced by similar historical/material conditions of existence.
In the habitus, material conditions of existence determine various practices (for example, ritual ones), and schemes of perceptions of the individuals are in turn determined by those material conditions. It seems that according to Bourdieu, habitus is determined by the very things it determines and reproduces.
Habitus reproduces social order and causes members of the group to conform to it because not only group’s view of the world is structured by it, but also the group itself is structured by “the temporal forms or the spatial structures” which it reproduces, thus making them a reality (Bourdieu 1972:163). Members of the group and various institutions constantly reinforce order of things through practice, and so this order becomes self-evident, seems natural, and is unquestioned. Falling out of the established, realized rhythm of things, not conforming to the social order would mean defying social solidarity.
Bourdieu distinguishes between practical and logical relations; for example, if an ethnographer sees kinship in terms of a closed system of logical relationships, practical functions of its terms and relations might be misunderstood or even remain unseen. It is because representational kinship (or official kinship) is a self-representation of a group acted out according to the group’s scheme of perception. The author compares logical relationships as seen by an anthropologist to a map, and practical ones, which practically exist in a society – to “the network of beaten tracks, of path made ever more practicable by constant use” (Bourdieu 1972:38). This difference between theory and practice presents certain difficulties for the observers who search for the truth in native accounts.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1972) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press.
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