Editing Pierre Bourdieu (section)

== Theory of habitus ==
{{Main|Habitus (sociology)|l1 = Habitus}}
Bourdieu developed a theory of action, around the concept of ''[[Habitus (sociology)|habitus]]'', which exerted a considerable influence in the social sciences. This theory seeks to show that social agents develop strategies which are adapted to the structures of the social worlds that they inhabit. These strategies are unconscious and act on the level of a bodily logic.

In Bourdieu's perspective, each relatively autonomous field of modern life (such as economy, politics, arts, journalism, bureaucracy, science or education), ultimately engenders a specific complex of social relations where the agents will engage their everyday practice. Through this practice, they develop a certain [[disposition]] for social action that is conditioned by their position on the field.<ref group="lower-roman">Dominant/dominated and orthodox/heterodox are only two possible ways of positioning the agents on the field; these basic binary distinctions are always further analysed considering the specificities of each field</ref> This ''disposition'', combined with every other disposition the individual develops through their engagement with other fields operating within the social world, will eventually come to constitute a system of dispositions, i.e. ''habitus'': lasting, acquired schemes of perception, thought and action.

''Habitus'' is somewhat reminiscent of some preexisting sociological concepts, such as [[socialization]], though it also differs from the more classic concepts in several key ways. Most notably, a central aspect of the habitus is its ''embodiment'': habitus does not only, or even primarily, function at the level of explicit, discursive consciousness. The internal structures become embodied and work in a deeper, practical and often pre-reflexive way. An illustrative example might be the 'muscle memory' cultivated in many areas of physical education. Consider the way we catch a ball—the complex geometric trajectories are not calculated; it is not an intellectual process. Although it is a skill that requires learning, it is more a physical than a mental process and has to be performed physically to be learned. In this sense, the concept has something in common with [[Anthony Giddens]]' concept of ''practical [[consciousness]]''.

The concept of ''habitus'' was inspired by [[Marcel Mauss]]'s notion of body technique and ''[[hexis]]'', as well as [[Erwin Panofsky]]'s concept of ''intuitus''. The word ''habitus'' itself can be found in the works of Mauss, as well as of [[Norbert Elias]], [[Max Weber]], [[Edmund Husserl]], and [[Alfred Schütz|Alfred Schutz]] as re-workings of the concept as it emerged in [[Aristotle]]'s notion of ''[[hexis]]'', which would become ''habitus'' through [[Thomas Aquinas]]'s Latin translation.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wacquant |first1=Loı̈c |title=A concise genealogy and anatomy of habitus |journal=Sociological Review |date=1 February 2016 |volume=64 |issue=1 |page=65 |doi=10.1111/1467-954X.12356 |s2cid=55087740 |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7808k2sg |access-date=13 July 2020}}</ref>

=== Disposition ===
"Disposition"—a key concept in Bourdieu's work—can be defined as a ''sense of the game''; a partly rational but partly intuitive understanding of fields and of social order in general, a practical sense, a practical reason, giving rise to opinions, tastes, tone of voice, typical body movements and mannerisms and so on. The dispositions constitutive of habitus are therefore conditioned responses to the social world, becoming so ingrained that they come to occur spontaneously, rather like 'knee-jerk' opinions. It follows that the habitus developed by an individual will typify his position in the social space. By doing so, social agents will often ''acknowledge'', ''legitimate'', and ''reproduce'' the social forms of domination (including prejudices) and the common opinions of each field as self-evident, clouding from conscience and practice even the acknowledgment of other possible means of production (including [[symbolic production]]) and power relations.

Though not deterministic, the inculcation of the subjective structures of the ''habitus'' can be observed through statistical data, for example, while its selective affinity with the objective structures of the social world explains the continuity of the social order through time. As the individual ''habitus'' is always a mix of multiple engagements in the social world through the person's life, while the social fields are put into practice through the agency of the individuals, no social field or order can be completely stable. In other words, if the relation between individual predisposition and social structure is far stronger than common sense tends to believe, it is not a perfect match.

Some examples of his empirical results include showing that, despite the apparent freedom of choice in the arts, people's artistic preferences (e.g. classical music, rock, traditional music) strongly tie in with their [[social position]]; and showing that subtleties of language such as [[Accent (sociolinguistics)|accent]], [[grammar]], [[spelling]] and style—all part of cultural capital—are a major factor in [[social mobility]] (e.g. getting a higher-paid, higher-[[social status|status]] job).

Sociologists very often look at either '''social laws''' ([[Social structure|structure]]) or the '''individual minds''' ([[Structure and agency|agency]]) in which these laws are inscribed. Sociological arguments have raged between those who argue that the former should be sociology's principal interest ([[Structuralism|structuralists]]) and those who argue the same for the latter ([[Phenomenology (sociology)|phenomenologists]]). When Bourdieu instead asks that '''dispositions''' be considered, he is making a very subtle intervention in sociology, asserting a middle ground where social laws and individual minds meet and is arguing that the proper object of sociological analysis should be this middle ground: dispositions.