Talk:Habitus (sociology)
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[edit] 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)
[edit] 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)
[edit] 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)
