Habitus (sociology)

Habitus is the set of socially learnt dispositions, skills and ways of acting, that are often taken for granted, and which are acquired through the activities and experiences of.

Habitus is a complex concept, but in its simplest usage could be understood as a structure of the mind characterized by a set of acquired schemata, sensibilities, dispositions and taste. The particular contents of the habitus are the result of the objectification of social structure at the level of individual subjectivity. Hence, the habitus is, by definition, isomorphic with the structural conditions in which it emerged.

The concept of habitus has been used as early as Aristotle but in contemporary usage was introduced by Marcel Mauss and later re-elaborated by Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu elaborates on the notion of Habitus by explaining its dependency on history and human memory. For instance, a certain behaviour or belief becomes part of a society's structure when the original purpose of that behaviour or belief can no longer be recalled and becomes socialized into individuals of that culture.

Origin of concept

Loïc Wacquant wrote that habitus is an old philosophical notion, originating in the thought of Aristotle, whose notion of hexis ("state") was translated into habitus by the Medieval Scholastics. Bourdieu first adapted the term in his 1967 postface to Erwin Panofsky's Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. The term was earlier used in sociology by Norbert Elias in The Civilizing Process (1939) and in Marcel Mauss's account of "body techniques" (techniques du corps). The concept is also present in the work of Max Weber, Gilles Deleuze, and Edmund Husserl.

Mauss defined habitus as those aspects of culture that are anchored in the body or daily practices of individuals, groups, societies, and nations. It includes the totality of learned habits, bodily skills, styles, tastes, and other non-discursive knowledges that might be said to "go without saying" for a specific group^{[citation needed]} -- in that way it can be said to operate beneath the level of rational ideology.

Body habitus

Body habitus is the medical term for physique, and is defined as either endomorphic (overweight), ectomorphic (underweight) or mesomorphic (normal weight). In this sense, habitus can be understood as the physical and constitutional characteristics of an individual, especially as related to the tendency to develop a certain disease.

Scholars researching "habitus" in the field

• Philippe Bourgois - An anthropologist who incorporates the concept of "habitus" into much of his work with injection drug users in the San Francisco Bay Area.
• Saba Mahmood - USA
• Loic Wacquant - USA studies the construction of the "pugilistic habitus" in a boxing gym of the black ghetto of Chicago in Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer (2004) and in "Habitus as Topic and Tool" (2009).

Further reading

• Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press.
• Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc J.D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. The University of Chicago Press.
• Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process.
• Hilgers, Mathieu. 2009. Habitus, Freedom and Reflexivity 'Theory and Psychology' Vol. 19 (6), pp. 728-755
• MacLeod, Jay. 1995. Ain't No Makin' It. Colorado: Westview Press, Inc.
• Maton, Karl. 2008 'Habitus', in Grenfell, M. (ed) Pierre Bourdieu: Key concepts. London: Acumen Press.
• Mauss, Marcel. 1934. "Les Techniques du corps", Journal de Psychologie 32 (3-4). Reprinted in Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie, 1936, Paris: PUF.
• Rimmer. Mark. 2010. Listening to the monkey: Class, youth and the formation of a musical habitus 'Ethnography' Vol. 11 (2), pp. 255–283
• Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. Body and Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Wacquant, Loïc. 2004. “Habitus.” pp. 315–319 in International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology. Edited by Jens Beckert and Milan Zafirovski. London: Routledge.