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Habitus and
liberation BY
HEIDI ISAKSEN THe notion of habitus
is often interpreted in an unnecessarily complicated
way. This was emphasized by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu,
during his
lecture “Physical Space, Social Space and Habitus” on the
occasion of the Vilhelm Aubert Memorial Lecture (Oslo
1995). In this article I will try to explain the notion of habitus
in a simple and easy-to-follow way. Hopefully this article
can contribute to make this liberating notion more easily
understandable. To
understand the notion of habitus,
one
must have some knowledge about Bourdieu’s analysis of social
space. According to Bourdieu, the
sociological tradition gives a one-dimensional analysis of social
space. Bourdieu
develops his representation of social space in three dimensions by
introducing
the notion of taste, and showing how
taste is socially determined. He divides the social space horizontally
in two
fractions, the dominating and the dominated. The dominating fraction
contains
individuals with significant amount of capital. The amount of capital
is the
total of economical, cultural and social capital a social agent
possesses. The
individuals that operate in the social space are called social
agents. In the dominating fraction
one will thus find the
agents with high income, prestigious occupations and good connections.
They
will constantly have the power to define the “right” taste,
and therefore the
agents who are located in the dominating fraction also and almost with
necessity, possess the criteria that are defined as important and
right. The
social space is also divided vertically. This division is determined by
whether
the amount of capital is dominated by economical or cultural capital. A
university professor will therefore be found in the fraction dominated
by
cultural capital, whereas a Norwegian businessman like Kjell Inge
Røkke will,
most likely, have stronger economical than cultural capital. BOurdieu then introduces the
notion of social field. Social space is composed
of various social fields. Social agents can, as a rule, operate in more
than
one field at the time. Each field is based upon a doxa.
The doxa is what unites the social agents of a field, it’s
something they all consider so valuable that they don’t need to
question it. In
the field of literature, to present an example, all the agents agree
that
literature is valuable, and this is not questioned by any of the
agents. Inside
the field of literature however, like in any social field, there will
be a
constant battle on determining the criteria of the “good”
and “right” taste.
The agents who defines this taste, and who fulfils the criteria defined
as
“right”, will attain the highest social positions in a
field. And the agents
with the highest social positions in the dominating fraction will be
the ones
who define the “good” taste. In one of his major works La Distinction, Bourdieu
and his research team from Collège de
France used quantitative statistics to show how agents from a social
field develop
similar taste, which again differs from the taste of agents from
another field.
They also show how agents from the dominated fraction aspires to attain
the
taste that the agents of the dominating fraction has defined as right,
and how
difficult this is, because of the constantly ongoing changing and
modification
of these definitions. The “right” taste is automatically
passé when it reaches
beyond the borders of the dominating fraction, and the agents of this
fraction
will define other means to maintain the distinction between them and
the agents
of the dominating fraction. Every agent of a social field is provided
with a habitus. The notion of habitus
can be compared to Noam
Chomsky’s idea of Generative grammar. Generative grammar is
related to the inborn,
and claims or suggests that every person is born with genetic grammar
schemas
that form the basis of learning any language. Habitus
is also schemas, which work in the same generative way. Habitus
is socially attained and it’s
part of an agent’s amount of capital. Habitus
is constituted in the environment that surrounds a person. It’s
not in the
blood, in the genes or in the physique of the body. Habitus
is something you acquire; it belongs to the social sphere.
The notion of habitus includes the
idea of it’s having a generative power. This generative power
function’s
independently, beyond the control of the social agents. Habitus
coordinates and generalises practice. Habitus
organises both the practice of an agent and how this agent
will apprehend other agent’s practice. According to Bourdieu the
notion of habitus covers at the same time both an
agent’s fundamental ensemble of schemas of perception and the
agent’s
systematically physical habits and practice. Habitus
shows in the manners, in the way of talking and moving and
in the attitude of an agent. It’s the living conditions, as well
as the
position in the social structure that produces habitus,
and therefore the habitus
of one social agent will resemble the habitus
of social agents from the same field and differ from the habitus
of agents from other fields. HAbitus is thus socially attained and
this acquirement can happen in plural ways. Either through total
acquisition,
which is the early acquisition, the one that individuals are submitted
to from
birth (and even maybe before, already in the mothers stomach), or habitus can be acquired later on,
delayed acquisition. Young social agents will absorb the habitus
of their field all naturally, without reflection, because
that is what they observe and what they learn is correct. If an agent
changes
field, i.e. changes position in the social space, the habitus
of the new field should be acquired. This will be a delayed
acquisition, and to succeed the agent must know about the codes and
rules that
lay in the habitus of the new field. To
illustrate this I will use table manners as an example. Since the
social
positions more often than not are reproduced, most of the agents in the
dominating fraction will possess total acquisition. In some social
fields, with
traditionally high prestige, for instance like in the field of
nobility,
centuries has been used to develop distinction mechanisms. The nobility
was
defined to be exempted from all kinds of physical work that did not
concern
leading war. According to the rules that were formulated by the
Catholic Church
in the 16-century to exclude Protestants from nobility, the aristocrats
could
loose their noble title if they indulged in physical pursuits. The
aristocracy
has consequently had a lot of spare time, a lot of which was used to
develop
socio-cultural traditions that operate as distinction mechanisms. The
agents of
this field have developed and perfected the codes and rules of table
manners
since the field emerged in the Middle Age, and have thus defined what
constitutes
“right” and “good” table manners. These table
manners will with that be
recessed into the noble habitus,
whereas a newcomer has to acquire these rites so as to not stand out
from the
rest. The embodied example of how deeply cemented the habitus
of a social agent can be, for me, is a woman I met while
working at a nursing home in Oslo. The woman suffered from severe
aphasia. She
had lost her language, was unable to deal with any of her own primary
needs and
the staff at the home helped her with everything, except eating. This
woman had
formerly occupied a high social position, and at meals she ate like she
was
sitting at the queens table. Certain table manners were so established
in her habitus that this
physical habit
remained intact even if she was now living completely in her own
world. FRom early childhood all
agents in social
space acquire habitus. Habitus can be
learned and “un-learned”,
but this is more complicated and will always require reflection around
what
constitutes your actual habitus and
knowledge about the codes and rules that determine the habitus
you wish to acquire. Literature
provides us with a lot of excellent examples of habitus.
I wish to conclude this paper with some examples from
French literature. First from Balzac’s Father
Goriot. Mme
de Beauséant, who is mentioned in the quotation, occupies one of
the highest
positions in the nobility described in Father
Goriot, because her family is a bastard branch of the French royal
family,
Madame de Nucingen is what we call a parvenue,
a newcomer in the nobility. Her father, Goriot, a poor commoner, made a
fortune
on corn speculation during the big French Revolution. With that he
could
provide his daughters with solid dowries and thus “buy”
them noble titles.
Consequently, Madame de Nucingen does not possess the aristocratic habitus. Mme de
Beauséant, who occupies
one of the highest positions use this social defect to distinguish
herself from
Madame de Nucingen. – Elle
est charmante, dit Eugène après avoir regardé
madame de Nucingen. – Elle a
les cils blancs. – Oui,
mais quelle jolie taille mince! – Elle a
de grosses mains. – Les
beaux yeux! – Elle a
le visage long. – Mais la
forme longue de la distinction. – Cela
est heureux pour elle qu’il y en ait là. Voyez
comment elle prend et quitte son lorgnon! Le
Goriot perce dans tous ces mouvements, dit la comtesse au grand
étonnement
d’Eugène. En effet,
madame de Beauséant lorgnait la salle et
semblait ne pas faire attention à madame de Nucingen, dont elle
ne perdait
cependant pas un geste. – She’s
charming, said Eugene after having looked at Mme de Nucingen. –
She has white eyebrows. –
Yes, but she is wonderfully slim! –
She has big hands. –But
she has beautiful eyes! –Her
face is too long. –
But the long shape is a mark of distinction. –
It’s good for her that she has that. Look how she takes and drops
her
lorgnette! The Goriot betrays in all her
movements said the viscountess to Eugene’s great surprise. As
a matter of fact madame de Beauséant had a close inspection of
the hall and it
looked like she was paying no attention at all to madame de Nucingen,
yet she
didn’t miss a single gesture. To
Mme de Beauséant it’s enough to observe how Mme de
Nucingen takes and drops her
lorgnette, because from these movements she can determine her social
background;
“The Goriot”, i.e. her father’s social position, is
betrayed in all her
movements. The end of the quotation reveals how a person of noble birth
uses
the lorgnette, imperceptible. Mme de Nucingen
tries to attain the noble habitus but
it’s not so easy, as Mme de Beauséant, pronounces; “Il y a de pauvres bourgeoises qui, en prenant nos chapeaux,
espèrent
avoir nos manières.«»
Just like some commoners think they can
acquire our manners by putting on our hats.” These quotations
show how
difficult it can be to acquire a new habitus. I
Will terminate with an
example of habitus from newer French literature.
In her book «La femme gelée”
“The frozen woman” Annie Ernaux describes part of a
woman’s life. This woman is
born and raised in a lower social class, i.e. in the dominated
fraction. Her in
many ways unconventional mother inculcates into her the importance of
education
for those who wish to change their social position, but at her school
however,
the teachers are cherishing a woman image that differs completely from
herself
and her immediate surroundings. “Soutien
contre cette évidence que certaines filles de la classe plaisent
aux
demoiselles plus que d’autres (…) gracieuses innés, je
croyais.” “A support against the fact that some girls
appealed more to the teachers than others (…) innately graceful, I
thought.”
The girl is big and quite clumsy. In the following quotation she
compares
herself with the dollish bourgeois girls in her school, girls that
possesses
the habitus she aspires
to. Vite, venez
à moi mon apparence imaginaire, celle que je
me fabrique quand je m’ennuie en classe, en prenant les longs cheveux
blonds de
Roseline, «ce serait un crime de les couper», a dit la maîtresse,
les
joues rebondies de Françoise, la finesse d’allure de Jeanne
(…) En sourdine
déjà l’étrange feuilleton que je me raconte pour
effacer la fille réelle et la
remplacer par une autre, pleine de grâce et de fragilité. Come
quickly to me, my imaginary appearance, the one I invent when I’m
bored in
class, taking the long blond hair of Roseline, “It would be a
crime to cut it”,
said the teacher, the round, pink cheeks of Françoise, the
alluring style of
Jeanne (…) Making painful already the strange story that I tell
myself to
erase the real girl and replace her with another, full of grace and
fragility. This
quotation shows how an agent aim at the taste that is determined as
“right”,
the main character strives after the image of the bourgeoise woman that
is
imparted in her school, and aspires to change her habitus
according to this image, becoming graceful and fragile like
the girls the teachers prefers. The notion of habitus procures insight in how physical habits, practice, and perception schemas of own and others practice are formed. This notion has a liberating function because it helps us to see that taste and practice is not recessed and natural, but socially determined and that what is regarded as “good” or “bad” taste depends on the prevailing definitions inside a social field.
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