Aug 1, 2025
This lecture discusses Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, how it mediates the relationship between individual freedom and societal rules, and its implications for social behavior and inequality.
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In the 17th century, the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz asked us to imagine two clocks or watches in perfect agreement as to the time. This could occur in one of three ways: first, through mutual influence; second, by appointing a skillful workman to correct and synchronize them at all times; or third, by constructing these clocks with such art and precision that one can be assured of their subsequent agreement. How is it that we coordinate our activities as humans? Like clocks, our language, humor, culture, and expectations come together in many ways so that we can interact.
For the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, born in 1930 and died in 2002, Leibniz was onto something. Bourdieu’s lifelong concern was how we interact sociologically and what glues society together. He was particularly interested in how we are both free and constrained by the rules of society, and how these two phenomena interact. What determines our tastes, for example, or our sense of humor? And where is the space for freedom in choosing our own tastes, sense of humor, or path? He wanted us to think about how theory and the objective facts about society that affect us all, and practice—how we live, embody those objective facts in our own subjective ways—interact. The result is an influential mix of sociology and philosophy that has had an impact across many disciplines.
His key concepts are habitus, field, and cultural capital. While it is important to understand how all three fit together, the key to understanding them all—and the focus here—will be the habitus. The philosophical context of the second half of the 20th century is important for understanding Bourdieu. Structuralists like Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that there were universal, rigid rules to all societies that provided the foundation for all social life, while postmodernists and existentialists emphasized individual subjective outlooks that can never be pinned down. Bourdieu called this the absurd opposition between individual and society. Both perspectives, he thought, were necessary and in some way work together.
His answer to how is the habitus. Bourdieu writes that all of his thinking started from this point: how can behavior be regulated without being the product of obedience to rules? The habitus explains how our likelihood to act in a certain way depends on how we expect others to respond. The social world becomes objectified into a range of probabilities and expectations that make us more likely to choose certain actions rather than others. The habitus organizes us. It is a predisposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination. As Bourdieu writes, we know that society is ordered in a certain way and that our own position in that society presupposes a range of options, some of which we might be likely to achieve and others not. Qualifications, universities, career paths, different regions, subcultures, musical genres—they all have different ways of doing things, different styles. There are rules of the game that aren’t necessarily written. Life is about getting a feel for the game, and there is a way in which social life is collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor.
Bourdieu asks whether one should talk of a rule. Yes and no. You can do so on condition that you distinguish clearly between rule and regularity. The social game is regulated; it is the locus of certain regularities. In this way, objective social life presents itself as a kind of pattern that becomes encoded in how we act, how we build our buildings, and what we show on television. The habitus is the underlying structure of social life that becomes ingrained into how we physically move or talk in the world. How we behave is conditioned by these objective possibilities. He calls this the subjective expectations of objective probabilities. Objective meaning, for example, the chance of getting a certain job or being able to buy a certain product; subjective meaning the behavior we adopt in setting out to do so. We respond unconsciously most of the time to the mathematical probabilities of the social world. For example, if you are not good at math, the probability of becoming an astronaut is slim, so this conditions your subjective decisions. Alternatively, you might think you are an incredible singer but live in a village in Siberia and so not pursue that particular talent.
This range of objective possibilities is what Bourdieu calls the field. The habitus is the way we enter it with the knowledge we have about ourselves. Another word Bourdieu likes to use is strategies. These are not necessarily conscious. We create strategies depending on what we think the right balance is between, for example, likelihood of success or appropriate challenge. The habitus is the way these social likelihoods become codified in our heads within our own psychologies. Different cultures, different classes, different industries have different habitus. They determine what is reasonable and unreasonable action within their fields, which then guides or restrains personal thought or action. We develop, consciously or unconsciously, different strategies for organizing our future actions. Language, interests, fashion, ways of speaking and walking are routines, and a lot of this is transmitted from parent to child at an early age.
This means that behavior is not just rational; it is conditioned by the possibilities that are presented to us. It is determined, but it does not mean we are only determined. We adjust the habitus depending on the uniqueness of our position in the world. We can move location, change what we wear, learn new skills. Our emotional responses to certain situations might be conditioned by the habitus too. Where we live, for example, our culture and social rules privilege certain emotions or virtues over others—stoicism or openness, for example, or maybe religious reverence. This is something discussed in the video on the social construction of emotions. In this way, the habitus shapes physiological responses, our muscles responding to stress under certain conditions. A certain emotional state might be more socially profitable in the army, say cold, stern, disciplined, than that of a theater actor. The boardroom demands a different habitus than the beach. Boys are told not to cry.
For Bourdieu, the habitus is the result of history being codified into practice. He writes that in each of us, in varying proportions, there is part of yesterday’s man. It is yesterday’s man who inevitably predominates in us since the present amounts to little compared with the long past in the course of which we were formed and from which we result.
How is the concept useful? In one study, Gareth Wilshire and his colleagues argued that Bourdieu’s theory can help us understand some of the causes of health inequalities related to age. Overcoming the disparity in life expectancy and healthy lifestyles between the rich and the poor is usually framed as either structural—access to health care, finances, etc.—or individual—encouraging changes through intervention and advertising. This dualism is something Bourdieu wanted to overcome. Following Bourdieu, they looked at how class differences are codified into physical habitual practices. Living in some areas, it might be important to look strong, for example, while in others to look smart. Accepting or aligning oneself to the habitus brings social and cultural capital that might lead to gains in contacts, respect, status, and so on.
Their research was conducted at different schools, interviewing children with different socioeconomic backgrounds in England. They found that children toward the middle and upper class tended to be pushed toward rugby because football was not posh enough for the school, which some of the children complained about. Kids from working-class backgrounds tended to talk disparagingly about sport in general, preferring activities like free running or scootering. Each activity carries with it certain expectations about the people you will associate with and the future pathways you create when you engage with that activity. Thinking about how different hobbies are the product of different social positions might allow us to think about how social mobility might be achieved in creative ways that see the links between the two.
Finally, what is the difference between habitus and habit? Bourdieu writes that one of the reasons for the use of the term habitus is the wish to set aside the common conception of habit as a mechanical assembly or performed program. The habitus is more flexible and precedes the physicality of the habit. Gambling might be a habit and urge, but the habitus is the social and economic conditions that structure the game, the likelihood of a person gambling. Habitus does not just refer to the instinct of habit. Rather than just being physical, the way we think, rationalize, and strategize about a situation—where we should build the casino, for example—is dependent on the habitus. We can see how similar habit affects both the gambler and the bookmaker.
Some have argued that the concept can be and is overused, and because of its wide applicability, it becomes ambiguous and loses its usefulness. But it is most useful when we use the concept to think about what might be arbitrary in the ways that we act, when we might be acting that way for the sake of other people, other groups, other classes, in a way that is limiting for ourselves and for others.
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