Habitus

•HabitusPhotos from anidarte.blogspot.com
•Marcel Mauss (1872 - 1950)
•Mauss was a French Sociologist and Anthropologist
•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. Mauss, Marcel. 1934. Les Techniques du corps, Journal de Psychologie 32(3-4)
•Bourdieu’s Notion of Habitus
•Bourdieu re-elaborated the concept of habitus from Marcel Mauss and extended the scope of the term to include a person's beliefs and dispositions.
•He looks at habitus as lasting and non-static “dispositions”
•Bourdieu’s Notion of Habitus (Cont’d)
•“dispositions”- lasting, acquired schemes of perception, thought and action.
•These dispositions develop as a result of determining structures i.e. class, family and education, and external everyday encounters.
•To some point it questions “objectivity”
•In closure, habitus:
•Gives the necessary “tools” and skills to find ourselves within different fields i.e. sports, professional life, home, et catera).
•Guides the choices of an individual without any prescription to written rules. E.g. Kuma’s plane crash example.
•These choices (guided by their success and/or failures) and the actions we take constantly remake habitus.