Explain how Pierre Bourdieu proposed to overcome the binary between agency/structure and subjectivism/ objectivism
Answers
Central to Bourdieu’s project is the notion of habitus. This refers to the mental structures – or schemes – through which people deal with the social world. Habitus is the product of the internalization of the structures that comprise the social world. Thus, it reflects objective divisions around class, gender and age (for example). It varies, in other words, with an individual’s position in the social world. Those who occupy similar positions will tend to have a similar habitus (giving rise to the idea of ‘collective habitus’).
Habitus emerges over time and acts like a durable ‘structuring structure’. It comes from practice; and it shapes practice. It predisposes people to think and act in patterned ways. But habitus does not determine action.
A field is an arena of struggle, or competition, with people or collectivities occupying positions and oriented to defending/improving them.
‘the fields is a kind of competitive marketplace in which various types of capital (economic, cultural, social, symbolic) are employed and deployed. However, the field of power (politics) is of the utmost importance; the hierarchy of power relationships within the political field serves to structure all the other fields’ (Ritzer again).
Questions posed by Bourdieu: (1) what is the relationship between any given field and the political field; (2) what is the objective structure of the relations among positions in the field; and (3) what is the nature of the habitus of the agents/collectivities who occupy the various types of position within the field.
The positions within the field are determined by the extent and strength of ‘flow’ (if I might put it that way) of each type of capital (economic = wealth, income; cultural = taste, connections; social = social relations; and symbolic = status). Occupants of positions employ (structured, but not structurally determined) strategies to defend/enhance them.