In sociology, habitus () is the way that people perceive and respond to the

social world Social reality refers to a socially constructed perspective of the world, consisting of the accepted social wikt:tenet, tenets of a community involving laws and social representations. It is distinct from biological reality or individual cognitive ...

they inhabit, by way of their personal

habit A habit (or wont, as a humorous and formal term) is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. A 1903 paper in the '' American Journal of Psychology'' defined a "habit, from the standpoint of psychology, ...

s, skills, and

disposition A disposition is a quality of character, a habit, a preparation, a state of readiness, or a tendency to act in a specified way. The terms dispositional belief and occurrent belief refer, in the former case, to a belief that is held in the mind b ...

of character.

Overview

People with a common cultural background (

social class A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of Dominance hierarchy, hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class and the Bourgeoisie, capitalist class. Membership of a social class can for exam ...

, religion, and nationality,

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

, education, and profession) share a habitus as the way that group culture and personal history shape the mind of a person; consequently, the habitus of a person influences and shapes the

social action In sociology, social action, also known as Weberian social action, is an act which takes into account the actions and reactions of individuals (or ' agents'). According to Max Weber, "Action is 'social' insofar as its subjective meaning takes acc ...

s of the person. The sociologist

Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (, ; ; ; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influ ...

said that the ''habitus'' consists of the ''

hexis Hexis () is a relatively stable arrangement or disposition, for example a person's health or knowledge or character. It is an Ancient Greek word, important in the philosophy of Aristotle, and because of this it has become a traditional word of phi ...

'', a person's carriage (

posture Posture or posturing may refer to: Medicine * List of human positions ** Abnormal posturing, in neurotrauma **Spinal posture * Posturography, in neurology Other uses * Posture (psychology) * Political posturing Political posturing, also known a ...

) and speech ( accent), and the mental habits of perception, classification, appreciation, feeling, and action. The habitus allows the individual person to consider and resolve problems based upon

gut feeling According to the ''American Psychological Association, APA Dictionary of Psychology'', a feeling is "a self-contained phenomenal experience"; feelings are "subjective, evaluative, and independent of the sensations, thoughts, or images evoking th ...

and

intuition Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning or needing an explanation. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledg ...

. This way of living (social attitudes, mannerisms, tastes, morality, etc.) influences the availability of opportunities in life; thus the habitus is structured by the person's social class, but also gives structure to the future paths available to the person. Therefore, the reproduction of social structures results from the habitus of the individual persons who compose the given social structure. The habitus is criticised as being a

deterministic Determinism is the metaphysical view that all events within the universe (or multiverse) can occur only in one possible way. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping mo ...

concept, because, as ''social actors'', people behave as ''automata'', in the sense proposed in the

Monadology The ''Monadology'' (, 1714) is one of Gottfried Leibniz's best known works of his later philosophy. It is a short text which presents, in some 90 paragraphs, a metaphysics of simple substances, or '' monads''. Text During his last stay in V ...

of the philosopher G.W. Leibniz.

Origins

The concept of the ''habitus'' was used as early as

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

. In contemporary usage it was introduced by

Marcel Mauss Marcel Israël Mauss (; 10 May 1872 – 10 February 1950) was a French sociologist and anthropologist known as the "father of French ethnology". The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss, in his academic work, crossed the boundaries between sociolo ...

and later

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Maurice Jean Jacques Merleau-Ponty. ( ; ; 14 March 1908 – 3 May 1961) was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The constitution of meaning in human experience was his main interes ...

; however, it was

who used it as a cornerstone of his sociology, and to address the sociological problem of

agency Agency may refer to: Organizations * Institution, governmental or others ** Advertising agency or marketing agency, a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients ** Employment agency, a business that s ...

and structure. In Bourdieu's work, the habitus is shaped by structural position and generates action. Thus, when people act and demonstrate agency, they simultaneously reflect and reproduce social structure. Bourdieu elaborated his theory of the habitus while borrowing ideas on cognitive and generative schemes from

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

and

Jean Piaget Jean William Fritz Piaget (, ; ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called genetic epistemology. ...

regarding 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 In sociology, socialization (also socialisation – see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and ...

into individuals of that culture. According to Bourdieu, habitus is composed of: Loïc Wacquant wrote that habitus is an old philosophical notion, originating in the thought of

, whose notion of ''

'' ("state") was translated into ''habitus'' by the Medieval

Scholastics Scholasticism was a medieval European philosophical movement or methodology that was the predominant education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. It is known for employing logically precise analyses and reconciling classical philosophy and C ...

Giorgio Agamben Giorgio Agamben ( ; ; born 22 April 1942) is an Italian philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception, form-of-life (borrowed from Ludwig Wittgenstein) and '' homo sacer''. The concept of biopolitic ...

stresses that this term ''habitus'' itself "originally signified 'a way of being or acting'" in the Christian

monastic Monasticism (; ), also called monachism or monkhood, is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual activities. Monastic life plays an important role in many Christian churches, especially ...

tradition; he claims that the term had been in use already among the Stoics as a description of personal attributes synonymous with virtue. Bourdieu first adapted the term in his 1967 postface to

Erwin Panofsky Erwin Panofsky (March 30, 1892 – March 14, 1968) was a German-Jewish art historian whose work represents a high point in the modern academic study of iconography, including his hugely influential ''Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art ...

's ''Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism''. The term was earlier used in sociology by

Norbert Elias Norbert Elias (; 22 June 1897 – 1 August 1990) was a German-Jewish sociologist who later became a British citizen. He is especially famous for his theory of civilizing/decivilizing processes. Life and career Elias was born on 22 June 1 ...

in ''

The Civilizing Process ''The Civilizing Process'' is a book by German sociologist Norbert Elias. It is an influential work in sociology and Elias' most important work. It was first published in Basel, Switzerland in two volumes in 1939 in German as ''Über den Prozeß ...

'' (1939) and in

's account of "body techniques" (). The concept is also present in the work of

Max Weber Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...

, and

Edmund Husserl Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; 8 April 1859 – 27 April 1938) was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology. In his early work, he elaborated critiques of histori ...

. 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 A habit (or wont, as a humorous and formal term) is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. A 1903 paper in the ''American Journal of Psychology'' defined a "habit, from the standpoint of psychology, [ ...

, bodily skills, styles, tastes, and other non-discursive knowledges that might be said to "go without saying" for a specific group (Bourdieu 1990:66-67) - in that way it can be said to operate beneath the level of rational ideology.

Non-sociological uses

Literary criticism

The term has also been adopted in literary criticism, adapting from Bourdieu's usage of the term. For example, Joe Moran's examination of authorial identities in ''Star Authors: Literary Celebrity in America'' uses the term in discussion of how authors develop a habitus formed around their own celebrity and status as authors, which manifests in their writing.

Use in literary theory

Bourdieu's principle of habitus is interwoven with the concept of

structuralism Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns t ...

literary theory Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, m ...

. Peter Barry explains, "in the structuralist approach to literature there is a constant movement away from interpretation of the individual literary work and a parallel drive towards understanding the larger structures which contain them" (2009, p. 39). There is therefore a strong desire to understand the larger influencing factors which makes an individual literary work. As Bourdieu explains, habitus As a result, habitus may be employed in literary theory in order to understand those larger, external structures which influence individual theories and works of literature.

Body habitus

Body habitus (or "bodily habitus") is the medical term for physique, and is categorized as either endomorphic (relatively short and stout), ectomorphic (relatively long and thin) or mesomorphic (muscular proportions). In this sense, habitus has in the past been interpreted as the physical and constitutional characteristics of an individual, especially as related to the tendency to develop a certain disease. For example, "

Marfanoid Marfanoid (or Marfanoid habitus) is a constellation of signs resembling those of Marfan syndrome, including long limbs, with an arm span that is at least 1.03 of the height of the individual, and a crowded oral maxilla, sometimes with a high arch i ...

bodily habitus".

Scholars researching habitus

* Loïc Wacquant - a sociologist and ethnographer who studied the construction of the "pugilistic habitus" in a boxing gym of the black ghetto of Chicago in ''Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer'' (2004) and in "Habitus as Topic and Tool" (2009). * Bernard Lahire - a French sociologist who suggested that the habitus is not (or no longer) a system shared by a class, but rather an eclectic set of dispositions that are often contradictory, due to non-typical socialization paths in late modernity. * Gabriel Ignatow explored how the notion of habitus can contribute to the sociology of morality. * Philippe Bourgois - an anthropologist who incorporates the concept of "habitus" into much of his work with intravenous drug users in the San Francisco Bay Area. *

Saba Mahmood Saba Mahmood (1961–2018) was professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, she was also affiliated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Institute for South Asia Studies, and the Program in Critical Th ...

- an anthropologist who suggested that the habitus can be shaped and transformed not only through unconscious mimesis but also through pedagogic process, while reverting from Bourdieu's account to that of Aristotle. * Stephen Parkin - a sociologist who considers the "habitus" construct as an explanatory mechanism for the production of drug related harm in drug using environments located in public settings in "Habitus and Drug Using Environments: Health Place and Lived-Experience" (published by Ashgate in August 2013). * Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer �
Center for the Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and Society (CIRRuS)
at Bielefeld University (Germany) * Ori Schwarz - a sociologist who studied the "sonic habitus", schemes that organize the production of sounds, their classification (e.g. as "noise") and the reaction to them. * Loren Ludwig, US - a musicologist researching the way tha
instrumental chamber music allows for the cultivation and experience of habitus by its players
*

- a German sociologist studying how the habitus is determined on our culturally accepted manners. In ‘’The Civilizing Process’’, his theory is also extended to a 'national habitus' of Germans, used to justify the Holocaust. * Dov Cohen and Hans IJzerman - psychologists who studied the habitus in social psychology, examining ho
Latinos and Anglos embody honor differently
* Sudhir Chella Rajan, who shows how automobility forms a complex discursive apparatus built on fragile assumptions around individuality, autonomy, an
driving
and is so ideologically powerful as to constitute the very bodily disposition of liberal political theory. * Victor J. Friedman and Israel J. Syke
likens
the idea of habitus to the idea of theory-in-action developed by

Chris Argyris Chris Argyris (July 16, 1923 – November 16, 2013) was an American business theorist and professor at Yale School of Management and Harvard Business School. Argyris, like Richard Beckhard, Edgar Schein and Warren Bennis, is known as a co-foun ...

and

Donald Schön Donald Alan Schön (September 19, 1930 – September 13, 1997) was an American philosopher and professor in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He developed the concept of reflective practice and contributed to the theor ...

. * William Cockerham - American medical sociologist, uses Bourdieu's habitus as a basis for his health lifestyle theory.