Editing Habitus (sociology) (section)

== Origins ==
The concept of the ''habitus'' was used as early as [[Aristotle]].  In contemporary usage it was introduced by [[Marcel Mauss]] and later [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]]; however, it was [[Pierre Bourdieu]] who used it as a cornerstone of his sociology, and to address the sociological problem of [[Agency (sociology)|agency]] 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]] and [[Jean Piaget]] 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 [[Socialization|socialized]] into individuals of that culture.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Outline of a Theory of Practice|last=Bourdieu|first=Pierre|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1977|pages=78–79}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Community and society|last=Tönnies|first=Ferdinand|publisher=Harper and Row.|year=1963|location=New York, NY}}</ref>

According to Bourdieu, habitus is composed of:
{{blockquote|systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Bourdieu|first=Pierre|title=The Logic of Practice|newspaper=Polity Press.|year=1990}}</ref>}}

[[Loïc Wacquant]] wrote that habitus is an old philosophical notion, originating in the thought of [[Aristotle]], whose notion of ''[[hexis]]'' ("state") was translated into ''habitus'' by the Medieval [[Scholastics]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wacquant |first=Loïc |date=2016 |title=A Concise Genealogy and Anatomy of Habitus |journal=The Sociological Review |volume=64 |pages=64–65|doi=10.1111/1467-954X.12356 }}</ref> [[Giorgio Agamben]] stresses that this term ''habitus'' itself "originally signified 'a way of being or acting'" in the Christian [[Christian monasticism|monastic]] tradition; he claims that the term had been in use already among the Stoics as a description of personal attributes synonymous with virtue.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Agamben |first=Giorgio |title=Altissima povertà: Regole monastiche e forme di vita |publisher=Stanford University Press |year=2013 |isbn=9780804786744 |pages=13 |language=Italian |translator-last=Kotsko |translator-first=Adam |trans-title=The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life}}</ref> Bourdieu first adapted the term in his 1967 postface to [[Erwin Panofsky]]'s ''Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism''.<ref>[http://www.brynmawr.edu/bmrcl/Winter2007/Premodern.htm Review] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090409100449/http://www.brynmawr.edu/bmrcl/Winter2007/Premodern.htm |date=2009-04-09 }} of Holsinger, ''The Premodern Condition'', in ''Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature'' 6:1 (Winter 2007).</ref>  The term was earlier used in sociology by [[Norbert Elias]] in ''[[The Civilizing Process]]'' (1939) and in [[Marcel Mauss]]'s account of "body techniques" ({{Lang|fr|techniques du corps}}).  The concept is also present in the work of [[Max Weber]], [[Gilles Deleuze]], and [[Edmund Husserl]].

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 [[Habit (psychology)|habits]], 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]].