Can Habitus Explain Individual Particularities? Critically Appreciating the Operationalization of Relational Logic in Field Theory

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2363992
AutoresSourabh Singh (0000-0002-9636-994X, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume40
Fascículo1
Páginas28-50
Data de publicação2022-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSociological Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0735-2751 • E-ISSN: 1467-9558
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/07352751221075645
OpenAlexW4210477681
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas47

Bourdieu's concept of habitus claims to solve the problem of the individual/society duality. However, the concept of habitus appears to be inadequate to explain the idiosyncratic features of individual field actors' practices. In this article, I argue that to explain the particularity of individual habitus, we must appreciate the operationalization of relational logic in field theory. I further argue that individuals learn to prediscursively identify certain types of practices as meaningful for a given field position (and not others) because of their embodied experiences of movements within the historically specific relational structure of the field. Thus, the same individual can exhibit multiple and even contradictory practices depending on the person's relational position in the field. I illustrate this insight by discussing the political habitus of the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru

Cultural capital · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Habitus · Operationalization · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Critical Realism in Sociology · Management and Organizational Studies · Mathematics · Social and Cultural Dynamics