Bourdieu and Habitus

 Janet K. Weirick, Ph.D.

Pierre Bourdieu developed a theory of habitus as it pertains to education. This theory describes education as a means to produce and reproduce social class structures. Class behaviors and awareness of the power dynamics that require class distinctions are developed throughout childhood and are reinforced in formal, post-secondary education. These attitudes and behaviors become unconscious, as people describe them as “just the way it is.”

Bourdieu describes habitus as “the product of internalization of the principles of a cultural arbitrary capable of perpetuating itself after pedagogic authority has ceased and thereby of perpetuating in practices the principles of the internalized arbitrary.” (p. 31)

Bourdieu described the process through habitus is produced as a “prolonged process of inculcation producing a durable transposable habitus, i.e. inculcating in all its legitimate addressees a system of (partially or totally identical) schemes of perception, thought, appreciation and action. Pedagogic Work contributes towards producing and reproducing the intellectual and moral integration of the group or class on whose behalf it is carried on.” (p. 35)

“Insofar as it is a prolonged process of inculcation producing more and more complete misrecognition of the twofold arbitrariness of pedagogical authority, pedagogical work tends, the more it is accomplished, to conceal more and more completely the objective truth of the habitus as the internalization of the principles of a cultural arbitrary which is more accomplished the more the work of inculcation is accomplished.”  (p. 39)

It's important to note that Bordieu uses the term inculcation to describe the goal of education systems. Inculcate means to “instill (an attitude, idea or habit) by persistent instruction; teach (someone) an attitude, idea, or habit by persistent instruction.” (Dictionary. Com) In this sense, families informally instill a cultural understanding of the world through many years of reinforcement of attitudes and behavior.  Primary and secondary education systems reinforce local culture, including messages about social class and a sense of belonging. Cultural coding can include language, ways of dressing, recreational activities, food choices and access to money.  Because middle- and upper-class students have had access to better schools during their pre-college years, they come to campus with knowledge and skills that weren’t available to working-class students.  This difference can cause physical and psychological barriers for working-class students when interacting with more privileged classmates.

“Any given mode of inculcation is characterized by the position it occupies between (1) the mode of inculcation aiming to bring the complete substitution of one habitus for another (conversion) and (2) the mode of inculcation aiming purely and simply to confirm the primary habitus (maintenance or reinforcement).” (p. 44)

Liam Gillepsie describes how habitus reinforces class difference through practices of various institutions. “Habitus produces relationships of domination through its institutions by default, because institutions distribute cultural capital differently and differentially among individuals. As Bourdieu elaborates, the unequal distribution of cultural capital creates and further exacerbates unequal socio-cultural settings; however, this inequality comes to appear ‘objective’, natural or meritorious within the habitus. Within habitus, the dominance of dominant subjects appears ‘objective’. The dominant can just ‘be’, while the dominated must first ‘clear the way’ before they can ‘be’.” (Criticallegalthinking.com/2019/08/06/pierre-bourdieu-habitus/)

The quality of pre-university education is fundamental to reproducing the status quo while working under the cover of “meritocracy” with testing and grading systems to guarantee that social class differences are maintained. It’s not just standardized testing, but subjective reactions to students’ speech patterns, dress, social skills and assertiveness.  Small talk between faculty and students can signal class differences that affect formal teacher/student interactions and subsequently student outcomes.

The subtleties of habitus “wiring” can sometimes result in faculty/administrators expressing “patronizing” behavior toward lower class students.  Going overboard to “help” working class students can further displace them from the presumed middle-class norms. Habitus runs deeper than norms and traditions. Habitus is not a conscious practice – it is unconscious and expresses the notion that an action or attitude is “just how it is.”

“Given that it must reproduce through time the institutional conditions for the performance of the work of schooling, i.e. that it must reproduce itself as an institution (self-reproduction) in order to reproduce the culture it is mandated to reproduce (culture and reproduction), every educational system necessarily monopolizes the production of the agents appointed to reproduce it, i.e. of the agents equipped with the durable training which enables them to perform the work of schooling tending to reproduce the same training in the new reproducers, and therefore contains a tendency towards perfect self-reproduction (inertia) which is realized within the limits of its relative autonomy.” (p. 60)

Because of this need to practice reproduction, part of the culture of most college systems is the practice of seeking and hiring middle class faculty and administrators.  Admissions departments create policies and procedures to attract students with the “right fit” for a particular campus culture. Sorting starts with recruiting, as Zip Codes become proxies for family income and quality schools. Most college applications include information about grades, extracurricular activities, club memberships and community service work. The required essays tell the admissions staff many details about a person’s social class, including vocabulary, topic, and subjective reference points. 

College Faculty expect students to meet campus standards for coursework, and they often make middle class assumptions about student expertise, academic background and life experience. Working class students can feel like they’ve “missed” something in their education, even when they performed well in high school. Because they have not learned the attitudes and behaviors expressed by those in charge of academics and student affairs, they can sometimes feel like “aliens” in and out of class.

“In a society in which the obtaining of social privileges depends more and more closely on possession of academic credentials, the School does not only have the function of ensuring discreet succession to a bourgeois estate which can no longer be transmitted directly and openly.  This privileged instrument of the bourgeois sociodicy which confers on the privileged the supreme privilege of not seeing themselves as privileged manages the more easily to convince the disinherited that they owe their scholastic and social destiny to their lack of gifts or merits, because in matters of culture absolute dispossession excludes awareness of being dispossessed. (p. 210)

Sources:

Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2000.

Gillespie, Liam. Online, August 6, 2019. https://criticallegalthinking.com/2019/0806/pierre-bourdieu-habitus/