‘It's all becoming a habitus’: beyond the habitual use of habitus in educational research

TLDR

The concept of habitus is central to Bourdieu’s framework and is complex, appearing in various forms across his writings and broader sociological literature. The paper aims to develop a nuanced understanding of habitus that acknowledges its permeability and its capacity to reflect continuity and change, and to map its relation to field and cultural capital. The study examines how habitus has been operationalized in educational research, critiques the tendency to overlay Bourdieu’s concepts onto data, and illustrates practical applications through diverse research examples.

Abstract

The concept of habitus lies at the heart of Bourdieu's theoretical framework. It is a complex concept that takes many shapes and forms in Bourdieu's own writing, even more so in the wider sociological work of other academics. In the first part of this paper I develop an understanding of habitus, based on Bourdieu's many writings on the concept, that recognizes both its permeability and its ability to capture continuity and change. I also map its relationship to Bourdieu's other concepts, in particular field and cultural capital. In the second part of the paper I examine attempts to operationalize habitus in empirical research in education. I critique the contemporary fashion of overlaying research analyses with Bourdieu's concepts, including habitus, rather than making the concepts work in the context of the data and the research settings. In the final part of the paper I draw on a range of research examples that utilize habitus as a research tool to illustrate how habitus can be made to work in educational research.