Showing papers on "Habitus published in 2000"
TL;DR: Bourdieu argues for a theoretical position one might term his "practical theory" which emphasizes virtuosic interactions between individuals as mentioned in this paper, and most frequently, Bourdieu appeals to the concept of the habitus according to which society consists of objective structures and determined individuals.
Abstract: There are two strands in Bourdieu's sociological writings. On the one hand, Bourdieu argues for a theoretical position one might term his “practical theory” which emphasizes virtuosic interactions between individuals. On the other hand, and most frequently, Bourdieu appeals to the concept of the habitus according to which society consists of objective structures and determined—and isolated—individuals. Although Bourdieu believes that the habitus is compatible with his practical theory and overcomes the impasse of objectivism and subjectivism in social theory, neither claim is the case; the habitus is incompatible with his practical theory, and it retreats quickly into objectivism. However, Bourdieu's practical theory does offer a way out of the impasse of objectivism and subjectivism by focussing on the intersubjective interactions between individuals.
512 citations
TL;DR: In the context of the Algerian war of national liberation, a quasi-laboratory situation for analysing the mismatch between the economic dispositions fashioned in a precapitalist economy, embedded in relations of group honour, and the rationalized economic cosmos imposed by colonization was created.
Abstract: During the war of national liberation Algeria offered a quasi-laboratory situation for analysing the mismatch between the economic dispositions fashioned in a precapitalist economy, embedded in relations of group honour, and the rationalized economic cosmos imposed by colonization. Ethnographic observation of this mismatch revealed that, far from being axiomatic, the most elementary economic behaviours (working for a wage, saving, credit, birth control, etc.) have definite economic and social conditions of possibility which both economic theory and the `new economic sociology' ignore. Acquiring the spirit of calculation required by the modern economy entails a veritable conversion via the apostasy of the embodied beliefs that underpin exchange in traditional Kabyle society. The `folk economics' of a cook from Algiers allows us to grasp the practical economic sense guiding the emerging Algerian working class at the dawn of the country's independence.
189 citations
TL;DR: This article used a combination of Bourdieu's concept of habitus theory and an interactionist perspective to examine women's participation in the traditionally'man's world' of boxing and found that women boxers occupied an ambivalent position: on the one hand, by definition, they challenged the existing gender order; on the other hand, they also reinforced the status quo by displaying traditional modes of femininity.
Abstract: This article uses a combination of Bourdieu's concept of habitus theory and an interactionist perspective to examine women's participation in the traditionally `man's world' of boxing. The two major aims of the study were to identify how women entered and stayed involved in boxing and the types of identities that they forged in the process. The data were collected via participant-observation and in-depth interviews with a sample of women boxers and their coaches. It was found that the women's entry into and continued involvement in boxing depends on both disposition and situation. It was also concluded that women boxers occupied an ambivalent position: on the one hand, by definition, they challenged the existing gender order; on the other hand, they also reinforced the status quo by displaying traditional modes of femininity. This tension was related to the modalities of boxers' practice (`hard' or `soft') and their social histories. In short, the process of identity-formation among women boxers was insep...
183 citations
TL;DR: Based on two empirical studies of senior executives, the authors examines key aspects of Bourdieu's theory of the reproduction of social class structures in the European business elite, to what extent it applies.
Abstract: Based on two empirical studies of senior executives, this article examines key aspects of Bourdieu's theory of the reproduction of social class structures. In the European business elite, to what e...
151 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors make a contribution to the housing tenure debate that stresses the cultural dimension of consumption, using Bourdieu's idea of ''habitus'' and Bauman's notion of ''the flawed consumer'' to provide a new perspective on the debate.
Abstract: Debates about the significance of housing tenure are well established within housing studies, but have tended to rely heavily upon economic and political dimensions of consumption. Hitherto, the perceptions of young people have been politically, if not economically, ignored. This article makes a contribution to the housing tenure debate that stresses the cultural dimension of consumption. In particular, it uses Bourdieu?s idea of ?habitus? and Bauman?s notion of ?the flawed consumer? to provide a new perspective on the debate. Drawing on data from qualitative interviews with a small sample of young people, the article considers young peoples? perceptions of housing tenure. It assesses how their tenure prejudice ? positive images of home ownership and negative images of council housing ? are the product of a housing socialization process and considers the ways in which prevailing attitudes towards housing tenure have been transmitted to a future generation of housing consumers. It uses the work of Bourdieu...
90 citations
TL;DR: The authors investigated the socio-logical relation between animal species and occupation in the popular imagination, specifically in the world of children's literature, in order to test a claim that the class habitus that naturalizes the division of labor, erasing the contingent nature of class domination, does not simply arise via the internalization of objective social divisions into a subjective social vision, but rather begins with the application of a totemic logic which maps differences between people onto differences between animals, thereby exaggerating and naturalizing them.
72 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a meeting with senior faculty and a senior administrator to discuss concerns they had with teaching was held, and the administrator and senior faculty acknowledged that race and gender biases on the part of students, especially in a course on social inequality, sex and gender, or race/ethnicity, put faculty of color and/or women faculty at a disadvantage.
Abstract: A couple of years ago, junior faculty in our department—most of them people of color and/or women—requested a meeting with senior faculty and a senior administrator to discuss concerns they had with teaching. One of their main concerns was that they felt they were being judged negatively by students, especially when they taught emotionally charged and politically volatile courses such as social inequality or race and ethnic relations. Students, they stated, tended to ding them on course evaluations for “lack of objectivity” in lectures and assigned readings. Furthermore, they observed that students did not always give them the respect that they believed they deserved. They were concerned with these patterns, both for pedagogical reasons and because they knew that student evaluations were part of the way that they were compared to their colleagues for merit ratings, promotions, and tenure decisions. Students’ views of them were important, and they were consequential. The administrator and senior faculty acknowledged that race and gender biases on the part of students—especially in a course on social inequality, sex and gender, or race/ethnicity—tended to place faculty of color and/or women faculty at a disadvantage. Their advice was to be rigorous teachers and to insist that their students use formal and respectful forms of address (e.g., referring to the teacher as Professor so-and-so, or Dr. so-and-so, rather than by the more familiar first name address). This advice, although surely intended to help women and/or faculty of color successfully navigate often subtly racist and sexist classroom dynamics, was not satisfying. It seemed to me that by ignoring the race and gender dynamics of the classroom in which white males are the professors, we were missing an opportunity to understand an important part of the reproduction of race and gender inequalities—
64 citations
TL;DR: The sickness absence practice of the municipal working community is an expression of the sickness absence habitus which is deeply rooted in the social history of the locality and in the health-related behaviour of the residents.
64 citations
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a re-reading of literary history: Michel Foucault - archaeology, genealogy and power culture and interpretation - anthropology, ethnography and understanding Pierre Bourdieu - habitus, representation and symbolic exchange Michel de Certeau - oppositional practices and heterologies.
Abstract: Part 1 Rethinking literary history: Michel Foucault - archaeology, genealogy and power culture and interpretation - anthropology, ethnography and understanding Pierre Bourdieu - habitus, representation and symbolic exchange Michel de Certeau - oppositional practices and heterologies Part 2 Cultural materialism and new historicism: Raymond Williams and cultural materialism ideology and hegemony - Althusser, Macherey and Gramsci contemporary cultural materialism - subjectivity, desire and transgression Stephen Greenblatt and new historicism conclusion - new historicism and contemporary criticism
59 citations
TL;DR: Bourdieu's meta-theoretical realism is a virtue rather than a vice and the manner in which he is a reductionist and determinist necessitate a re-thinking of what is meant by these notions as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Jeffrey Alexander argues that despite Bourdieu’s considerable achievements ultimately his work is reductionist and determinist. He further argues that though Bourdieu is a middle range theorist he is implicitly realist in his meta-theoretical assumptions. This article accepts these conclusions but argues that Bourdieu’s meta-theoretical realism is a virtue rather than a vice and that the manner in which he is a reductionist and determinist necessitate a re-thinking of what is meant by these notions. Alexander uses Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to demon-strate a fundamental contradiction in Bourdieu’s theorising. According to him habitus presents us with the oxymoron of unconscious strategisation. This article uses a discussion of habitus in order to demonstrate that in its relationship with the concept of field it instead produces a practical resolution of long standing theoretical problems concerning structural determination and human agency. It is also argued that these problems are resolved at the meta-theoretical level in the form of critical realist ontology and that it is Alexander’s misunderstandings on this level which cause him to fail to appreciate the significance of Bourdieu’s achievements.
50 citations
TL;DR: The authors compared and contrasted the views of educational policy makers and consumers within Lincolnshire, an English rural county, using Bourdieu's notion of "habitus" as a vehicle for analysis.
Abstract: This article compares and contrasts the views of educational policy makers and consumers within Lincolnshire, an English rural county, using Bourdieu's notion of ‘habitus’ as a vehicle for analysis. The article focuses on the relative importance of education as cultural capital in determining the motivational factors affecting participation in lifelong learning. The article considers lifelong learning in the context of ‘continuing education’. If lifelong learning is characterized into three discrete yet connected phases: the first, ‘full-time education’ from the age of 5 until leaving full-time education at age 16, 18 or 21; the second, the ‘transitional phase’ between school and work at age 16–21; the third, ‘continuing education’ beyond the age of 21; it is the policies and attitudes to this third phase described in this paper. Education for adults rather than simply the education of adults. Interviews with small groups of learners and an experienced manager of lifelong learning policies in Lincolnshire...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory of the Logic of Practice to present a case that when viewed as a social practice, these movement forms generate certain, specific, practically oriented schemes of dispositions or habitus in the practitioner.
Abstract: The practice of the self-defense martial arts has much to offer physical education. In this paper we draw on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory of the Logic of Practice to present a case that when viewed as a social practice, these movement forms generate certain, specific, practically oriented schemes of dispositions or habitus in the practitioner. We then consider the potential value of using matia1 arts practice in physical education for their ability to offer a glimpse at genuinely alternative ways of relating to oneself and the world through the physical mediunm that would help to compliment and offset the overriding domninance of dualist understandings of the mind /body nexus that currently exists in Western physical education.
TL;DR: The campaign against masturbation offers one of the outstanding success stories in the history of medical popularization, and this paper seeks to identify the reasons for this success, focusing on the campaign's early stages, from the late seventeenth century onwards.
Abstract: The campaign against masturbation offers one of the outstanding success stories in the history of medical popularization. This paper seeks to identify the reasons for this success, focusing on the campaign's early stages, from the late seventeenth century onwards. It first identifies a series of often quite explicit political, ideological, and economic motives such as religious notions of 'uncleaniness', bourgeois concerns about self-control, marriage, and population growth, and the financial interests of the London veneral trade. Drawing, in particular, on the 'confessions of self-declared victims of masturbation in eighteenth-century patient letters, it then shows that the physical and mental symptoms attributed to masturbation very successfully addressed some of the deepest anxieties in contemporary society, anxieties about virility, gender identity, and physical selfhood. Finally, applying Bourdieu's notion of 'habitus', the central role of a new, implicitly male, more solid, closed and self-contained dominant body image is underlined. Framing the interpretation and the very experience of the body among the proponents and the recipients of anti-onanist discourse alike, it helped to make the dangers of masturbation an almost irrefutable, objective truth.
28 Jun 2000
TL;DR: Bourdieu’s theoretical framework will be used in a research program that examines the structural processes by which information technology may be constrained from emancipating humankind, and may actually be disempowering and abandoning significant numbers of societal members.
Abstract: This paper introduces the critical social theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. The objective of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework is to uncover the buried organizational structures and mechanisms that are used to ensure the reproduction of social order. This theoretical framework will be used in a research program that examines the structural processes by which information technology may be constrained from emancipating humankind, and may actually be disempowering and abandoning significant numbers of societal members.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated women's perceptions of choice and risk in the field of pensions and concluded that the expansion of choice has passed pension risks onto consumers and thus led to increasing poverty among many women in later life.
Abstract: This paper investigates women's perceptions of choice and risk in the field of pensions. It extends on a paper published in a recent edition of this Journal in which Alan Aldridge applied Pierre Bourdieu's notions of cultural capital and habitus to the field of personal finance. Since the late 1980s the marketisation of pensions has resulted in an expansion of pension options. According to Anthony Giddens the expansion of choice is one of the positive aspects of living in a ‘risk society’. However, the expansion of pension choice has passed pension risks onto consumers. Using qualitative interviews this paper investigates the perceptions of 45 employed women aged 40–59 of the risks associated with choosing a pension. At the theoretical level the paper seeks to demonstrate the need to qualify notions of reflexive decision-making put forward by Giddens by emphasising the role of habitual action in decision-making, as put forward by Bourdieu. The paper shows that material circumstances, cultural capital, extent and quality of pension information and habitus affect perceptions of pension choice and pension risks. The paper concludes that the expansion of pension choice has been, in many ways, negative rather than positive and thus is likely to lead to increasing poverty among many women in later life.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this article, a large study of 100 children making the transition from home to school in order to take another look at what really counts (for, or against) children in early literacy lessons and to challenge the "mantra" of working with "what children bring" is presented.
Abstract: LANGUAGE ARTS, VOL. 78, NO. 1, SEPTEMBER 2000 Educators have long struggled with the intractable fact that | different children have different learning outcomes, which relate in complex and not always predictable ways to their socioeconomic circumstances, gender, ethnicity, race, location, parents' education, and more. In this paper, I draw on a large study of 100 children1 making the transition from home to school in order to take another look at what really counts (for, or against) children in early literacy lessons and to challenge the "mantra" of working with "what children bring." Through short transcripts of three children's early experiences of school literacy lessons, I consider what makes a difference in their relative success and failure during the first months of school. I argue that how, whether, and to what extent children take up what teachers make available to them is inextricably connected with the repertoires of practices and knowledges that these children already possess. Children's homes and family lives do not simply disappear when they begin schooling. They take with them to school their health and ill health and their contrastive accumulations of privileges and disadvantages or as Bourdieu (1990, 1991) puts it, their economic, cultural, social, symbolic, and linguistic capital and their habitus, sets of dispositions acquired in daily life, that incline people to act in particular ways. Identifying how particular repertoires of behaviours, dispositions, attitudes, and knowledges count (or don't count) in particular school sites can generate useful questions for practitioners to consider about the connections between children's home, community, and school lives in terms of language and literate practices. What literate practices might they use for pleasure, social action, communicative purposes, and different forms of employment? In what ways do children's different linguistic, social and cultural resources and dispositions count as credits or debits early in their school lives? What can they make use of that they bring from home? What home knowledges and practices must they discard or exclude? My purpose here is to use a micro-analysis of everyday classroom events to focus upon what confronts young children as they begin schooling and how that makes a difference to different children.
TL;DR: The field of education management has grown rapidly in the past 30 years with members positioning themselves in all parts of the education system as mentioned in this paper, and the main claim for distinctiveness is working with and on behalf of the practitioner, and intellectual positioning is based on the nature of intervention with the practitioner such as empirical research, course provision, and consultancy.
Abstract: The field of education management has grown rapidly in the past 30 years with members positioning themselves in all parts of the education system. The main claim for distinctiveness is working with and on behalf of the practitioner, and intellectual positioning is based on the nature of intervention with the practitioner such as empirical research, course provision, and consultancy. In undertaking an intellectual analysis of the field, Bourdieu's theory of practice, developed through and with Habitus and Field, is used to think with and to develop an understanding of the 'possibilities' and 'traps' for the professional practice of field members.
TL;DR: In the third millennium cal BC, there were major changes in many aspects of Cypriot material culture, technology and economy which characterize the division between the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age on the island as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: During the third millennium cal BC, there were major changes in many aspects of Cypriot material culture, technology and economy which characterize the division between the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age on the island. Many innovations can be traced to Anatolian antecedents. These include a very wide array of domestic as well as agricultural and industrial technologies. Their nature and range make it possible to argue strongly for the movement of people to the island, rather than for other mechanisms of technology transfer and culture change. This identification of an intrusive group, with distinctive patterns of behaviour (habitus), opens up questions of prehistoric ethnicity, and the processes by which the initial maintenance of different lifeways by indigenous and settler communities eventually gave way to a common cultural system. French Migration et ethnicite dans la Chypre prehistorique: technologie en tant qu'habitus Les changements profonds qui prirent place dans de nombreux aspects de ...
TL;DR: The authors argue that sharp distinctions between formal ritual action and everyday practice cannot always be sustained, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among British Quakers and Swedish charismatic Protestants, they seek to show that both groups manifest an experiential aesthetic that constructs and is constructed by engagement in daily life.
Abstract: This paper argues that sharp distinctions between formal ritual action and everyday practice cannot always be sustained. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among British Quakers and Swedish charismatic Protestants, we seek to show that both groups manifest an experiential aesthetic that constructs and is constructed by engagement in daily life. The Quaker aesthetic we call 'the plain', and the charismatic aesthetic we term 'the positive'. In presenting our argument, we adopt Bourdieu's concept of habitus and extend its meaning to take account of material culture in the establishment of religious commitment.
TL;DR: In this paper, a group of rural African American women entered a community college work program to seek the skills they needed to escape the welfare rolls and to prepare themselves for jobs in their community.
Abstract: Nationally, educational institutions are responding to changes in the postindustrial economy by emphasizing the preparation of students to enter more highly technical jobs. Schools and colleges look toward strengthening their graduates by tying classroom work more closely with the skills students need to be successful in the workplace, by emphasizing workplace values, and by teaching on-the-job behaviors that employers find desirable. In this study, a group of rural African American women entered a community college work program to seek the skills they needed to escape the welfare rolls and to prepare themselves for jobs in their community. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of "habitus " was used to help explain the contradictions and complexities in the daily lives of these women as they struggled to overcome their difficult situations and faced decisions about their futures in a rural community offering few options for long-term employment.
Book•
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: Niilo Kauppi as mentioned in this paper examines the complex affinities between Pierre Bourdieu's ideas on embodiment and traditions in anthropology (Claude Levi-Strauss), linguistics (Ferdinand de Saussure), literature (Honore de Balzac), philosophy (Gaston Bachelard), and psychology (Lev Vygotsky).
Abstract: At times controversial, always thought-provoking, Pierre Bourdieu is one of the most influential modern social and cultural theorists. In this in-depth, multidisciplinary analysis of the Bourdieusian concept of babitus, the embodied social and cultural environment, Niilo Kauppi initiates a dialogue between Pierre Bourdieu's theory and historical (Lucien Febvre), philosophical (Aristotle and C.S. Peirce), and sociological (Emile Durkheim and Norbert Elias) approaches to habits and subjectivity. Through terms such as action, arbitrariness, homology, and structure, the author examines the complex affinities between Pierre Bourdieu's ideas on embodiment and traditions in anthropology (Claude Levi-Strauss), linguistics (Ferdinand de Saussure), literature (Honore de Balzac), philosophy (Gaston Bachelard), and psychology (Lev Vygotsky). Niilo Kauppi offers a constructive basis for a re-evaluation of habitus, >
TL;DR: In this article, the negotiation of colonial history, diasporic consciousness, and cultural practice by first-generation resident Koreans of Japan is examined through the concept of bodily memory, and the body acts as a critical site of struggle in the performance of identity.
Abstract: According to Bourdieu's thesis on habitus, codes of behavior are "memorized" and incorporated by the body, becoming the repertoire of culturally appropriated bodily behaviors.Building on this model, immigrant subjectivity with respect to aging is examined through the concept of bodily memory. I focus here on the negotiation of colonial history, diasporic consciousness, and cultural practice by first-generation resident Koreans of Japan. This paper examines how the bartering of symbolic meanings in the consumption of Korean food reflects postcolonial negotiations of ideologies of difference and how the body acts as a critical site of struggle in the performance of identity.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored some very recent research, undertaken as part of a Large Australian Research Grant project entitled: "Stories of Ageing: A Longitudinal Study of Women's Self-Representation".
Abstract: This paper explores some very recent research, undertaken as part of a Large Australian Research Grant project entitled: ‘Stories of Ageing: A Longitudinal Study of Women's Self-Representation'. The research involved writing and video diary workshops with older women. What I want to discuss in this paper is that part of the research which involved video diary workshops, using an interpreter, with Australian Vietnamese women aged 55–70, in Fitzroy in Melbourne. None of the researchers spoke Viatnamese and the Vietnamese women (with some exceptions) spoke little English. Part of the emphasis of this paper will be on ways of translating difference, of effecting cross-cultural dialogues without a common language. In this case, the translation was through images, in the form of videos made by the women themselves in their own environments. The videos, which gave the researchers visual access to the women's lived habitus as they themselves represented it, become a complex semiotic medium for further intercultur...
TL;DR: In this paper, the forging of ethnic identity by urban Malays in Malaysia around a dialectic between being Islamic and being Malay is explored, and it is argued that the individual is sufficiently conscious of his/her identity to be able to construct it in ways that allow it to be employed as a political weapon.
Abstract: This article explores the forging of ethnic identity by urban Malays in Malaysia around a dialectic between being Islamic and being Malay. I introduce Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus and Anthony Giddens's notion of reflexivity to argue that the Islamic subject in Malaysia engages in different types of interaction which demand varying degrees of reflexivity. While Bourdieu's concept of habitus importantly reveals the actor to be a cultural agent, it denies the individual the meaningful agency that the increasing reflexivity of modernity demands. I suggest that Bourdieu's assertion that the dispositions of habitus are less than conscious does not hold true in a highly reflexive modernity. In this context, the individual is sufficiently conscious of his/her identity to be able to construct it in ways that allow it to be employed as a political weapon.
TL;DR: In this article, Bourdieu's notion of habitus is used as a way of grounding the rhetoric of legitimisation, with particular reference to ecclesiastical authority, and the interpretation of a particular version of the past is related to power differentiation and the legitimisation of authority.
TL;DR: In this article, the development of the parochial framework in west Cornwall is considered within the context of political change and social transition, and the notion of habitus is used to explain how aspects of continuity and deep memory may have been at the very heart of these organizational developments, which saw forces of change rooted within the conservative and familiar nature of hagiographical writing.
Abstract: From a starting point of contextualizing landscape research both socially and spatially, the need to recognize evolving ideas of territoriality and processes of territorialization in landscape studies is focused upon. The development of the parochial framework in west Cornwall is considered within the context of political change and social transition. Through a detailed examination of hagiographies and related saintly legends, territorial and organizational development of ecclesiastical authority is firmly placed within contemporary experiences of landscape, linguistic politics and relationships with a particular past. Bourdieu's notion of habitus is used to explain how aspects of continuity and deep memory may have been at the very heart of these organizational developments, which saw forces of change rooted within the conservative and familiar nature of hagiographical writing.
TL;DR: Theoretical work in the sociology of punishment increasingly recognizes the importance of the cultural a... as mentioned in this paper, especially since Garland's influential introduction of the notion of penal ''sensibilities''.
Abstract: Theoretical work in the sociology of punishment (especially since Garland's influential introduction of the notion of penal `sensibilities') increasingly recognizes the importance of the cultural a...
TL;DR: In this paper, the evolution of bodybuilding in relation to gay culture through representations of body building in magazines, both straight and gay, is explored, in terms of Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus.
Abstract: The aim of this essay, then, is to explore the evolution of bodybuilding in relation to gay culture, through representations of bodybuilding in magazines, both straight and gay. Firstly, the significance of magazines as a site of gay cultural capital will be discussed, in terms of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. Secondly, the ways in which bodybuilding codes and knowledge have become part of gay culture will be explored, through an examination of the history of bodybuilding and its representation in particular magazines. Key moments in bodybuilding representation in Outrage will then be addressed, through articles in Outrage about bodybuilders Con Demetriou and David Bruno, gleaned from a random sample taken from issues from the period January 1994 to January 1997. The transformation of the gay body and its unique position within the world of the gym, provide insights into a culture that is continuing to experience what can be termed a ‘crisis of habitus’.
TL;DR: Searle's The Construction of the Social World (1995) as mentioned in this paper is a critical confrontation of these strengths and weaknesses with Pierre Bourdieu's theory, and it becomes clear how this theory actually contributes to a philosophy of society.
Abstract: Bourdieu's sociology contains many concepts and terms that could play a significant role for philosophy. University philosophers are hardly inclined, of course, to accept suggestions from other disciplines, in particular when they carry the scent of empirical research in the everyday world. Their interest lies-apart from a few exceptions, such as Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Charles Taylor-beyond the sensory world, directed instead toward the world of pure thought. The mind has no smell; it avoids contact with the corporeal. When philosophers describe society, it is transformed into a product of thought. The absence of sensuality lends intellectual rigor and consistency to their attempts, inasmuch as they trace social structures back to logical ones. In this way philosophy can achieve, at best, clarifications of concepts from which sociology can also benefit. However, this advantage is always obtained at a high price: intellectual construction ignores everything that constitutes society-social practice, power, actions of social agents, their habitus, their position, strategies, and the internal complexities of society itself. The weaknesses and advantages inherent in a logical reconstruction of social processes can be studied in John R. Searle's The Construction of the Social World (1995). Through a critical confrontation of these strengths and weaknesses with Pierre Bourdieu's theory, it becomes clear how this theory actually contributes to a philosophy of society. Searle's publication is the logical continuation of his work on construction, which spans several decades. It leads from his theory of the speech act, via the concept of intentionality, to the "rediscovery of the mind," finally arriving at an "ontology of social facts."' Bourdieu's starting points are his culturalanthropological field research, and empirical sociological studies of traditional and modern societies. In these works, he develops a theory of social action and of a society characterized by power structures.2 Searle transfers an entire field out of the empiricism of sociology into the philosophy of mind, and submits it to an ontological model of hierarchical levels of reality. Bourdieu's aim has long been to dissociate the concept of the social agent from the philosophy of mind. Both Bourdieu and Searle invest a wealth of ideas in their attempt to reorder the respectively opposing discipline
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study the processes of ethnic re-migration and ethnicity formation, which bring co-ethnics back to their homeland, by comparing groups in a given situation in several countries.
Abstract: In Russia, everyone called me Jewish. But now that I'm in Israel, people say I'm Russian. It's painful[2]. Fast jede Art von Gemeinsamkeit und Gegensaetzlichkeit des Habitus und der Gepflogenheiten kann Anlass zu dem subjektiven Glauben werden, dass zwischen den sich anziehenden oder abstossenden Gruppen Stammverwandtschaft oder Stammfremdheit besteht. (Weber 1962:107) In public discourse and modern sociological literature, the concept of ethnicity is often treated as a category attached to persons or certain groups in a quasi-biological sense. In particular, this is the case when ethnicity is used as a substitute for race and thus inherits the Darwinian connotations of that concept. Modern thinking about genetics has a tendency to return to this type of argument. In this tradition, even social scientists have attributed certain positive or negative characteristics to whole groups.[3] Studies of immigrant groups based on survey or census data often carry a tendency to treat ethnicities as groups with certain inherent characteristics, comparable to treating collective public opinion in quantitative research. In particular, this is done in studies which rely only on one set of data limited to just one country. Critizing these tendencies, Katznelson has warned that social scientists should begin their analysis with events in the "early, fluid period of immigration, which have a determinative impact on subsequent patterns of group behaviour and not restrict their studies to the groups' behaviour patterns."(Katznelson 1973: 24) Another way for more in-depth analysis is to compare groups in a given situation in several countries. Classical social science literature has insisted that ethnicity not be a fixed part of a person or a group, but a social construct. Thus Max Weber remarks that ethnic and national belonging share a belief character (Weber 1962:305ff) and Benedict Anderson describes nations as "imagined communities."(Anderson 1983) Indeed, Hobsbawn's idea of "invented history" has had an important influence on the literature about the construction of social reality. Still, in the literature on ethnic groups, and the discourse on ethnicity the concept of ethnic identity is often treated in a rather unflexible way. However, ethnicity and ethnic identity a term taken from the field of psychological deviance problems - are dynamic phenomena. In much of the literature on immigration, scholars and writers are concerned with the adaptation of certain groups to a new environment, following the classical study on "The Polish Peasant in Europe and America", and its theories about family structures, "disintegration" and "social reorganization."[4] Although the dominant American perspective on ethnicity changed from a WASP-centered assimilationist perspective to form a white ethnic pluralist perspective (Alba 1990), it was always concerned with the problem of immigrant identities between the country of origin and the country of immigration. Thus immigrants are identified with the traditions of their country of origin, or traditions supposed to be of that country - a process that can easily lead to stereotyping, particularly when researchers share ethnocentric prejudices. To get a deeper insight into the processes of migration and ethnicity formation, it is particularly helpful to study the processes of ethnic migration, or re-migration, which bring co-ethnics back to their homeland. In the case of Greece and Turkey in the early 1920s, the processes of national homogenization were agreed between the two governments and conceived to provide for a state of peace and the end of conflict. In this case, however, religion was taken as the defining criterion of transfer, demonstrating the passing over from the older type of religious conflict and allegiance to the modern nation-state type. Although we find processes of ethnic re-migration with respect to the nation state since the end of World War I (under the paradigm of self determination of nations as a result of the dissolution of the Habsburg and Romanov dynasties which lead to an "unmixing" of peoples) there has been little systematic study devoted to these policies. …