Habitus theory explains ethnicity’s persistence and flexibility through embodiment, agency, and collective-individual interplay

Evidence

One way this can be achieved is via Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus (see Bourdieu, 1984, 1990a, 1990b; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). The application of habitus to ethnicity and ethnic identity formation has been discussed at length elsewhere (see Bentley, 1987; May, 1999b, 2001; Smaje, 1997; Wicker, 1997). However, for the purposes of this discussion, it is enough to say that the four key dimensions of habitus highlighted in Bourdieu’s work - embodiment, agency, the interplay between past and present, and the interrelationship between collective and individual trajectories - provide us with a useful means by which the continuing purchase and malleability of ethnicity, in its particular contexts, can be critically examined. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 937

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distills Bourdieu’s habitus into four analyzable dimensions applicable to ethnicity.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of Bourdieu from cultural theory and to social capital literature (Coleman’s rational-choice vs. Bourdieu’s practice theory). — connects to: Habit’s virtuality marks the shift from Greek to modern subjectivity — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 613; Habitus derives from group membership as much as from class — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1066; the MOC “The Forge and the Other: How Power, Discourse, and Encounter Cast the Self” (+2 more)