“Bourdieu's_Work_Hovers_Incoherently_Between_Denying_That_Agency_Exists_and_Treating_It_in_Terms_of_Rational_Choice_Theory”._Discuss.

“Bourdieu’s work hovers incoherently between denying that agency exists and treating it in terms of rational choice theory”. Discuss. The notion of the individual subject has been at the centre of many key debates within anthropological theories. It is important to ground Bourdieu’s work with a discussion of Durkheim in order to understand the context of the theoretical debates that have ensued with regards to the individual subject and agency. Durkheim tried to understand individuality by arguing against the Adam Smith approach, which emphasizes free-market ideology and maintains that individuals are able to choose freely, stating that individualism is not the starting point of society but the product of a particular type of society (i.e. liberalist Western society). Durkheim argues that there is no moral basis for a society based on individualism as he maintains that there is no such thing as individual, separate moral beings as morality only comes out through society which creates moral beings. This relates to Durkheim’s argument against Adam Smith’s notion of the freely choosing individual as Durkheim believes that division of labour is not just a technical or economic factor, it also involves society in a ‘deeper’ way as people are created through these processes. Thus, Durkheim goes against the idea of a closed-off individual by arguing that individuals are in fact made by our society. (Durkheim: 1964). Similarly, Dumont’s work is important to the understanding of theories about the individual within anthropology. He explores the ‘ethnographic oddity’ that equality and freedom are categories linked with the individual, and of course although he does not deny that individuals exist, he aims to debunk individualism in order to understand that it is the product of a particular historical system. In “Homo Hierarchicus”, Dumont offers a comparative approach to modern ideology as he wants to understand the ideology of the caste system in India which contradicts the egalitarian theory which Western society holds. Dumont sets out to question the universality of Western individualist ideology by challenging the assumption that the human is an individual. (Dumont: Both Durkheim and Dumont stress that morality comes from one’s place in ‘the system’; this is true in the case of Durkheim’s mechanical solidarity and Dumont’s homo hierarchicus (the only difference being that Durkheim argues that in the case of mechanical solidarity everyone is similar, whereas Dumont’s homo hierarchicus stresses everyone’s difference). Their approaches can be contrasted with ones that stress that the source of morality comes from within, rather than within the social system in which one is placed, as is the case with theories on agency. Indeed, Ortner notes the shift back to the study of the individual subject through a recent emphasis on agency as a movement which began “into the eighties” in the field of anthropology. (Ortner: 1984). Such a shift can be seen as a reaction to the tension between ideas (such as the one’s put forward by Durkheim) that the individual is a product of the society and that therefore the individual is living within a constructed system and ideas based on individualism (a specifically Western notion, as Dumont points out) which sees individuals as acting on the world, according to their own wills and desires. This struggle within anthropology, between acknowledging individual action and understanding this as contained within a system, is something that Bourdieu tries to deal with. In this respect, it is possible to tackle the claim that “Bourdieu’s work hovers incoherently between denying that agency exists and treating it in terms of rational choice theory” as Bourdieu does indeed attempt a balancing act between determinacy and agency. Bourdieu seeks to link objective social structures with subjective social actions/enactments in “Outline of a Theory of Practice”. In an attempt to move away from a Geertzian emphasis on culture as a system of meanings external to the individual, Bourdieu wants to emphasize that individuals create their society, making it through their actions. In this way, Bourdieu argues against the idea of culture or society as existing in and of itself in ‘midair’, and wants to draw attention to the fact that individuals actively take part in the construction of society. In order to do so Bourdieu develops his theory of habitus, by which he refers to dispositions laid down in early childhood and patterns that make it possible for people to live in a world with taken-for-granted meanings. Thus, he describes habitus as a culturally specific set of dispositions as being inscribed in the body and directly related to the shaping of ways of being in the world. In doing so, Bourdieu introduces the body as a site of cultural reproduction by theorizing a relationship between the body and social constructed space, which he believes plays a key role in the embodying of social structures. *Question Bourdieu’s acceptance of the notion of embodiment' Bourdieu criticizes attempts to explain social actions by a study of rules located in an abstract social structure. (Habitus is not a set of rules but a “matrix of perceptions, appreciations and actions” that governs the way agents perceive and act in the world). Instead, Bourdieu argues that social ‘reality’ should be studied by looking at, not a system into which one is born, but a system which is re-enacted through the everyday. Bourdieu is able to argue that individuals create society through his theory of habitus by arguing that social norms are created through repeated practices, which inscribe dispositions through habitus, thus reproducing society. Therefore, Bourdieu’s theory of habitus recognizes the importance of actors through his focus on actors’ dispositions, the daily practices anchored in the body. Questions what makes people adhere to certain ways of behaving… Objectivism – does this misrepresent actors motivation' However, this focus on dispositions as being internalized through schemes, which is what allows every agent to act in accordance 3 modes of theoretical knowledge: 1) “phenomenological…sets out to make explicit the truth of primary experience of the social world… the unquestioning apprehension of the social world which, by definition, does not reflect on itself and excludes the question of the conditions of its own possibility.” 2) objectivist knowledge: “constructs the objective relations which structure practice and representations of practice… This construction presupposes a break with primary knowledge, whose tactily assumed presuppositions give the social world its self-evident, natural character.” 3) theory of practice: “makes possible a science of the dialectical relations between the objective structures to which the objectivist mode of knowledge gives access and the structured dispositions within which those structures are actualized and which tend to reproduce them.” (ch1, p.3). Read: “From the “rules” of honour to the sense of honour” esp. p.15. “agents are possessed by their habitus more than they possess it, this is because it acts within them as the organizing principle of their actions and because this modus operandi informing all through and action (including thought of action) reveals itself only in the opus operatum.” (ibid: p.l8). Objectivism: “failing to construct practice other than negatively, objectivism is condemned either to ignore the whole question of the principle underlying the production of the regularities which it then contest itself with recording; or to reify abstractions by the fallacy of treating…culture/structures etc… as realities endowed with a social efficacy, capable of acting as agents responsible for historical actions or as a power capable of constraining practices.p.27. ( i.e. not sufficient analysis… • Outline Bourdieu’s theory of habitus (refer to lec. notes) • Reading – denying agency X rational choice theory