The Habitus Process

A Biopsychosocial Conception

Andreas Pickel

Working Paper CSGP 05/1

www.trentu.ca/globalpolitics

Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

The concept of habitus, popularized in the last two decades of the twentieth century

especially by the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias, is frequently employed in

the social and biosocial sciences. The concept of habitus seems to offer a fruitful way of

dealing with some fundamental problems in social theory today by providing a promising

conceptual linkage between cultural, social, psychological and biological dimensions of

reality. The task of this paper is to work towards a clearer and more systematic

conception of habitus based on a systemic and mechanismic philosophy of science. The

paper surveys the various forms in which habitus appears in the social world, presents a

systematic account of the structures and effects of habitus, and sketches a dynamic model

of how habitus as process in biopsychosocial systems works. The illustrative case to be

discussed is that of national habitus and homo nationis as a biopsychosocial system.

2

The Habitus Process

A Biopsychosocial Conception

I agree that cultures are not immutable “essences” and that they have no fixed

contours. I also agree that their “content” is not “self-evident.” But to deny the

reality of that “content” altogether and reduce us all, as cultural beings, to

members of myriad “groups” – cross-cutting, overlapping, and ever-evolving,

means to overlook the central reality. . . no on is more acutely aware of this reality

than a bilingual who lives his or her life in two languages and two cultures, and the

testimony of bilingual and bicultural writers is loud and clear (Wierzbicka 1997,

p.18).

Introduction

The study of habitus has both a long tradition and a short history. Matters that fall under

the conception of habitus as presented here have been examined in general terms such as

customs and cultures at least since Montesquieu, and under the headings of ideology

(Marx), milieux (Durkheim) and indeed habitus (Weber) by the classics of modern

sociology. Weber’s famous thesis about the relationship between capitalism and the

Protestant “work ethic” was only one aspect of social reality for which he considered

habitus sociologically significant. Others concerned such fundamental matters as

political legitimation and modern bureaucracy. Not only Durkheim and Weber, but also

Marx, Comte, Tönnies, Simmel and other social theorists of the late nineteenth and early

twentieth century (Camic 1986, p.1050) employed the concepts of habit and habitus1 in

the broad sense of guiding action. But what is the sociological significance of habitus

today? And what does it add to the social scientist’s toolbox that is not already covered

by other concepts of normatively and rationally guided patterns of conduct? The

argument to be defended here is that unlike other conceptions, the concept of habitus

provides a promising conceptual linkage between cultural, social, pychological and

biological dimensions of reality.

The concept of habitus, long neglected or ignored, made a comeback in the

scholarly literature starting in the 1980s. The contributions of two scholars can be

credited for the revival of the study of habitus, Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias.

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Bourdieu, whose work has been published since the late 1960s, has been the more

successful of the two in terms of frequency of citation of his work. Norbert Elias’s key

work The Process of Civilization (first published in German in 1936 and in English in

1939) was not widely recognized as a classic until the 1990s. However, there is little

doubt that Elias has strongly influenced Bourdieu’s own work on habitus. The work of

both on habitus has found strong resonance in traditional disciplines as well as in a

surprising range of applied and multidisciplinary fields. Applied fields include law and

management studies, medical anthropology and educational ethnography, the sociology

of sports and health psychology, environmental policy and biomedical engineering.

Multidisciplinary fields include political economy, social psychology, and historical

sociology.

I myself have become attracted to this concept in my work on nationalism and

national identity for which habitus – in this case national habitus – seemed to capture

important cultural dimensions in political and economic change processes for which I

have been unable to find an adequate conceptual framework. When I employed the

concept of habitus in a paper on the continuing significance of the national in the age of

globalization, some readers rightly criticized that I had not provided an explicit

definition, let alone a systematic conception, of habitus. Regrettably, notwithstanding the

richness of their contributions, neither Elias (Smith 2001) nor Bourdieu (King 2000) have

provided such a clear and systematic conception of habitus. As Crossley (2001, p.81) has

put it with respect to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, “there is more potential for an

elaboration and deepening of this concept than his work to date has achieved.”2 The

present paper tries to make a contribution towards this goal. The paper, however, is not

designed as an internal critique or elaboration of Bourdieu’s and Elias’s conceptions of

habitus. Instead, it approaches the question of habitus from a systemic and mechanismic

philosophy of science perspective based primarily on the work of Mario Bunge (2003).3

The conception of habitus presented here may suggest new ways to approach a

number of widely recognized, unproductive divisions, both conceptually and in scientific

practice. The conception of habitus to be presented here provides an example of a

conceptual linkage between cultural, social, psychological and biological dimensions of

reality that have proved difficult to incorporate into one general framework or approach.

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The conception of “habitus as process” to be developed in this paper claims to identify

and conceptually bring together crucial cultural mechanisms at work in interconnected

social, psychological, and biological systems the linkage of which has not been

systematically studied.

The paper proceeds in four steps. I begin by discussing the various forms in

which habitus appears in the social world. Next comes a systematic account of the

structures and effects of habitus. The third section presents a dynamic model of how

habitus as process works, along with an empirical illustration. A summary of the major

points and arguments precedes the final two sections, a discussion of national habitus and

concluding remarks on homo nationis as a biopsychosocial system.

5

Phenomenology: What forms does habitus take?

Since several elements of habitus are in fact at least partially observable in individual and

social behaviour, it might be useful to start the analysis by identifying some of them.

[Figure 1 about here]

As figure 1 illustrates, a habitus takes a variety of different forms from simple automatic

behaviours such as holding open a door to generalized and complex forms of interacting

with others in a particular professional setting. The proper handshake in a particular

social situation, general ways of identifying and solving problems at a workplace, and

even what happiness or the good life means and entails, are other examples. Some of the

many forms that a habitus can take in individual persons as represented in figure 1 may

suggest that the concept of habitus refers primarily to the characteristics of individuals –

patterns of thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, and interacting4 – in short, that habitus is an

individual thing. But the theoretical significance of habitus lies in the fact that habitus is

above all a social thing. A habitus emerges in concrete social systems – a family, a firm,

an artistic subculture, a political organization, or a society. (I use a very broad concept of

social system that includes anything from loose social networks and groups to

organizations and state-societies.) It is this concrete social system that marks the context

in which we can draw up a model (or “ideal type”) of a system-specific habitus, based on

a wide range of observations and conjectures.5 Thus from a macrosociological point of

view it does not make sense to conceptualize habitus as the property of an individual.

Instead, habitus should be seen as the property of a social system. The habitus of a social

system is reflected in different ways in the personalities and “behaviours” of the

individuals comprising the system (i.e. in their unique “personalized habiti”). But a

habitus is generated by the system, i.e. it emerges from the joint activities and

interactions of the individuals making up a system, not from the characteristics of its

individual components.6 It is a key proposition of this paper that a habitus is the

emergent property of a social system. This proposition implies strong structural

causation in the matter of habitus, that is, from properties of the social system to the

behaviour of its individual components. The process of causation from individual

6

persons to social and symbolic systems exists, but given the emergent nature of many

systemic properties, such properties cannot be explained in terms of individual

“behaviour.” Moreover, the nature of the individual components of social systems is

certainly not as unproblematic as many approaches in the social sciences tend to assume.

What both individualist and structuralist approaches in the social sciences treat as

“individuals” are in fact biopsychosocial systems. To say that an individual person is a

biopsychosocial system means that individual behaviour and action, thought and emotion,

can be accounted for only if we know something about each of the systems involved and

even more importantly how specific biological, psychological and social systems interact

with each other. Neither methodological individualism nor methodological holism in the

social sciences approach individual persons in this fashion. They differ mainly with

respect to the direction of causation they presuppose as primary in the relationship

between “individuals” and “society.” For both types of methodology “the individual” is

either unproblematic (holist or structuralist approaches) or subject to a priori assumptions

of rationality that ignore the relevant results of the biological and psychological sciences

(individualist approaches).

The conception presented here does not speak of “individuals” and “society.”

Instead there is “agency” in a number of different systems. I have proposed that habitus

is the property of a concrete social system – a family, a church, a school, a firm, a

government institution or an entire “nation.” Being in large part mediated through social

representations – in discourse, ritual, everyday practice – a habitus is at the same time

always part of semiotic or symbolic systems. Of course a habitus is also part of “an

individual,” but I will speak here instead of psychological and biological systems, i.e.

minds and brains. This gives us a total of four types of systems relevant for habitus:

biological, psychological, sociological, and semiotic. Figure 2 indicates what habiti are,

where they are situated, what they do, and what major effects they have. It is important

to note that a habitus, although defined here as a property of a social system, exists

simultaneously in all four types of systems. In other words, the habitus process occurs –

and therefore needs to be examined – in social systems, symbolic systems, individual

minds and brains. Properties of all four types of system can be causally relevant, which

rules out social, semiotic, psychic or biological reduction. We will begin by considering

7

each of the four system types separately and in a subsequent step focus on the major

linkages between them.

8

Statics: structures and effects of habitus

What habiti are and where they are situated (lines 1 and 2 in figure 2).

Habiti are emergent properties of social systems. These properties are manifested in

individual and collective actions and representations by components of the system in

question. Put more simply, they are system-specific patterns of “behaving”: wanting,

feeling, thinking, doing, and interacting.7 A simple example is: wanting to “make it to

the big leagues” in the social system of Canadian hockey; feeling good about that dream;

thinking that it is a realistic possibility; training and playing hard; using hockey-specific

walk and talk. Social systems have – their own or shared – symbolic systems that depict

the habitus of the social system. These are discursive and non-discursive social

representations of the system concerning, among others, its origins, functioning, place in

the social world, mission, and appropriate ways of “behaving.”

[figure 2 about here]

We move next to the biopsychic systems relevant for habitus, i.e. mind and brain. Rather

than speaking abstractly of “individuals,” I refer to persons as biological and

psychological systems, with consciousness and a personality as emergent properties

(Searle 2000). This, as we will see, facilitates an analysis of the habitus process in all

four systems (see next section). The mind as the relevant psychological system reflects a

habitus in specific cognitive, emotional and volitional processes. Some psychologists

(e.g. Lester 1993, 1997, 2003; Aijzen 2001; survey in Mayer 2001) have proposed that

the self is composed of subsystems (“subselves”). As the social psychologist Pierre

Moessinger (1999, p.53) puts it: “A subself is an interconnected system of attitudes,

values, cognitions, and behaviors. Some subselves are coherent and well-integrated (the

cognitive and moral subselves, for example), and others are poorly integrated and not

very autonomous, such as the affective subself.” (For another, sociological conception of

the self compatible with the present argument, see Wiley 1994; cf. also Callero 2003.)

Thus habiti at this level can be represented by widely used concepts such as “cognitive

schemata” and “cultural scripts” (Wierzbicka 1993). While current psychological

research on personality is an active field in the discipline with several established and

9

new approaches, it is far from a consensus on the ontology of the mind (Funder 2001). It

is important to note, however, that personality psychology, as well as social psychology,

are likely to be the most relevant fields for the study of “habitus and mind” since they

recognize, at least in principle, that individual minds do not only think, but at the same

time also act, and that they do so in particular social contexts. That is not the case with

many other parts of contemporary psychology, especially cognitive psychology. This is

not to say that such approaches do not generate useful insights for the study of habitus.

Thus research on reasoning, judgment and choice seems to have settled on “dual process

models” which distinguish between “automatic and controlled processing,” that is,

between “immediate affective responses and more effortful cognitive responses” (Shafir

and LeBoeuf 2002). While habitus might seem to fall into the former, more automatic

type of process, it is according to the conception presented here clearly also involved in

controlled reasoning and analytic intelligence for which both cultural frames and

cognitive schemata play a significant role.8 Marshall (2002 ) and Hammond (2003), for

instance, attempt to link the social phenomena of ritual and of solidarity, mainstays of

classic, especially Durkheimian, sociology, to neurophysiological and social-

psychological mechanisms.

The brain as a biological system is involved in habitus insofar as psychological

processes are (also) brain processes, specifically neurophysiological and

neuropsychological processes. Neurological research on learning, and specifically on

habit learning, for instance has found that two memory systems, in the basal ganglia and

the medial temporal lobe, are simultaneously activated in learning processes and under

certain conditions competitively interfere with each other (Packard and Knowlton 2002).

Recent studies in neurophysiology, neurobiology, neuroimaging, and computation have

made progress in modeling the neural basis of the functioning of the prefrontal cortex,

which is assumed to play a central role in cognitive control (Miller 2001). The study of

brain processes involved in habituation, including in non-primate species (Zaccardi et al.

2001), obviously has implications for the habitus process. Smith and Stevens (2002), for

example, attempt to map the neurosociological mechanisms of how activity in core brain

systems constrains deep patterns in social life, such as altruism and reciprocity. Having

10

surveyed what habiti are and where they are situated, we turn now to some of their major

effects.

Major effects of habitus in biological, psychological, social and symbolic systems

(see lines 3 and 4 in figure 2)

I have proposed that habitus is an emergent property in a social system. While some

elements of a habitus can remain stable for a long time (e.g. the high value placed on

certain “behaviours” in a culture9), habiti are constantly changing. A social habitus may

in fact change more quickly than the “personalized habiti” in individuals, which seeem to

“ossify” over time (more accurately, there is an “age-related reduction in cultural efficacy

or efficiency”; Baltes et al. 1999). At the same time, carried by individuals and groups,

habiti can move to “new” social systems where they survive (usually in hybrid form) or

quickly disappear. Immigrant communities provide rich empirical evidence for such

processes (Portes 2001).

A habitus can be mapped as a property or set of properties, that is, as a pattern of

typical modes of thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, and interacting in a particular social

system. Such descriptive maps10 are a precondition for developing models of a habitus,

which in turn can serve a variety of explanatory purposes. Such habitus models will be

by definition static, since they describe a given pattern under specific spatio-temporal, i.e.

historical conditions. Habitus, however, can also be conceived as process, that is, as part

of the processes with which typical modes of thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, and

interacting are bound up. This process conception is the precondition for making a

habitus model dynamic. While habitus as process does not exclude recognizing stability

of habitus patterns or stability of the social systems in which it occurs, the theoretical

significance of the process view lies in the fact that it allows us to deal with change –

changing habitus and/or changing systems. In contrast to viewing habiti as sets of

properties only, the process perspective creates the precondition for examining

theoretically and empirically not simply whether but how such change processes occur. I

will present a general model of habitus as process in the next section. In the remainder of

this section, let us briefly look at effects that major habitus processes have in the four

systems under study.

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At the most basic level, i.e. in biological and psychological systems, processes of

habituation and dehabituation play a central role – processes that occur in many

biological organisms. Specific habiti are bound up with basic needs for food, shelter, and

security, though they are not necessarily “functional” for satisfying those needs. Clearly,

a person may be or remain unaware of a particular habitus and its actual consequences.

She may fail to recognize its dysfunctionality; fail to mobilize the requisite will to

change; miss the more complex cognitive skills to make a change; or be caught in a social

situation that severely constrains the room for change. While processes of habituation

and dehabituation are biologically “grounded,” the habitus process in psychological

systems also involves certain patterns of thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, and interacting

of which a person is conscious.11 It further involves cognitive schemata, specifically

“cultural scripts,” through which reflective action is organized. For instance, certain

moral schemata contain presuppositions that guide reflections on such matters as, “what

is the right route to take in this situation?,” or “what is my role in this group?” There are

also evaluative schemata that may lead persons to analyze situations in terms of

maximizing personal utility (e.g. rational choice) or in terms of God’s word (religious

doctrines). Contrary to the claims of rational choice theorists (e.g. Becker 1992), not all

habiti have been adopted or are retained because of their individual utility, nor is it

possible to undertake such complex tasks as the calculation of utility in the absence of

already existing cognitive schemata that are logically and empirically prior to reflection

and domain-specific.12 Since the present conception of habitus encompasses both simple

behaviours and complex evaluative schemata, it becomes possible to pose related

theoretical and empirical questions rather than adopting one or the other a priori

assumption. In the corresponding analyses, the problem of habitus vs reflection, or

reason vs passion, or free will vs determination would not be approached as an abstract or

general philosophical question, but rather would be placed in a “multisystemic” context.

This means that habitus processes occurring in social and symbolic systems become part

of the analysis.

While the functional significance of a habitus in biological and psychological

systems relates to a person’s basic and more complex needs and wants, their functional

adequacy will further depend on realities in the corresponding social and symbolic

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systems. Significance and standards of adequacy of habiti, possibly even for the most

basic human needs, are themselves defined in the symbolic system which sets relevant

constraints and supplies symbolic resources. Needs and their satisfaction are of course

not merely symbolic constructs but material realities in particular social systems. The

habitus process is centrally involved in the reproduction of social and symbolic systems,

and thus in their stability over time. However, the habitus process is also involved in

adaptation and breakdown of social and symbolic systems. Think of the changing role

and gradual breakdown of Marxist-Leninist ideology, as well as the more sudden regime

breakdown, in Communist countries. Both rapid habitus change and long-term habitus

stability can be a source of systemic stability or breakdown. The process view of habitus

makes it possible to examine the mechanisms underlying such inertia as well as changes

in social, symbolic, and psychological systems and their interactions. Having surveyed

some of the systemic functions and effects of habitus, it is now time to describe how

habitus as process works.

Dynamics: How the habitus process works

Figure 3 provides a schematic model of the habitus process. Clearly, this is a bare-bones

representation of the process, but one that I hope serves to emphasize the potential value

of this conception of habitus. The first thing to note is the basic structure of the diagram.

[Figure 3 about here]

The box in the centre of figure 3 outlines the habitus process, in what I call the “habitus-

personality complex.” The habitus-personality complex is linked (at the top) to a social

system. As I have proposed earlier, habitus is an emergent property of a social system.

The habitus-personality complex is also linked (at the bottom) to a biopsychic system

which generates a personality as an emergent property. Thus there is a bottom-up

causality and a top-down causality at work. The habitus-personality complex, while

composed of two emergent properties (bottom-up: personality; top-down: habitus), can

also be seen as a process. In this view, the habitus mechanism refers to the working of

system-specific patterns of wanting, feeling, thinking, doing and interacting, while the

13

personality mechanism refers to individual forms of wanting, feeling, thinking, doing and

interacting. The two simultaneously operating mechanisms produce self-consciousness

and identity, and what Elias calls the “we”-“I” balance in a personality (Elias 1991).

The habitus-personality complex is only one, albeit fundamental process linking

social systems and “individuals” (i.e. biopsychic systems). Another fundamental one is

the production-consumption process. For instance, food scarcity affects social systems

regardless of particular habitus structures. Of course the specific effects of such

economic processes on social systems and their components are in part determined by

established habiti. Thus it will make a significant difference whether existing habiti

relating to just distribution are peaceful and egalitarian or violent and class-based. A

further fundamental process is the political power-authority process. For instance, a

political regime conducting war affects social systems above all by killing and injuring

people, again regardless of these systems’ particular habitus structures. The specific

effects of such political processes on social systems and their components will however

be strongly influenced by established habiti. Thus it will make a significant difference

whether or not existing habiti relating to legitimate power can and are likely to call the

regime’s war policies into question or whether they will impose a “patriotic consent.”

The conception proposed here therefore analytically distinguishes (but does not

theoretically separate) the habitus process from other – economic, political, and “natural”

(environmental) – processes. The theoretical challenge is to identify and explain the

working of particular concatenations of habitus mechanisms and other (economic,

political, ecological) mechanisms giving rise to specific social phenomena. This paper is

limited to discussing the habitus process.

The causal relationships in the habitus process flow in both directions, and the

general nature of these relationships can now be specified. (1) A system-specific habitus

shapes the individuals making up that system (top-down causation). More specifically,

the system-specific patterns of wanting, feeling, thinking, doing and interacting reach a

person’s subselves through social experiences and are processed in affective, cognitive,

and moral subsystems (or their equivalents; see above). This processing involves the

interaction between subselves (minds) and neural networks (brains). (2) An individual

personality affects the social systems of which it is a part (bottom-up causation). More

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specifically, individual forms of wanting, feeling, thinking, doing and interacting shape

social systems. Social systems of course have in addition non-reducible, emergent

properties and are causally affected by their social environment (i.e. other social systems)

and their natural environment. The habitus process therefore, to repeat, represents only

one set of mechanisms in large social processes by which most social systems are

affected. Before defending the usefulness and relevance of the conception presented

here, let us briefly consider an example.

At the top of figure 3 there is the category of “social system” – used in the

broadest sense to refer to any social formation from families to state-societies, and from

fleeting groups such as a crowd of demonstrators to permanent institutions such as the

Catholic Church and General Motors. Such a broad conception of social system is not

widely used, at least not in the social sciences, and generally elicits skeptical reactions. It

should not be confused with systems theories, such as those of Parsons or Luhmann. The

best philosophical exposition of systemism can be found in the work of Mario Bunge

(1998; 2003). The concept of social system as used here is compatible with other, though

sometimes vague concepts such as fields, domains, and games (see e.g. Fligstein 2001)

and the concept of institution in the “new institutionalism” (Hollingsworth 2000). This

broad conception is particularly useful for present purposes since any social system thus

understood may give rise to a particular habitus process, as the following case of an

unstable and short-lived social system illustrates.

The habitus of today’s crowd of demonstrators was probably not much different from

those of other, similar protest events. As people follow the organizers’ call for a protest

march along a predetermined route, most participants will be familiar with the habitus of

such an event while others will be familiarized with the habitus by participating in this

particular event. Protesters will bring signs and whistles, sing and shout, and generally

respect that the event should be peaceful. They feel concerned enough about what they

perceive to be at issue to participate, and they expect to feel good by participating. They

may interact with other demonstrators, though anonymity will remain the general

condition. The crowd may briefly assemble at some point during the march to listen to

speakers, but at the end it will quickly dissolve. This rough model of the demonstration

habitus will be followed with some variations at every event of this kind – that is,

15

because of the nature of the social system which the participants see themselves joining.

Of course there may be deviations – some demonstrations may end in violence, or some

groups of demonstrators will refuse to disperse. This does not change the demonstration

habitus as such, for most people will continue to join protest marches expecting to take

part in a non-violent event and to go home after.

Not all deviations from an existing habitus, however, will remain such. Some may

turn into lasting innovations (Tarrow 1998). The innovation comes about on the initiative

– planned and/or spontaneous – of some demonstrators (usually themselves concrete

groups, i.e. social systems), and it will be replicated in future demonstrations by others

depending in part on the perceived success of the new practice. Whether or not the new

practice will be adopted also depends on the nature of each subsequent demonstration as

a particular social system and event: the number of people who turn up, the weather,

police presence, activities of extremists, the current political climate, etc. It will therefore

not be fully explainable in terms of the “behaviours” of all the individuals at one of those

subsequent demonstrations, let alone their preferences. Ultimately the changed habitus

(i.e. the addition of the new practice to the repertoire) will be an emergent property of a

particular social system under all of those specific conditions (though other conditions or

configurations might have had the same effect, a fact referred to as “multiple

realizability” (e.g. Sawyer 2004)). Fundamental innovations are those that at some point

become part of the standard “demo habitus,” i.e. when they no longer depend on all those

contingencies but are now routinely practiced. It is obviously much easier to ascertain

such habitus changes than to explain them in terms of individual actions and context.

This is of course true for all systemic properties that are not reducible to individual

components (Bunge 2003). An unstable and short-lived social system like a

demonstration provides a good example of habitus as an emergent property of a particular

type of social system. What makes a demonstration a demonstration rather than a riot or

a leisure walk is the expectations of the participants, and thus the appropriate habitus

informing their actions. These expectations are part of a larger knowledge system which

contains the description of a demonstration and its corresponding habitus. The mass

demonstration has become a global form of collective action, though national and other

specificities remain central (Tarrow 2001). When demonstrations turn into riots, as is

16

sometimes the case, this is usually in spite of the expectations and goals of most

participants. It is the result of police action and/or small groups of demonstrators setting

off an escalation mechanism. With the nature of the event having changed from

demonstration to riot, demonstrators can then decide either to leave or to join the riot with

its own particular habitus.13

More stable social systems tend to have clearer enforcement mechanisms for their

habitus – established processes, rituals and routines that are usually difficult or costly to

challenge or ignore. An example in most contemporary “modern” families is the

increasing rejection of elements of the family habitus, especially the specific authority

structure, as children become adolescents – a normal part of the individualization process

on which modern culture places such emphasis. While certain modifications may be

negotiated between parents and children, no one expects the working out of a new family

habitus as grown-up children establish their own households and families. In social

systems such as organizations with written rules and bureaucratic procedures, habitus

also matters greatly (which is why it is not enough to analyze formal institutions and

procedures), a fact that is reflected in such phrases as organizational culture, political

culture, economic culture, etc.

Most social systems overlap with others – some hierarchically, some horizontally.

The same applies to system-specific habiti. The more powerful and socially significant a

social system, the more important its habitus for its members (functionally and/or

symbolically) relative to other social systems to which they belong. Especially in larger

social systems, a dominant habitus is usually confronted by challengers. The relationship

of different habiti with each other is of course crucially important but will remain a loose

end in this paper. My hunch, and my hypothesis in the last section of this paper, is that

there are first-order or meta-habiti in and through which other, more minor habiti are

integrated (see also Frank and Meyer 2002).

What is the point of this model? Most important, it sheds light on processes that in

most approaches end up in a “black box.” The habitus-personality complex models

psychocultural and sociocultural processes that both social science and psychological

approaches find difficult to account for. In psychology, the psyche-culture linkage is

recognized as of fundamental importance only in somewhat marginal subfields such as

17

social psychology and personality psychology. In the social sciences, the basic

significance and the methodological implications of studying “cultural variables” have

always been controversial. Mainstream approaches in sociology, political science, and

economics have tended to steer clear of psychocultural and sociocultural dimensions of

reality, leaving the field since the 1980s to postmodern approaches and cultural studies,

which have little sympathy for scientific standards. However, the widespread use of such

psychocultural and sociocultural concepts as “discourse,” “identity,” “meaning” and

“reflexivity” by many social scientists underscores the perceived importance of the

“cultural” dimension. The argument presented here is a philosophically and

methodologically self-conscious effort to conceptualize sociocultural phenomena by

specifying key systems and mechanisms as well as emergent properties and processes

(Bunge 2004). The biopsychosocial model of the habitus process proposed here

establishes explicit conceptual links between types of processes that are under the

jurisdiction of different disciplines and their specialized approaches. How, then, does

this conception improve on those of other basic approaches?

Rational actor models, for instance, rest on a priori assumptions that cut them off

from cultural dimensions of reality in two directions. Upward by denying –

methodologically and sometimes even ontologically – the existence of social systems,

hence ruling out the explanatory significance of sociocultural macroprocesses in

principle. Downward by postulating a rational actor – as a methodological device and

sometimes as an ontological fact – an ideal type that is immune from the findings of

psychology and in effect denies the explanatory significance of psychocultural processes

in principle. The model of the habitus process proposed here links up at both “severed

ends” of the rational actor model, i.e. to sociocultural and psychocultural dimensions.

The model thereby does not deny the explanatory significance of rational action in

principle, but problematizes this dimension by contextualizing it in the habitus-

personality complex (see figure 3 above). The framework of rational individual action

under constraints is replaced with a biopsychosocial conception of a habitus process that

provides an alternative framework allowing us to search for rather than assume major

mechanisms underlying social life.

18

Structuralist approaches, by contrast, are all about social systems but often do not

take the system components sufficiently seriously. The causal efficacy of individual

actors, for example, is considered low in structuralist models, shifting the major weight of

the explanation on the “logic” (in my terms: on the emergent or systemic properties) of

social systems. But what is rarely spelled out are the processes and mechanisms by

which social structures shape individuals without at the same time depriving them of their

agency. While structuralist approaches are in principle open to examining sociocultural

processes, they are not conceptually equipped to link up to psychocultural processes. The

habitus conception presented here provides this conceptual link with the view of

individuals as biopsychosocial systems as well as the dynamic or process connection in

the form of the habitus-personality complex.

If habitus as conceived here encompasses neural networks and brain processes;

feelings, thoughts, and actions; a range of psychological dispositions; as well as social

systems, power, economics, institutions, cultures, and languages, isn’t this conception of

habitus much too broad? It is important to note that only a broad, philosophically tenable

conception of this major dimension of social processes allows us to move beyond the

confines imposed by disciplinary boundaries and methodological conventions such as

those of rational actor and structuralist approaches discussed above. The systemic

perspective underlying this broad conception of habitus as a process running “both ways”

between social and biopsychosocial systems via symbolic systems provides a

transdisciplinary framework within which to relate and integrate known –

neurobiological, biopsychological, psychosocial and social – habitus mechanisms and

formulate problems leading to the discovery of new mechanisms. The point is not to

work towards some general social theory of habitus but rather to develop a general

framework within which to handle biopsychosocial processes and mechanisms. Far from

an exercise in abstract theorizing, such a framework responds to the needs felt perhaps

most strongly by those studying practical problems such as health, mental disorders, or

substance abuse (e.g. Leukefeld/Leukefeld 1999; Kordon/Hohagen 2000; Egger 2001) –

problems that require a broad biopsychosocial conception of habitus. At this point it may

be useful to review some of the major results of the discussion so far before discussing

how they apply in a concrete case.

19

Summary

The conception of the habitus process presented here has distinguished between systems

of different kinds, the most basic distinction being that between social systems and

biopsychosocial systems. The following propositions recapitulate the major points made

for each, and one (proposition 7) still to be made in the next section.

Social Systems

1. A habitus is a property of a social system.

2. To each concrete social system may correspond a particular habitus. If there is

more than one habitus, there will be a dominant one, since habitus is closely

related to power.

3. Lower-level social systems (e.g. households, schools), in addition to having their

own habiti, will share the habitus of higher-level social systems (esp. state-

societies/”nations”) to which they belong.

4. Since most people simultaneously belong to several social systems, habiti overlap

and intermix.

5. There are more and less significant social systems and habiti – defined in power,

authority and functional terms in relation to particular individuals and groups.

6. Habiti strongly shape but do not exlusively determine individual personalities.

Put differently, habiti “loosely structure” personalities.

7. The single most important habitus in the late twentieth and early twenty-first

centuries is the national habitus, corresponding to the significance of state-

societies. Pervading most other social systems, the national habitus can be

described as a meta-habitus (see the following section).

Biopsychosocial systems (“individuals”)

8. Individuals are biopsychosocial systems.

20

9. Individuals develop personalities, that is, typical forms of feeling, thinking, doing,

and interacting. A personality can be conceived as a biopsychosocial system at a

particular point in time.

10. Individuals are subject to biological, psychological and sociological “laws” of

personal development (re: age, socialization into and appropriation of particular

habiti) and personality change (voluntary and involuntary).14 These processes of

development and change strongly shape how habiti are acquired (both actively

and passively).

11. A personality is composed of subsystems (or subselves), such as cognitive,

emotional, and volitional subsystems. While the activity in the subsystems is

shaped by particular habiti, a person is capable of adopting/reshaping/abandoning

parts of a habitus. The degree to which this is possible depends in part on the

significance of the habitus and social system in question, in part on individual

characteristics of the person.

12. An individual person has a unified consciousness, that is, one psychic “space”

(Searle 2000) in which feeling, thinking, and wanting occur, i.e. in which the

subsystems operate.

13. A unified consciousness (a self) is an emergent property of brain activity, that is,

of neurophysiological processes in and between particular areas (subsystems) of

the brain.

National Habitus as Meta-Habitus

In this section of the paper, I will try to strengthen and further illustrate my conception of

habitus as process in social and biopsychosocial systems by discussing the case of

“national habitus.” Since there is a great deal of interest in questions of national identity,

nationalism, etc. in numerous scholarly literatures employing a variety of different

approaches, the area is particularly useful for demonstrating the potential relevance of the

habitus conception that so far in this paper has been presented in mostly general and

abstract terms.

The phrase “national habitus” is not common currency in the social sciences. In

fact, most social scientists would probably be either skeptical or simply dismissive in

21

response to the suggestion that national habitus is a useful concept referring to a powerful

social reality. It is perhaps no coincidence that Bourdieu, the most well-known and

influential theorist of habitus, nowhere speaks about national habitus. In fact, outside the

specialized and somewhat insular nationalism literature15, related concepts such as

“national culture” and “national character” are eyed with suspicion as politicized,

essentialized, and theoretically questionable. The concept of national identity is taken

more seriously and is more widely used, though many argue that the significance of

national identity should not be overrated. In postmodern, globalizing times national

identity is at best one among other basic collective identities, and perhaps one that is

being quite rapidly eclipsed – by larger global and transnational identities, on the one

hand, and more particularistic collective identities, on the other. In this section of the

paper, I will argue that conceiving the national as simply a collective identity misses

important dimensions of social reality that a conception of national habitus is able to

capture. National habitus does indeed exemplify all the manifestions of habitus presented

in figure 1. The following discussion of national habitus will stay as closely as possible

with the major points summarized above, noting where I believe this conception has the

potential to add something to the debate.

If, as proposition 1 asserts, a habitus is an emergent property of a social system,

then what are the social systems that give rise to a national habitus? My conception of

habitus as process rejects what is widely taken for granted, i.e. that nations are concrete

social systems in their own right. The fact that the nationalism literature has failed to

reach anything approaching a consensual definition of nation (Smith 2001) suggests that

the ontological status of “nation” remains essentially contested. Rather than adopting one

or another contested definition of what the nation is, the habitus model reconceptualizes

the nation as a process. This means that the nation is not a social entity, but a property of

certain social systems (real social entities), a property generated by a “nationalizing”

process. Which systems are in question? The widely used phrase “nation-state” suggests

that there are two systems, a state and a nation, that come together in the nation-state.

Since however most contemporary states contain more than one national group while

numerous national groups do not have their own state, the phrase “nation-state” has been

increasingly considered problematic. Analytical distinctions such as those between

22

Staatsnation, Kulturnation and Volksnation or between “state-nations” (i.e. nations

dominant in a particular state) and “stateless nations” or “state-seeking” and “non-state

seeking” illustrate the complexity of the problem. But they are unsatisfactory conceptual

solutions since they presuppose that, whatever their relationship to a particular state,

nations are concrete social systems. The habitus process approach to the nation, by

contrast, rejects this view. Modern societies bounded by a territorial state are real social

systems, they are state-societies in which nationalizing processes occur. But they are not

the only ones. Nationalizing processes also occur in educational institutions, political

organizations, economic organizations, clans, families and social networks from the

global level to the local level. Thus to say that a national habitus is an emergent property

of a social system makes it possible to avoid the problem of having to define a nation as a

real social entity while at the same time taking account of the fact that not only modern

state-societies, but also many other social systems, are part of nationalizing processes.

This, perhaps surprisingly, includes social systems that are referred to as international,

transnational, and global. For instance, a multinational/transnational/global corporation

is to a significant extent shaped by the national habitus of the originating country

(Doremus et al. 1998). Of course such a social system is also shaped by other habiti,

such as a firm-specific habitus, an industry-specific habitus, or the habiti of specific

groups and networks within the corporation. So-called transnational migrants, to take

another example, can be best understood in terms of a combination of nationalizing

processes: the national habitus of the home country in its interaction with the national

habitus of the receiving society under specific conditions – with creolization as an

emergent property. The concept of “transnational communities” is merely an analytical

category; real communities are subject to specific nationalizing processes. The point is

that the habitus process approach does not need to pose the question whether a particular

system is national, transnational, or global but asks which particular habiti shape the

behaviour of particular concrete social systems.

Proposition 2 asserts that to each concrete social system may correspond a

particular habitus. If there is more than one habitus in a system, there is likely to be a

dominant one since habiti are closely related to power. The overriding importance of

national habitus leads me to suggest that national habitus is a meta-habitus. This should

23

not be surprising since modern states are among the most powerful sets of institutions,

controlling with more or less success all other social systems in the state-society.

Nevertheless, some supporting arguments for this claim are called for.

The long-term historical trend towards increasing social differentiation and

integration into ever larger social units culminated in the creation of a global system of

nation-states in the twentieth century. This has given rise to a historically specific

personality structure, homo nationis: the individual who is born and raised in a particular

national culture, and who lives most of her life in a nation-state of which she is a citizen.

As a product of the emerging global order composed of nation-states, homo nationis

became a truly global phenomenon in the second part of the twentieth century after two

world wars and numerous anti-colonial struggles, all fought in the name of the nation.

While it is not necessarily the dominant habitus in every contemporary state-society –

some societies have little national coherence and strong regionally, religiously or

linguistically based subcultures – the “nationalized personality structure” is fundamental

in most state-societies today. Homo nationis is driven, like homo oeconomicus, by

individual interests and, like homo sociologicus, by social norms. However, a particular

nationality – or national identity in a broad sense – gives a crucial and distinct

psychocultural specificity and political and economic context to people’s individual

interests and society’s social norms at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The fragmentation of identities described by postmodern theorists16 would

suggest that all-encompassing collective identities and habiti, especially national ones,

are similarly being weakened and undermined. Individuality, it appears, is increasingly

becoming a unifiying characteristic and source of common identification for many people

of different nationalities.17 While at one level this commonality is real,18 it does not

follow that it occurs at the expense of or transcends the framework of the national culture.

Norbert Elias, one of the few sociologists who uses the concept of national habitus,

writes: Powerful as the advance of individualization has been in recent times, in relation to the nation-

state plane we-identity has actually strengthened. One often finds that people try to overcome the

contradiction between their self-perception as a we-less I, as a totally isolated individual, and their

emotional involvement in the we-group of the nation by a strategy of encapsulation. Their self-

perceptions as an individual and as a representative of a we-group, as a Frenchman, Englishman,

24

West German, American, etc., are assigned to different compartments of their knowledge, and

these compartments communicate only very tenuously with each other (Elias 1991, p.209).

This radical separation diagnosed by Elias is facilitated by the taken-for-grantedness or

“second nature” that national habitus represents for most people most of the time.19

Much the same seems to hold for individuality as a part of habitus. The timeless,

placeless self, personally experienced by a growing number of people – the subjective

part of individualization processes – is however firmly tied to its national culture as

source and reference point. The deeply rooted nature of the distinctive national characteristics and the consciousness of

national we-identity closely bound up with them can serve as a graphic example of the degree to

which the social habitus of the individual provides a soil in which personal, individual differences

can flourish. The individuality of the particular Englishman, Dutchman, Swede or German

represents, in a sense, the personal elaboration of a common social, and in this case national,

habitus (Elias 1991, p.210).

The concept of national habitus highlights that, in addition to formal and informal

institutions and abstractly rational individuals, the modern order rests on psychosocial

foundations. These foundations may be strong and evolving, or they may be brittle and

dissolving. In either case, they exist in every modern state.20 They cannot be reduced to

individual choices or systemic structures, though both are involved. The development of

national habitus is structurally favoured by the global state system.21 It is functionally

significant since national habitus plays a fundamental role in many social processes. A

social process like the development of a national habitus is a cultural fact, produced for

the most part not by design but the result of unintended consequences of human action.

Propositions 4 and 5 underscore that since most people belong to several social

systems, habiti overlap and intermix. However, the power, authority, and prestige of a

particular habitus derives from the political, economic or cultural significance of the

social system in which it emerges. The national habitus provides a common cultural

basis for the different habiti and their configurations. Proposition 6 acknowledges that

habiti “loosely structure” personalities rather than fully determining them. The national

habitus process is perhaps the single most powerful and pervasive structuring process in

the world today. (Obviously, there are significant variations among particular state-

25

societies and other social systems in this respect.) What is new in these arguments?

There are two major points that may perhaps add something to the debate. First and

most important is the process conception of habitus. A habitus process needs to be

studied with reference to the social system in which it emerges. Habitus is an emergent

property in any social system. Some habiti are more important than others – in

political, economic or cultural terms. This is not a reduction of habitus to the social

system but rather indicates the material basis from which habiti emerge. The system-

specific patterns of feeling, thinking, doing and interacting loosely structure individual

personalities. How (top-down mechanisms), to what extent etc. are empirical

questions. The second point of importance is the argument that a national habitus is a

meta habitus. Not all habiti are of equal explanatory significance for social processes.

The national habitus is one that has not been conceptualized as such, and its

significance has not been widely recognized, especially in the globalization debate.22

Homo nationis as a biopsychosocial system

In addition to social system-specific patterns of “behaving” that loosely structure

individual persons, the conception of habitus presented here also has a bottom-up

causal flow. For individual persons are not just loosely structured through habitus

processes from above. They possess personalities, which means individual forms of

feeling, thinking, doing, and interacting. That is because the individual actor or

individual member of a social system is at the same time a complex system itself, i.e. a

biopsychosocial system. This implies that in addition to social mechanisms, individuals

are subject to biological and psychological mechanisms shaping personal development

and personality change. These processes of biopsychic personality development and

change shape how social habiti are acquired and “applied.” It may seem that this

renders individual agency so hopelessly overdetermined that it makes no longer sense

to speak of individual actors. This, however, is not the case. The phrase “loosely

structured” with respect to the social mechanisms of the habitus process suggests the

opposite, i.e. underdetermination. But does including biopsychic mechanisms in

personality development lead to the feared overdetermination? I will conclude that it

does not, but that it may well undermine conventional conceptions of the individual.

26

As proposition 11 maintained, a personality is composed of subsystems (or

subselves), such as cognitive, emotional, and volitional subsystems. While the activity

in the subsystems is shaped by particular habiti “from above,” a person is capable of

adopting, reshaping, and abandoning parts of a habitus. The degree to which this is

possible depends in part on the significance of the habitus and social system in

question, in part on individual characteristics of the person and the situation at hand.

The individual forms of feeling, thinking, wanting, doing, and interacting that make up

a personality are emergent properties of the underlying biopsychic system (i.e.

brain/mind). What is left for the active agency of the individual?

As propositions 12 and 13 suggest, a unified consciousness (a self) is an emergent

property of brain activity, that is, of neurophysiological processes in and between

particular regions or subsystems of the brain. An individual person has a unified

consciousness, that is, one psychic “space” in which feeling, thinking, and wanting

occur, i.e. in which the subsystems operate. It is this psychic space or unified

consciousness that perhaps corresponds most closely to our conventional view of

individual actors. Be that as it may, the objective of this paper has been to rethink

habitus as process by conceptualizing individuals as biopsychosocial systems. The

promise of this kind of conception is to facilitate linkages between the various

disciplines and applied fields in which conceptual problems of the sort discussed here

arise.

27

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Figure 1: Individual manifestations of habitus

from: simple and circumscribed . . .

simple automatic behaviours, e.g. facial expressions,

social touching

perceiving, speaking, writing, evaluating, task execution,

problem solving

interpersonal interaction, economic, political, religious,

domestic behaviour freedom, obedience, restraint

durable and generalized

predispositions in a domain of life, or in all of life (e.g. “national habitus”)

. . . to: generalized and complex

Figure 2: Systems and processes in the study of habitus

Brains Minds Social Systems Symbolic Systems

1.What? neurophys.+neuropsych. individ +collective processes cultural scripts behaviour habitus models

2.Where? diff.areas of brain personality subsystems individual and collective actors social representations

3. How? indiv.patterns of feeling, individual strategies social institutions/norms thinking, wanting

4. Effects basic needs complex wants reproduction, adaptation, breakdown

Note: Some of the systems and processes in this figure do not fall neatly into one of the categories of

brains, minds, social systems, or symbolic systems since they seem to me better represented as overlapping.

This is no problem for the conception of habitus as process in biopsychosocial systems proposed here,

which does not depend on demarcations of this sort.

32

Figure 3: Habitus in systemic perspective: How the habitus process works

state-society (“nation”) social system family, workplace, etc.

emergent property: habitus process: system-specific patterns of behaving, feeling,

thinking, doing, interacting self-consciousness, identity (“we”-“I” balance) individual forms of behaving, feeling, thinking, process: doing, interacting (automatic and reflective) emergent property: personality at t (“the” individual) bio-psychic system: subselves: affective, cognitive, moral biological system: neural networks

33

34

Endnotes

1 Camic speaks only of “habits,” not of “habitus.” In the present analysis, the concept of

habit is rarely used and subsumed under the concept of habitus. A sharp distinction

between the two is not necessary or useful, as the conception presented below (see esp.

figure 1) will suggest.

2 Crossley himself has subsequently presented several contributions towards this goal.

See e.g. Crossley 2004; 2003). For an analysis of the cognitive origins of Bourdieu’s

habitus in the work of Piaget, see Lizardo 2004.

3 A recent symposium in the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences (2004) on systems

and mechanisms debated the significance and usefulness of Bunge’s philosophy of

science for the social sciences.

4 I follow the “Natural Semantic Metalanguage” developed by Polish-Australian social

linguist Anna Wierzbicka (1999; 1997; 1992) as a tool for cross-cultural analysis to

define the basic components of habitus.

5 Methodologically highly sophisticated analyses of aspects of habitus can be found in the

works of Michele Lamont (2002) and Anna Wierzbicka (1999; 1997).

6 For a clear discussion of emergence and systems, see Bunge (2003).

7 For the sake of brevity, though at the risk of being misleading, I will occasionally use

“behaviour” in quotation marks to refer to “thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, and

interacting.”

8 As McGrew (1998) in his discussion of culture in nonhuman primates suggests, more

sophisticated habits (and thus habiti) are not confined to the genus homo.

35

9 For the to my knowledge most advanced approach to the study of culturally specific

emotions and cognitions (“cultural scripts”) and fascinating empirical studies, see the

work of Anna Wierzbicka (e.g. 1999; 2002; 2003).

10 Some of the work produced in the humanities, as well as some fictional literature, can

provide significant material for the construction of such maps.

11 In a recent discussion in Annual Review of Neuroscience, Searle (2000) uses a broader

conception of consciousness – a “unified field theory” – that would include the whole

range of habitus “behaviours” described above (see figure 1). However, the problem of

consciousness is not central for the present analysis.

12 Thus in the context of cognition, Markman and Gentner (2001) report that, in contrast

to traditional approaches that focus on abstract logical reasoning, a number of current

approaches in psychology posit domain-specific [in our terms: habitus-specific]

cognition.

13 May 1 demonstrations in (West) Berlin, for example, have developed their own

particular habitus since their beginning in the early 1980s in which violence has become

an expected part of the event (cf. Rucht 2003).

14 Voluntary: entering and exiting a particular social system; overcoming an addiction.

Involuntary: Belonging to a system subject to radical change.

15 For a useful analyis of the relationship between sociological theory and nationalism

studies, see Spillman and Faeges 2004.

16 For a critical assessment of these positions from a viewpoint similar to the one

presented here, see Billig (1995), esp. ch. 6-7. A different view examining the

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relationship between Foucault and Bauman, on the one hand, and Elias, on the other, can

be found in Dennis Smith 2001.

17 The EU as the leading case of transnational integration provides an ideal testing ground

for whether and how strong postnational identities can emerge. See e.g. Cederman 2001;

Soysal 2002.

18 I.e. in terms of similar values as measured, for instance, in the cross-national surveys of

Inglehart (e.g. 1997).

19 The best recent treatment of this “banal” nature of nationalism is probably Billig 1995.

20 Note that the claim here is not that national habitus works everywhere as the only, or

necessarily major, psychosocial foundation of modern order. Such generalizations

would be untenable given the diversity of nation-states.

21 There are other structural features of a state-society, such as internal linguistic or

religious divisions, that do not favour the development of a national habitus, though they

don’t necessarily exclude it (cf. Switzerland).

22 For conceptualizations similar at least in part to the one proposed here, however, see

Brubaker et al. 2004; Brubaker 2002; van Dijk 1998.