Bourdieu - Habitus, Freedom and Reflexivity

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Theory & Psychology

DOI: 10.1177/09593543093458922009; 19; 728Theory Psychology

Mathieu HilgersHabitus, Freedom, and Reflexivity

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THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY VOL. 19 (6): 728755 The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0959354309345892 http://tap.sagepub.com

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Habitus, Freedom, and Reflexivity

Mathieu HilgersFREE UNIVERSITY OF BRUSSELS

ABSTRACT. The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this

paper I propose that the notion of freedom is an essential and necessary com-ponent for the coherence of the analyses which mobilize habitus both in termsof their theoretical articulation and in terms of their grounding in empiricalreality. This argument can seem surprising considering that the theory of habi-tus has often been accused of being deterministic. Yet I show that, from anepistemological point of view, habitus theory is not deterministic. Bourdieustreatment of this concept implies at least three principles that exclude deter-minism: (1) the production of an infinite number of behaviors from a limitednumber of principles, (2) permanent mutation, and (3) the intensive and exten-sive limits of sociological understanding. After identifying and describingthese principles, I show the reason for their incompatibility with a determin-

istic perspective and consider their implications for the corresponding modelof action. I illustrate this analysis by a discussion of Loc Wacquants carnalsociology of the pugilistic universe which reveals why it is essential to under-stand and explain the relation between habitus and freedom.

KEY WORDS: Bourdieu, determinism, freedom, habitus

May I congratulate Pierre Bourdieu, whose life and work constitute a livingrefutation of the basic view of sociology according to which the individual is deter-

mined by social relations? He has never done that to which his origin and training pre-destined him, rather always doing whatever put him in open opposition to thepower of groups and institutions internalized in usthe very thing that, under thenames of habitus and social field, he made key to his analyses. (Beck, 1997)

Importing classic concepts into a system of thought often involves a series oftheoretical problems related to them. Sometimes these prove central for com-

pletely understanding the stakes and the fruitfulness of an analytical model.Classic theories of habituality have often seen their authors reflect on thenotion of freedom (for a review of these theories, see Camic, 1982/2000;

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Hran, 1987; Rist, 1984).1 The notion of habitus always evokes a dispositionthat is difficult to transform, a finality without consciousness, perceptible andcomprehensible only by its manifestation as phenomenon, that is, by action in

the world; often, the challenge has been to establish the real consequence ofhabitus in our behavior, to understand better its determinations in order betterto inflect them, to grasp the importance and the effect that consciousness ofconstraints has on those constraints.2 What is the status of will, the conse-quence of reflexivity, of being conscious of the process of habituality on judg-ment? Can this consciousness modify the structure of representation of theworld, or the logic of action? Finally, can one be free with a habitus? As onewill see, the unexpected experience of Loc Wacquant in the pugilistic universeand his attempt to grasp it through the notion of habitus provide some interestingperspectives and empirical situations through which to investigate thesequestions (Wacquant, 1998, 2004, 2005, 2009).

Although it has rarely been discussed, I will propose the hypothesis that thenotion of freedom is an essential and necessary component for the analyseswhich mobilize habitus both in terms of their theoretical articulation and interms of their grounding in empirical reality. This argument can seem surprisingfor a perspective which has often been accused of being deterministic.

Nevertheless I believe that from an epistemological point of view habitus the-ory, and more specifically Bourdieus treatment of habitus, a concept that hehas refined and made useful for social sciences, excludes determinism. This

study aims to identify the theoretical developments linked to this exclusion. Iwill thus consider the role of freedom by approaching habitus theory froma constructivist point of view. By restricting myself to the notion of habitus,I do not intend to exhaust the question. This paper can function as a first stepin thinking through the connection between empirical experience and theimperatives related to the will to forge a theoretical model, to reconstruct the

progressive and indefinite adjustment of a series of explicative hypotheses toan indefinite series of singular experiences, but also in general to consider theimportance of freedom in Bourdieu (Bouveresse & Roche, 2004; Quiniou,

1996; Sapiro, 2004) and in sociology (De Coster, 1996).To highlight the relation between habitus and freedom I will mobilize the

work of Wacquant devoted to the boxing world, more precisely his bookBodyand Soul(2004), as a vivid illustration of the question that I am focusing onhere. Indeed the concept of habitus as operant philosophy of action andmethodological guide organizes the entirety of this book (Wacquant, 2005,

p. 470). The theoretical agenda ofBody and Soulis to engage, exemplify, andtest empirically the notion of habitus by disclosing in considerable detail howa particular type of habitus is concretely fabricated (Wacquant, 2005,

p. 453). This is why it is not surprising that one finds again, at least implicitly,the relation between habitus and freedom at the heart of Wacquants descrip-tions of the pugilistic universe. His position in the field shows perfectly somedecisive aspects of this relation and the importance of clarifying them.

HILGERS: HABITUS, FREEDOM, AND REFLEXIVITY 729



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Why Is Bourdieu Not a Determinist?

By the importation of the notion of habitus into the social sciences, Pierre

Bourdieu attempts to overcome a series of oppositions: subjectivism vs.objectivism, micro vs. macro, strategy vs. non-strategy, freedom vs. deter-minism, and so on. Among others, his work takes a stand in the debate

between Sartrian free will and Lvi-Straussian determinism. In proposing apraxeological perspective (Bourdieu, 1972/2000a, 1972/1977), Bourdieusambition is to overcome these oppositions while keeping their contributionsto the sociological treatment of action. The praxeological mode of knowledgeis the product of a double theoretical translation (Bourdieu, 1972/2000a,

p. 235).3 Bourdieus project is to appropriate the objectivist approach, whilequestioning the conditions of possibility of primary experience, and to sur-

pass it by emphasizing the weakness of the objectivist foundationwhichrefuses any kind of self-interpretation or reflexive consideration of its ownconditions of possibility. By showing that this kind of knowledge is consti-tuted in opposition to primary experience, Bourdieu stresses the impossibilityof integrating a theory of practical knowledge of the social world into astrictly objectivist perspective. Praxeological knowledge is useful because iteffects a synthesis between the givens of objectivist knowledge (which it

preserves and surpasses all while incorporating its assumptions that allow atheory of action) and those of practical knowledge of the social world.

Habitus is at the heart of the theory that Bourdieu develops through thismethod and that Wacquant mobilizes and discusses in order to grasp the

pugilistic world.Bourdieus treatment of this notion implies at least three principles that

exclude determinism: (1) the production of an infinite number of behaviorsfrom a limited number of principles, (2) permanent mutation, and (3) theintensive and extensive limits of sociological understanding. After identifyingand describing these principles, I will show the reason for their incompatibilitywith a deterministic perspective and will attempt to demonstrate what they

imply for his theoretical model and more broadly for the analyses whichmobilize the notion of habitus.

The Production of an Infinite Number of Behaviors from a LimitedNumber of Principles

Habitus generates an infinite number of behaviors from a limited number ofprinciples. It is a generative system composed of limited, transposable princi-ples. The agent incorporates rules throughout his or her socialization and

social trajectory; these rules are few in number but determine a representa-tional matrix as well as a matrix of action. The formal rules at the heart ofthese matrices functioning are limited but transposable to a plurality of con-texts, and their content can vary infinitely. Habitus resembles a generative

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grammar (Bourdieu, 1967) because it allows the combination of elementsmore or less similar in form but whose content differs with each agent.4 Theagents mode of social functioning is simultaneously constrained and enabled

by a structure that is both structuring and structured, composed of a restrictednumber of principles that allow the production of an infinite number ofbehaviors. I discuss later what this implies.

Permanent Mutation

Habitus is a dynamic notion composed of schemes that produce practices aswell as schemes of classification that allow the perception and appreciationof practices. The agent perceives, understands, evaluates, adapts, and acts ina situation according to his or her habitus. The actions produced and theirresults can have a varyingly important influence on the individuals percep-tion of things and, in consequence, on his or her dispositions (toward actionand perception). Because of its evolutionary dimension, habitus determines

practice but is also determined by it. Habitus is thus in a state of permanentmutation, all the more so because it is exposed to heterogeneous contexts andsituations. This mutation can reinforce or weaken already acquired disposi-tions. Because of these successive modifications, one can only grasp thisdynamic notion at a precise moment in the history of an agent through therecomposition of this history up to the present.

In addition to the difficulty of analytically reconstituting a single habi-tus, at a collective level all forms of generalizing a given behavior

between individuals who share a similar habitus, for examplemustremain fundamentally approximate. In fact, it is impossible for twoagents of identical condition and origin to live exactly the same situa-tions or experiences in a similar order. Even so, if we do manage to iden-tify some practices shared by the members of a group, they still wont besubstitutable or impersonal. It is in a relation of homology, of diversitywithin homogeneity reflecting the diversity within homogeneity charac-

teristic of their social conditions of production, that the singular habitusof the different members of the same class are united (Bourdieu,1972/1977, p. 86).

If there exists a structural affinity between individuals who share a commonbelonging, we must still admit that each ones relationship to contexts will bedifferent. As a result of such variation and permanent mutation, the effects ofhabitus are partially indeterminate.5 This indeterminacy does not make possiblean analysis of the social world characterized by radical determinism.

The Limits of Sociological Understanding

The last principle considered here follows logically from the second and isspecific to the analysis of the social sciences. One can grasp only approximately




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the different elements that have formed and continue to form habitus. It isimpossible to apprehend them all or even to understand perfectly the influenceof a single one of them. This is why, for example, in his book on Heidegger

(Bourdieu, 1991b), Bourdieu reminds us that it would be necessary, in orderto describe the ethos or generic habitus animating individuals in the field ofGerman philosophy, to conduct a rereading of German philosophy and intel-lectual tradition from a praxeological perspective. Incapable of bringing sucha vast project to fruition, he resorts to formulating hypotheses in the form ofconditional totalizationsthat is, by generalizing a theoretical opinionwhich, for lack of an ability to develop the empirical grounding that it needs,remains limited to the formulation of hypotheses.

These three elements intrinsic to the model allow us to think through theunpredictability of practice. The production of an infinite number of behaviorsfrom a restricted number of principles implies the infinite variety of practices

possible for an individual; permanent mutation points to the relative malleabilityof habitus throughout the trajectory of an agent and therefore to the limits ofany fixed analysis; and the intensive and extensive limits of sociologicalunderstanding account for the impossibility of grasping the real in its totalityas well as the poor predictive ability of sociology. However, does the unpre-dictability that sociological science faces mean that practices are truly free orindeterminate? To answer this question, or at least to illuminate its signifi-cance for Bourdieu and the authors who mobilize the notion of habitus, we

must understand the role of these principles within a theory, which aims toidentify and conceptualize a system that generates practices. Consistent withthe limits that I have set for this study, I will pursue this analysis whileremaining at the internal level of the model. Rather than focusing on the limitsspecific to social science, I will concentrate on the production of behaviorsfrom a limited number of principles and on permanent mutation.

The Analogy of Experience

The system that generates practices is made up of certain components that areapplicable to multiple situations in everyday life. According to Bourdieu, thesimilarity between different practices and reactions of a single agent originatesin an analogical principle: a transfer of schemes that the habitus performson the basis of acquired equivalences, facilitating the substitutability of onereaction for another and enabling the agent to master all problems of a similarform that may arise in new situations (Bourdieu, 1980/1990b, p. 94). Thisanalogical principle allows, by practical substitutability, a small number of

generative schemes to manage cognitive and evaluative structures and,thereby, the perception and organization of action.6 The transposition outsidethe ring of the system of schemata of perception, appreciation, and actioncharacteristic of their craft by the boxers whom Wacquant (2004) studied




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illustrates this principle well. Even if numerous boxers violate the command-ments of the pugilistic catechism (such as regulated practices of abstinencethat compose the trinity of the pugilistic cult: food, social life, and sexual

commerce; Wacquant, 2005, p. 461), the more they are engaged in the ManlyArt, the more they perceive the world and act in function of an ethos related totheir pugilistic practices.

Habitus is a system of durable and transposable dispositions. The analogyof experience7 facilitates at the same time recourse to identical schemes fordifferent situations and agents capacity for improvisation, as well as adapta-tion, improvised or not, to new contexts. This practical substitutability andthe postulate of the worlds being apprehended as (and composed of) homo-logical structures permit and assist the extension of the analytical model to allbehaviors. But this abstract model, even if it only draws meaning, form, andsubstance from practical manifestationsand even though a dispositionremains irreducible to any finite or infinite series of actualizations, that is, toany actual fact or group of facts (E. Bourdieu, 1998, p. 39)can be nothingother than a theoretical artifact.8 From that moment,

the description through construction that is made possible by mastery ofthe generative formula of practices has to remain within the limits that areset on practical logic by the very fact that it derives not from this formula

but from its practical equivalenta system of schemes capable of orientingpractice without entering consciousness except in an intermittent and partial

way. (Bourdieu, 1980/1990b, pp. 269270)

In a certain sense, the theoretical model is thus distinct from the mastery ofagents in practice; it only gives an idea, both very close and very distant, ofthe real. Theory must always be readjusted for the sake of this real, for thesocial world remains irreducible to the architectures we give it.

Practical logic recalls the plurality of interrelated aspects of the real. Thiscomplexity explains how it works with a certain freedom compared to logicallogic. Practical logic is the application of a

partially integrated system of generative schemes which, being partiallymobilized [italics added] in relation to each particular situation, produces, ineach case ... a practical definition of the situation and the functions of theaction ... which, with the aid of a simple yet inexhaustible combinatory, gen-erates the actions best suited to fulfill these functions within the limits of theavailable means. (Bourdieu, 1980/1990b, p. 267)

The piecemeal nature of schematic mobilization anticipates the critiques that amonothetic, monolithic, and unilateral principle would like to make of habitus, andsuggests agents ability to adapt to a variety of contexts, as shown perfectly by the

fact that a young white European graduate student at one of the most prestigiousuniversitys in the world can become a boxer in the black ghetto of Chicago. Itallows us better to understand the regulated freedom that characterizes the unpre-dictability of practice but also the plural dimension of the process of socialization.9




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Habitus works through an analogical transfer of schemes that allows us toapprehend the real through a relatively fixed system of perception. Past experi-ences structure transposable dispositions, give meaning to new experiences

and situations, and contribute to the more or less congruent adjustment ofpractice to objective rules and structures. From this analogical schema thecreative perception of a sense whose newness depends on the situation is putto work. This sense is produced by the immanent law of habitus that makesthe agent adjust, un-adjust, and readjust his or her practices to be compatiblewith objective reality as it appears subjectively.

The nonequivalence of objective context and subjective appreciation givesrise to phenomena of hysteresis of variable importance. These phenomenaappear when the individuals most fixed dispositions, which are almost natu-ralized and relatively unchangeable, are faced with a situation where theyhave become obsolete. Such gaps explain, for example, the difficulty thatsome agents have in grasping the meaning of historic upheavals, their inabilityto process objective events. Because of fixed dispositions, an individual canremain closed off to the evolution of a context, to the modification of itsobjective rules, of its function, and therefore of his or her own position withinthat context. The lasting effect of the most essential structures thus stands outin situations of hysteresis. The evolution and makeup of habitus alwaysremain dependent on practice. Habitus unites objective reality and subjectiverepresentation. From Bourdieus perspective, this union is the principle that

allows action by the subject in the world.10 The more it is mastered, the moreit contributes to freedom.

The principle of analogy, since it allows us to envisage a multitude of prac-tices from a restricted number of principles, facilitates the development of asynoptic schema that authorizes the simultaneous, monothetic apprehensionof meanings that are produced and used polythetically by agents (Bourdieu,1972/1977, p. 107; 1980/1990b, pp. 834). The analyst has the opportunity toexercise a power of generalization by examining as arrested phases the possiblescenarios that the agent can see only in temporal succession.11 If the analyst

does not go beyond this generalization, he or she will not be able to accountfor the unpredictability of practice because it is characteristic

of a polythetic relationship to experience. This is a type of relationship to theworld which allows one to distribute in succession attitudes that would bejudged contradictory, but which when referred to contextual occurrences createan approximate rhythm of variations in behavior. (Maesschalck, 1997, p. 13)

The intersection of the principle of an infinite number of behaviors from alimited number of rules with a specific situation indicates the general space

of an agents possibilities of action. As this space can never be totally recon-structed, the action remains partly unpredictable. Does this unpredictabilitysignify freedom, or could it at least be a sign of it?




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An agents freedom can only be expressed through the regulated mecha-nisms of the system that generates practices. The challenge of Bourdieu isthus to convert necessity into choice without falling into the traps of deter-

minism or total freedom. Habitus is a unifying principle that associates subjec-tive desire with the evolution of objective finality. Bourdieus schematism,according to Maesschalck (1997), goes beyond the Kantian perspective

of a mechanism of subsumption into categories because it attempts toresolve, in a practical formula, the dialectics most radical demand: thetransformation of necessity into free choice. ... The coupling of practicalschemes and classificatory schemes makes it possible, in fact, to unite theinternal coherence of practices and their external coherence as self-identityand difference from the non-self. (p. 20)

This schematism allows us to pose an objective principle of orientation and asubjective principle of appreciation but also to grasp diversity through a syntheticunion of the two. Bourdieus model must for its internal coherence effect asynthesis between necessity and freedom. Moreover, the discrepancies

between empirical reality and the theoretical articulation of the social world,between actual behaviors and behaviors that conform to the models rationale,the gaps between opus operatum and modus operandi, between act and

power, between dispositions and positions, between objective structures andcognitive structures, become significant thanks to this relatively free unpre-

dictability of behaviors that the model theorizes, in particular, through adynamic conception of habitus.12

Habitus as a Dynamic Notion

How does what I have called the principle of permanent mutation play out inthe formation of habitus? Bourdieu does not say much on this question. Evenso, using his work we can conceive of habitus as the superposition of differentlayers of socialization. Among these, one must distinguish a primary layerand a secondary layer. Both are made up of the singular appropriation of collec-tive reference points that is realized through the particular experiences ofagents (see Berger & Luckmann, 1966).13 Progressively and involuntarily,agents specialize themselves through their durable exposition to particularcontexts. They also do it voluntarily, for example through the acquisition ofspecial aptitudes such as these of the Manly Art in the case of Wacquant.

The primary layer develops from archetypal and collective representationsarticulated through a system of binary oppositions that differentiates the sexes(man/woman, brother/sister, etc.), time (day/night, morning/evening, short/long,

etc.), size (large/small, wide/thin, etc.), place (inside/outside, open/closed,etc.). The primary layer is the fruit of sedimentation by generations of social-ization. The relationship of domination between the sexes is, for example,




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characteristic of this layer. Always present in spite of manifest attempts toovercome it, it proves the difficulty of reversing this sedimentation.14

Changes in the primary layer of habitus happen slowly and laboriously, as

shown for example by Wacquants attempts to acquire an art that nothing, neitherhis origin nor his trajectory, predestined him to practice, least of all in acontext that was a priori strange to him and within which he was a statisticalanomaly (Wacquant, 2004).

Produced in the reproduction of domestic practices, in daily activities thatinternalize the roles and functions of the family unit, the primary layer is par-ticularized during early childhood. The family transmits models of represen-tation that organize agents perceptions and display the behaviors that willstructure their practices. This layer of socialization is administered essentiallythrough family and school. The process of acquisition implies a relationshipof identification that is in no way a conscious imitation of an objectivatedmodel. It is a process of reproduction. Agents internalize objective reality andhelp reproduce the categories they have perceived, because they situate theirown acts in relation to this perception of the world. In a certain sense, through

practice, agents make what they perceive exist. They externalize their inter-nalization. This process of acquisition participates in the construction of whatone is, what one becomes, develops a proclivity for the development of a pos-sible self, of a finality which is never totally definitive or completely deter-mined. What is learned by body is not something that one has, like

knowledge that can be brandished, but something that one is (Bourdieu,1980/1990b, p. 73). The agent grows up and the secondary level of his or herhabitus develops throughout the agents relative autonomization. This ismade up of a particularized collective dimension. Wacquants descriptions ofthe pugilistic universe provide a vivid illustration of this phenomenon whenthey underline the intromission of the individual and the collective in thetransmission process of the Manly Art (Wacquant, 2004, pp. 99126). Evenif an individual has a lifestyle or a habitus typical of a group or class, he orshe nonetheless remains a single individual.15

This delineation that I suggest allows us to grasp through a synchronicview of the state of a habituss makeup the proportion and therefore the sig-nificance of different moments of socialization in the history of an individual;in other words, their strength of determination. It highlights the importance ofthe trajectory and the evolving nature of habitus. Daily life and its events rein-force or weaken a partially moving habitual nature. The experiences that sedi-ment habitus make of it the materialization of ... memory (Bourdieu,1980/1990b, p. 291, n. 3), which it perpetuates through practice.

The earliest experiences are the most determinative, leaving the strongest

and most lasting imprint. It is they that form schemes of perception, thought,and action.

The very logic of its genesis makes habitus a chronologically ordered series ofstructures, where one structure of a given level specifies the structures at lower




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levels (which are thus genetically anterior) and structures the higher-levelstructures through the structuring action that it exercises on the structured expe-riences that generate these structures. (Bourdieu, 1972/2000a, p. 284, tr. J.R.)

Habitus appears thus as a relatively and relationally malleable entity. It ismodified through the experiences that constitute it, through encounters andcontacts in a real that is always already relational. The earliest experiencesmark, more than others, the perception of the world and the practices thatresult from them. Throughout life, the individual must face new situationsand draw on resources from past experiences to adapt to them. The importanceof early experiences also results from the tendency of habitus to protect itsown constancy and defend itself against change and questioning. The indi-vidual evolves in a universe tailored to reinforce his or her own dispositions

and to receive them favorably. By limiting exposure to unknown environ-ments, without necessarily being conscious of doing so, the individual avoidscontact with information likely to challenge the accumulated information thatfashions his or her representation of the world. This is why many anthropol-ogists produce reflection about their own society when they come back fromthe field (e.g., Bourdieu, 1962). Everyday life in the field affects the ways inwhich they think, perceive the world, and act.16

Modifications are made relatively irreversibly. Throughout ones evolu-tion, or trajectory, or aging, mental and other structures progressively closeoff to the principle of practice. Habitus is the fruit of history and generates,

by itself, (practices and therefore) history

in accordance with the schemes generated by history. It ensures the activepresence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism in the form ofschemes of perception, thought and action, tend to guarantee the correctnessof practices and their constancy over time. (Bourdieu, 1980/1990b, p. 54)

In other words, the product of history is what makes history (both individualand collective).

A fundamental question is to establish how an individual can voluntarily

affect his habitus, that is, modify his own dispositions, and through them hisperceptions and practices. In my view, Body and Soul describes this phe-nomenon from two points of view. The first is the standpoint of the athletes,including Wacquant himself, who construct their bodies and improve their

performance by following a rigorous and demanding training regimen. Thesecond is the standpoint of the researcher who is immersed in a new realityand who uses the analytical resources of his discipline to transform his owndispositions. The paradox in Wacquants attempt is that he was developing anepistemic reflexivity, both for his analyses and for his integration in the field,

in order to acquire a non-reflexive practice. Indeed, boxing consists of aseries of strategic exchanges in which one pays for hermeneutical mistakesimmediately : action and its evaluation are fused and reflexive returns is bydefinition excluded from the activity (Wacquant, 2004, p. 59). Even if the




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resources it provides are insufficient by themselvesinsofar as they have tobe coupled with a real practical learningsociological reflexivity constitutesa powerful tool to adapt dispositions and to ease the conversion into a strange

universe. Here epistemic reflexivity is deployed, not at the end of the project,ex post, when it comes to drafting the final research report, but durante, atevery stage in the investigation (Wacquant, 2009, p. 147).

An agents freedom in the face of determination of self by self, of futurehistory by past history, of what is by what has been, resides in the ability toobjectivize his or her own condition. This is exactly what Wacquant describeswhen he relates his experience in the pugilistic universe and demonstrates

practically, through a particular experiment in apprenticeship, Bourdieusidea according to which agents fully become Subjects when, through themediation of a reflexive effort, they identify and begin the work of gaining(relative) control over their own disposition. This reflexivity allows one,depending on the context, to give free rein, to temper, to inhibit, or even tooppose dispositions to each other. It enables us to monitor, up to a certain

point, some of the determinisms that operate through the relation of immediatecomplicity between position and dispositions (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992,

p. 136). Thus in a given situation, the malleability of a habitus, its potentialfor transformation, its ability to adapt, are proportional to its degree of sedi-mentation, in other words to the layer involved in action. The potential trans-formation of habitus can be done depending on the layer involved and on the

intensity, newness, and repetition of a given experience. Wacquants descrip-tions of the repetitive, denuded, and ascetic character of boxers training arean excellent illustration of this phenomenon (Wacquant, 2004, pp. 60, 66,104). If the entirety of habitus is present in an action, some of its traits can beinhibited, reinforced, or emphasized. The experience will not have the sameeffects on each component of habitus.17 Its malleability is precisely whatenables it to adapt to a plurality of social universes. This also shows howhabitus depends on the practical universe with which it is associated.

Body and Soul descriptions show clearly that this first step in analyzing

freedom in habitus shouldnt limit us to understanding freedom in theabstract. It should allow us to illuminate, from a theoretical point of view,why habitus is not a destiny (Bourdieu, 1997/2000b, p. 180). Agents canobjectivate the influence that they exert on the social space that determinesthem. The practices they produce by means of categories of perception,thought, and action that they have internalized through contact with objectivestructures participate in the modification of these structures and thus, eventu-ally, in the modification of internalized categories. This is why social agentsare determined only insofar as they determine themselves; but the categories

of perception and appreciation which provide the principle of this (self-)deter-mination are themselves largely determined by the social and economic condi-tions of their constitution (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 136). An agentwith the means to determine him- or herself through knowledge of objective




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mechanisms can use them precisely to step back and gain distance fromdispositions (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 136). The emancipation thisknowledge aims for requires knowledge of the principles at the heart of the

action. From that moment, as Bouveresse (2004) remarks against accusationsof determinism, it is not sociology but the desocialization and the depoliti-cization of the problem of freedom that constitute a threat for true freedom(p. 13). In the same line of thought, we can distinguish two types of freedomin Bourdieu: unconscious freedom and conscious freedom, or, more pre-cisely, a freedom prior to sociological revelation and a freedom after it.Similarly, these two levels of freedom are found concretely in the work ofWacquant devoted to the production of the pugilistic habitus.

Freedom Prior to Sociological Consciousness

Habitus is an ordering principle of regulated improvisation (principium impor-tans ordinem ad actum; Bourdieu, 1972/2000a, p. 262; 1990a, pp. 7879;1980/1990b, p. 10), it generates practices that tend to reproduce the regulari-ties immanent in the objective conditions of the production of their generative

principle, while adjusting to the demands inscribed as objective potentialitiesin the situation (Bourdieu, 1972/1977, p. 78). The social space and its con-straints form a place at the center of which, by the acquired systems of gener-

ative schemes and within the framework of its limits, the agent can freelyexercise his or her practice. The objective structure of which habitus is the

product governs, through it, practice by means of constraints and limits origi-nally assigned to the agents inventions. Creation always happens in a contextthat constitutes the agent and that the agent appropriates actively; it can thusonly be realized within the limits of this space and within the limits of the sys-tem of practice. The generative system is composed of a restricted number of

principles that make it possible to generate an infinity of relatively unpre-dictable practices, but these are limited in their diversity. It is in this sense that

theory of habituality can move beyond the debate between freedom and deter-minism. Habitus is the system of unchosen principles of choice that allowsimprovisation, creation, and innovation. It is a system that generates regulatedimprovisation and that subjectively activates and reactivates the objectivemeaning of context.

Socialization bestows creative capabilities on agents that allow them toinvent freely within the limits of the conditions of their existence, their dispo-sitions and context, and their adaptations to situations. The generative systemis conceived as a reproductive system. It is founded on the internalization of

an exteriority whose sense is given, throughout socialization, from originaryexperiences and from the individual trajectory that particularizes and composesthe (di)visions, hierarchizations, classifications, and appreciations of repre-sentations of the social world. The practical relationship with the future




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determines present practice. Habitus is constituted and determined accordingto a probable future that it helps actualize through anticipation. The embodiedobjectivity of the social world generates objective regularities that surpass

agents, but which agents actualize by their daily practice because they areformed by the context that they themselves form. These embodied represen-tations generate the perception of a subjective world and form the basis forthe particular anticipation of this perceived world, so much so that, startingfrom a regulated freedom, practices tend by their consequences to reproducein the real (i.e., to make exist) this subjective perception (e.g., relationships

perceived as corrupt can generate corrupting behaviors that participate in theexistence of corruption).

The future is virtually inscribed in the present and is, in a certain way,perceived as already being there by practical schemes that impose order onaction. Habitus operationalizes the structural social explanation by grantingto the Subject its active character (Alexander, 1995).18 The understanding ofthe world is always elaborated in relation to and starting from a backgroundinscribed in practice. Agents understand this without necessarily requiring areflexive gesture. By actively and unknowingly appropriating this back-ground, agents generate representations. These representations are sometimesformulated as engagements, as finalities, as ambitions, and so on, but most ofthe time they remain unformulated, even unformulatable, and structure intel-ligent action in the world. This intelligence, without being formulated, flows

from a comprehension that is for the most part not made explicit yet alwayspresent (Taylor, 2000). Often, practice evolves according to the principle ofan intelligence without consciousness, anticipating without always knowingthat it is the product of and that it produces anticipations.

The freedom that habitus leaves room for has an involuntary aspect. Thisaspect typical of practical logic allows a form of unconscious, or scarcelyconscious, freedom. The amnesia of the genesis of this freedom (which in certainaspects is illusory) makes it possible to forget that at the source of a belief orchoice is socialization. It is as such that, in a mode very reminiscent of Pascal,

Bourdieu considers that if the decision to believe ... is to be carried outsuccessfully, it must also obliterate itself from the memory of the believer(Bourdieu, 1980/1990b, p. 49).19 In this way he finds a solution to the antinomyof decision-based belief that Pascal had left unresolved (one cannot simulta-neously believe x and believe that x is the fruit of ones will to believe x). Theagent believes his or her vision of the world to be natural, having forgotten itsgenesis. Most of the people who train in the gym where Wacquant undertookhis pugilistic eduction believe that Youre born a boxer (or not). Here theapprenticeship of the ethnographer clearly underlines the paradox that

the belief in the innate character of the boxers ability can peacefullycoexist with an unrelenting and rigid ethic of work and striving. The nativemyth of the gift of the boxer is an illusion founded in reality what fighterstake for a natural capacity (Youve got to have it in you) is in effect this




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peculiar nature resulting from the protracted process of inculcation of thepugilistic habitus, a process that often begins in early childhood, eitherwithin the gym itself or in the antechamber to the gym that is the ghettostreet. (Wacquant, 2004, p. 99)

The pugilistic habitus is this cultivated nature whose social genesis hasbecome literally invisible to those who perceive it through the mental categoriesthat are its product (Wacquant, 2004, p. 99).

Freedom of action is actualized through the product of a socialization thatimplies an involuntary aspect of practice; thus paradoxically this type of free-dom can hold back a liberation from social conditionswhich in any case isalways limited. It seems to permit agents to believe that they are free.20 It allows

belief and choice to be experienced simultaneously as logically necessary and

sociologically unconditioned (Bourdieu, 1980/1990b, p. 50). However, thisfreedom is nevertheless not totally illusory. The system of dispositions makesit possible to freely generate thoughts, perceptions, and actions within the limitsof historical and social conditions that circumscribe and fashion its production(Bourdieu, 1980/1990b, p. 55). These conditionings allow the agent relativeautonomy when he or she faces present situations.

Not all agents have the same degree of autonomy. Nothing is simultane-ously freer and more constrained than the action of the good player(Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 63). The degree of freedom varies, in fact, with thesocial position of the individual and the degree of officialization, institution-alization, and ritualization of the context. The possibilities of habitus arerealized all the more freely when they have a conducive space in which to

become manifest. If agents can master the objective rules that structure afield, then they are at ease playing with them while remaining in line withtheir requirements, transgressing them in a regular way and thereby distin-guishing themselves through excellence, rather than being stuck in a conformitylimited to pure and simple execution. Conversely, the less congruity there is

between objective structures and the structures of habitus, the less agents canfall into line with rules that are made against them (Bourdieu, 1980/1990b,

p. 298, n. 12). The interaction between dispositions and situations causesagents to some extent [to] fall into the practice that is theirs rather than freelychoosing it or being impelled into it by mechanical constraints (Bourdieu,1990a, p. 90). This spontaneity is indeterminate because it functions withinthe urgency of the situation. An individual constrained by the instantaneity ofthe present makes choices instinctively based on his or her embodied dispo-sitions, without logical or rational calculations. In fact, practical logic canonly function by taking all sorts of liberties with the most elementary princi-

ples of logical logic; it develops from schemes that are partially mobilized

in relation to each particular situation (Bourdieu, 1980/1990b, p. 267). Theindividual will be all the more at ease since there is an important correspon-dence between what he or she is and should be in the situation. This ease canlead to the blossoming of a creative freedom. Habitus adjusted in advance to




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the individuals position and made for it (by the mechanisms determiningvocation and co-optation) contributes to making the position, especially sinceit has a large margin of freedom and since there is a significant distance

between the social conditions of ... production and the social demands andconstraints inscribed in the position (Bourdieu, 1980/1993, p. 141).It is necessary to distinguish objective necessity from experienced

necessity. Sociology exposes objective necessities while postulating thateverything must have a social reason for existing. The degree of determi-nation of the world as it appears subjectively depends on the knowledgewe have of it. In a perspective very reminiscent of Spinoza, Bourdieu(1980/1993) declares:

Whereas misrecognition of necessity contains a form of recognition of

necessity, and probably the most absolute, the most total form, since it isunaware of itself as such, knowledge of necessity does not at all imply thenecessity of that recognition. (p. 25)

Individuals are as free as they are conscious and knowledgeable of theconstraints placed on them. Sociology is a powerful tool for allowing thisgrowing awareness to take place.

Freedom After Sociological Consciousness

In Body and Soul, Wacquant (2004) offers a paradigmatic demonstration ofhow sociological consciousness can be deployed as a tool to modify habitus.The book focus[es] on the generic properties ofpugilistic embodiment tospotlight the manner whereby [boxers] acquire and activate the system ofschemata of perception, appreciation, and action of their craft (Wacquant,2005, p. 454). In addition, it shows how Wacquant modified his own habitusto become a(n apprentice) boxer and to be accepted by his gym mates andintegrated in his field site. From this point of view, Body and Soulis not only

an empirical observation but an empirical experimentation which highlightsconcretely the difficulties inherent in the project of shaping ones habitus andthe contribution of sociological objectivation to the process of mastering and

building oneself.During his apprenticeship of boxing in a context far removed from his

original social milieu, Wacquant (2004) became so deeply immersed in thepugilistic world that he thought for a while of aborting [his] academiccareer to turn pro (p. 4). But, even in such moments of sensual and moralepiphany, Busy Louie, as his gym mates called him, remained a highly

educated Frenchman who was leading a sort of Dr. Jekyll-and-Mister Hydeexistence, boxing by day and writing social theory by night (Wacquant,2009, p. 145). He was thoroughly embedded in the social scene of the gym

but, as he makes clear in the books closing pages, he was still different




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from the other athletes training there (even if they could not imagine whata sociologist is and does).21 This difference, rooted in his social conditionand trajectory, facilitates keeping the relative distance from within the social

game studied that the ethnographer needs, even the fight itself and the rou-tine of training presuppose precisely that one suspend reflexivity. Indeed,Wacquants book shows that adopting the Manly Art in the ghetto cannot bereduced to the moments spent in the ring or in the gym training. Becominga fighter is to acquire an ethos and an ethic of life transposable outside thering. During the period of inactivity caused by getting his nose broken,Wacquant had an opportunity to reflect and the sociologist could assessmore accurately his difference within the field (Wacquant, 2004, p. 7). Thuseven as he often forgets why he is there (originally to find a platform forobservation in the ghetto, a place to meet potential informants; Wacquant,2009, p. 141), even if for a moment he considers dropping out of universityand becoming a professional prizefighter, Wacquants investment in thegame and the amnesia of the genesis of his presence in the field remainalways provisional. These are precisely particular moments in the process ofinquiry. Every good ethnographer engaged in long-term immersion forgetsduring some moments the object that he is observing, because he is discov-ering new facets of it; he becomes overwhelmed by the site and washed over

by the endless flow of social life. But he never forgets for too long his originand the springs of his trajectory, especially as he retains a broader freedom

of choice compared to the people with whom he shares the site. As coachDeeDee reminded Wacquant in the last sentence of the book, the sociologistdont need to get into the dring as a professional (Wacquant, 2004, p. 255);he has a life and a future outside of it.

In this book, epistemic reflexivity constitutes a tool, not only to understandthe process of habitus construction, but also to describe the potential effectsof sociological knowledge on this process. As Wacquant (2009) aptlyreminds us, habitus is a set ofacquireddispositions:

No one is born a boxer (least of all, me!): the training of fighters consistsprecisely in physical drills, ascetic rules of life , and social games gearedtoward instilling in them new abilities, categories, and desires, those spe-cific to the pugilistic cosmos. (Wacquant, 2009, p. 142; see also 1998)

To acquire the boxers dispositions and to change his own habitus, Wacquanttrained as a boxer amidst amateurs and professionals for three years. Thechange of habitus is effected only when it is embodiedin other words, whenthe modifications have been learned in and by corporal practices, because

practical mastery operates beneath the level of consciousness and discourse,

and this matches perfectly with a commanding feature of the experience ofpugilistic learning, in which mental understanding is of little help (and can evenbe a serious hindrance in the ring) so long as one has not grasped boxing tech-nique with ones body. (Wacquant, 2009, pp. 142143)




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Moreover, his own trajectory enabled Wacquant to grasp analytically the wayin which he could work to modify his own habitus. While his gym mates learnthe body techniques through an invisible and implicit pedagogy, because of

his social science knowledge and ability to objectivize the social world,Wacquant was in a position to both undergo and analyze the practices ofpugilistic inculcation and the pedagogical work effected at the WoodlawnBoys Club. This demonstrates that individuals with different life experiences,who have thus gained varied ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, can usedifferent dispositions to reach the same goal through different routes. Itshows also that the dispositions mobilized to acquire the techniques producetheir own goal. Contrary to most of his gym mates, Wacquants aim was ana-lytical and was not to be a great prizefighter.

Body and Soul differs from other accounts of habitus because Wacquantdeployed the concept as a methodological device. He placed himself

in the local vortex of action in order to acquire through practice, in realtime, the dispositions of the boxer with the aim of elucidating the magnetismproper to the pugilistic cosmos [and to] push the logic of participant obser-vation to the point where it becomes inverted and turns into observantparticipation. (Wacquant, 2009, p. 145)

Through this work of carnal sociology, Wacquant shows concretely how,through concrete practices aided by sociological consciousness, one can will-

fully change ones habitus. The fact that his boxing career was short and hisonly official fight was a defeat suggests two other points. First, the malleabil-ity of habitus remains considerable if we compare Wacquants trajectory withthe normal and probable trajectory of similarly situated academics. Second,although habitus can be changed, it takes an immense work to modify ones

primary dispositions and the results are often below the skill level of specialistsborn and bred with the social game in questionin this case boxers who havetrained since pre-adolescence (it is too late for Wacquant to become a highly

proficient boxer, let alone a champion). This also implies that a degree of

sociological consciousness is indispensable to assist in the process of habitusmodification, but that it does not suffice to durably transform dispositions.The extension of freedom by sociological consciousness allows a normative

choice that consists in accepting necessity or not. The agent or the politicalworld can introduce modifying elements that may suffice to transform theresult of mechanisms in the direction of our desires (Bourdieu, 1982, p. 20).The mere fact of knowing which mechanisms owe their efficiency to mis-recognition, for example cases of symbolic violence, helps modify theireffects. Sociological science, therefore, in revealing the real, has liberatingvirtues. It allows one to introduce a freedom relative to the original adhesionand to become, partially, master and possessor of social nature (Bourdieu,1982, p. 33), to control the effects of the determinisms that operate on thesocial world (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 67). But by conceiving of freedom




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as revelation, does Bourdieu not return to Pascals antinomy? If consciousnessmakes it possible to act on the principles of socialization, if habitus is malleable,does that not imply that will and consciousness can, for the best sociologists

among us, form the basis of the dispositions that make us believe things?Following this reasoning to its end would suppose that one could acquire a dis-position toward self-objectification in order to profit fully from ones own freewill and exercise it in total consciousness. But is that not believing at the sametime as one decides to believe? To these questions, Bourdieu would probablyrespond by distinguishing belief and scientific truth. Such a distinction high-lights the ambiguity of this position that often wavers between construc-tivism and realism, but it can still be discussed here.

Beyond regulated freedom, practical freedom appears to Bourdieu as theconsciousness of structures and determinations, which, in a certain way, signifiesthat practical freedom is the possibility of a conscious and voluntary trans-formation of objective structures. Here we are not far from Spinozian freedom:real freedom is the knowledge of constraints.22 Individuals who are notconscious of their determinations can believe they are free, mistake necessityfor virtue, and then select as the best choice the one toward which their habitusleans. The freest individuals are those who, aware of their determinations,end up either choosing them or transforming them. We find ourselves facedwith two levels of freedom. The first, without sociological awareness, seemsalmost illusory. The internalization of structures allows us to think we are free

without being conscious of our own determinations. The second, fruit ofanalytical thought about ourselves through the exposition of structures that areflexive distance makes possiblean awareness of our own habitusenables a kind of self-control. Sociology frees us by freeing us from the illu-sion of freedom ... from the misplaced belief in illusory freedoms. Freedomis not something given: it is something you conquercollectively(Bourdieu, 1990a, pp. 1516). We can never dispose freely of these disposi-tions, but we can better control them by having knowledge of them. As forSpinoza (1928, part V), this conquered freedom implies virtue. Thus, in the

realm of science, for example, the double objectification implies an ethic thatincites to scientific virtue, that is, to raising the conditions of scientific rigor(Hilgers, 2006). First of all

because it is a science, [then because] if it is true that it is through knowl-edge of determinations that only science can uncover that a form of freedomwhich is the condition and correlate of an ethic is possible, then it is also truethat a reflexive science of society implies, or comprises, an ethic. (Bourdieu& Wacquant, 1992, p. 198)

Throughout this growing awareness the agent enjoys greater freedom withthe rules. If the individual always tends toward the realization of his or hersocial being, if the individual is moved by a conatus,23 then freedom withoutsociological consciousness (or with only, through the power of spontaneous




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sociology, a weak sociological consciousness) is the ability to anticipate astrong probability and to make ones own what must probably happen (in thestatistical sense). This is why agents conscious of their potential exclusion

from a social space often end up excluding themselves from it. In this way,for example, awareness of discrepancies between the norms of the school andtheir modes of representation, requirements, and relationship to knowledgecan lead the most disadvantaged segments of society to exclude themselvesfrom the school system on their own. In this case, when their subjective hopeis even weaker than their objective chance, the agents transform a probabledetermination of their future into a chosen freedom. They contribute throughtheir self-determination to their own disqualification.

For Bourdieu, sociological thought can give access to an understanding ofthe mechanisms which, beyond spontaneous reflections (and reflexivities),make it possible for agents to identify the best strategies for attaining theirgoals, and for the collectivity or politics to effect transformations of objectivestructures. Sociological analysis can allow us to minimize social determinationsand help universalize the conditions of access to the universal. This freedomthat knowledge enables has ethico-moral ramifications. Awareness of the struc-tures of socialization, of the mechanisms that structure social relationships in agiven field, can be used in the service of expanding access to the universal.

The degree of freedom is variable. In general, it grows as economic andeducational capital increase. It implies an effort to master the future that

requires a knowledge of the possible equivalence between objective poten-tialities and subjective hopes. The importance of this equivalence underpinsall Bourdieus work. From his earliest writings, he writes that it allows a life

plan, as a rational and reasonable expectation founded on futures that are suc-cessively accessible given a certain effort (Bourdieu, Darbel, Rivet, &Seibel, 1963, p. 366). As early as his analyses of Algerian society, Bourdieushows that the most privileged classes have access to a greater degree offreedom. This reading must not omit the social constraints endured by higherclasses. It is sufficient to recall, for example, the analyses of Norbert Elias on

Louis XIV and the weight of social codification (Elias, 1933/1983), or theanalyses of Bourdieu on matrimonial strategies (Bourdieu, 1962, 2002/2007)in order to keep their importance in mind.

When Bourdieu passes from a formal to a substantial reflection on freedom,he also passes from a scientific discourse on practice to a moral, politicallyengaged one. The goal is no longer to study the relationship between socializa-tion and freedom but to study that between freedom and emancipation. Thisapproach attempts, among other things, to help free the dominated from theirdomination (but not only them, as everyone can benefit from sociological

knowledge), since the capacity for choice and the degree of freedom varydepending on income, degree of qualification and instruction, and socioprofes-sional categories. The conformity of subjective hopes with objective possibili-ties allows a higher degree of self-fulfillment and attainment of ones ambitions.




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It is not merely a question of giving to the dominated the possibility ofreaching the same level of freedom through consciousness that the dominantmay enjoy through their habitus. Rather it is a question of a true self-liberation

through knowledge, and in this sense this liberation is aimed, without distinc-tion, at all social agents. Only acquiring consciousness and distance from theobjective structures to which agents adapt allows them to exercise true freewill. Material freedom is not freedom of consciousness, even if it is a neces-sary condition for it. This conception of freedom leads to an axiologicalapproach that is developed more specifically in Bourdieus last works. Thefreedom of choice enabled by the unveiling of practical logic requires one tochoose a stance toward the Ideal. The individual must make a normativechoice according to a subjective moral value, and can try to open up to somethingother than his or her own habitus. Until this moment behavioral unity wasdetermined by habitus; then habitus was introduced into the awareness of

practical logics functioning such that the Subject could make acts that, forhim- or herself, modify the concrete objective structure of the axiological uni-verse, and could become, within certain limits, autonomous from social deter-minations. Bourdieus last works seem to display a tension between hisanalytic refocusing on the role of the field in the determination of practicesand the importance of subjective determination in the emergence of necessitiesinduced by the field. From a normative point of view, it seems that the capacityfor change that each agent contains must be reinforced by an increased aware-

ness of the functioning of the social world in order to remedy the inequalitiesproduced by objective structures.24

Conclusion

We have little or no ability to choose our socialization, and adaptation to afield happens naturally, even instinctively; however, there is no coercion thatimposes our actions on us. Free choice often appears as an obligatory freedom

whereas it should be a conscious freedom (Bourdieu, 1991a, p. 95). And evenif freedom remains under constraints and is exercised in a space of objectivepotentialities defined by the encounter between embodied dispositions andthe rules and relations that manage the social structure, the choices that resultfrom it are not identical in tenor and orientation if it is a conscious freedom(Bourdieu, 1996, pp. 339340). It becomes thus important to expand accessto rational means and to use fully the margin of maneuver left to liberty(Bourdieu, 1999, p. 629); in other words, its not a question of lockingagents into an original social being treated as a destiny, a nature, but of offer-

ing them the possibility of taking on their habitus without guilt or suffering(Bourdieu, 1980/1993, pp. 2324).Agents can progressively emancipate themselves from their determinisms.

Throughout its progression, this emancipation becomes a duty since freedom




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of consciousness implies a great responsibility: a knowledge of theobjective necessity of the field [offers] the possibility of freedom with respectto that necessity, and therefore of a practical ethics aimed at increasing that

freedom (Bourdieu, 1997/2000b, p. 117). This freedom requires conditionsof possibility (a certain quality of life and level of education in order to under-stand oneself reflexively in a sociological way) to be met in order to beattained; independently of these, for Bourdieu, even the promotion of freedomsince it would point back to those conditions of possibilityallows us towiden access to the universal.

Like all theories that employ the notion of habitus, Bourdieus modelattributes a specific status to freedom, even though it is not often discussed.At the level of theory, this notion, or perhaps more precisely the notion ofindeterminateness, allows us through at least three principles (the productionof an infinite number of behaviors from a limited number of principles, perma-nent mutation, and the intensive and extensive limits of sociological under-standing) to account for the gaps between the theoretical model and the

practice of agents while providing elements for a sociology of freedom.Freedom is conceived as the knowledge of constraints (self-objectificationthrough sociological analysis), as the capacity for self-determination towarda chosen finality, and as relatively free action despite the obligations that stemfrom a given position in the social space. It supposes the dispositional capacityof the agent but also the configurational (i.e., relative to the field) and situa-

tional (i.e., relative to the concrete interactions that actualize the structure ofthe game for the actor) capacity to adopt a free behavior that is probably moredifficult to foresee for his or her partners. At the moral level, freedom

becomes an instrument of struggle against social inequalities, althoughBourdieu is not especially explicit on this subject. In a certain way, liberatedconsciousness implies a responsibility before the state of the world. In affirmingthat the distinctiveness of symbolic domination resides precisely in the factthat it assumes, of those who submit to it, an attitude which challenges theusual dichotomy of freedom and constraint and that the choices of habitus

... are accomplished without consciousness or constraint, by virtue of the dis-positions which, although they are unquestionably the product of social deter-minisms, are also constituted outside the spheres of consciousness andconstraint, Bourdieu significantly stresses the importance of the distinction

between freedom before and after sociological consciousness (Bourdieu,1991a, p. 51).25 It is, for him, the latter that is fundamental for change andemancipation from social suffering.

Wacquants carnal sociology of boxing can be read through a similar prism.His experimental study highlights the dynamic relation between habitus and

freedom in a concrete case. It shows with particular clarity the stakes involvedin this nexus, the distinction between freedom before and after sociological con-sciousness, and the conditions of possibility of this consciousness and theirimplications for emancipation. These questions are not at the heart of the




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analytical agenda pursued by Body and Soul. Nevertheless, as explained at thebeginning of this paper, they are entailed among theoretical issues raised bythe use of the concept of habitus. It is not surprising then that these questions

appear implicitly in Wacquants account of the forging of the pugilist.Although it does not explicitly engage the debates that these questions involve(e.g., is sociological revelation a sufficient condition for emancipation and theconquest of freedom?), Body and Soulcontains the elements of an answer tothem and a stimulating description of the tension between freedom and habi-tus at multiple levels. This work experiments with habitus in the twofoldsense of putting the notion to the test empirically and methodologically(Wacquant, 2005, p. 468). It deploys the concept to analyze the pugilistic uni-verse and, by the same token, it describes concretely how an individual canshape his dispositionsand how difficult such work of self-making is.

Notes

1. Let me specify, to avoid confusion, that my intention here is not to follow certainauthors who argue that Bourdieu merely reproduced these theories. The rigoroususe of concepts often requires a treatment of the theoretical problems theyinvolve.

2. Amid an abundant literature on the notion of habitus one could, for example, referto the work of Arnou, who shows the central role played by freedom in Thomas

Aquinass theory of habitus (Arnou, 1970, 1971).3. Translators note: The 1977 English version of this work (Outline of a Theory ofPractice) differs significantly from the 1972 French original (Esquisse dunethorie de la pratique). Where possible, references to this work are noted usingthe English pagination, but occasionally it is necessary to refer to the paginationof the French original. In the latter case, I indicate parenthetically that the trans-lation given in this article is my own (J.R.).

4. For Bourdieu these elements are position, disposition, trajectory, and capital(symbolic, cultural, economic, social, relational, linguistic, scholarly, etc.). Forreasons that cannot be explained here, Bourdieu progressively abandons the term

generative grammar which he had freely borrowed from Chomsky (see E.Bourdieu, 1998, pp. 171172).5. All the more so in modern societies, where the agent is exposed to a greater variety

of contexts.6. For a critique of these principles, see Lahire (1999).7. This expression is borrowed from Kantian schematism.8. An artifact which itself is the reflection of a scientific practice.9. Regarding this last point see Lahire (1998).

10. Unlike what certain cursory readings, or readers, suggest, Bourdieu never seeksto evacuate the subject. He merely does not mean subject in the usual sense (a

pure, transcendental subject with universal categories, etc.) but rather a subject whose categories of perception and thought, whose structures andschemes that will be used to construct the world, are to a certain extent the structures




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of the world in which he or she is. ... Only on the condition of knowing where I amin this space, which owes something to the fact that I am a point in this space, can Ihave some chance of truly being a subject. (Bourdieu, 2002, pp. 256)

11. But, by doing this, the analyst exposes him- or herself to the risk of investing elementsinto the understanding of practice which, by their virtual character, may proveinconclusive for the clarification of behaviors. In the same way, generalizationfrom arrested phases can cause the analyst to omit or neglect the orientation that tem-poral structuring imposes on behaviors, making the latter seem reversible eventhough they seem irreversible to the agents. The synoptic schemas capacity forsynchronization and generalization makes it possible to explain the coherence ofpractices but without taking into account their unpredictability and their rhythm.

12. In the face of these discrepancies, different theoretical options are possible.Although Bourdieu observes them in his early works on Algeria (Bourdieu &

Sayad, 1964), he notes their greater importance in modern societies, and studiesthem especially through the notion ofhysteresis and in the theory of fields. Aftersubmitting the model to criticism, Lahire (1998) attempts to refine it by develop-ing questions that very often are only sketched out: the initiation of embodiedschemes of action, the heterogeneity of processes of socialization, the process ofanalogical transfer, and so on. He empirically analyzes these many discrepancies,dissonances, or paradoxes by (re)centering the line of questioning on the individ-ual (Lahire, 2004). Martuccelli (1999), for his part, considers that the increase inthese multiple discrepancies proves the models inability to grasp modernity.Rather than a refinement or increased complexity of the model, these studies

plead in favor of displacing the line of questioning, that is, in Kuhnian terms, fora paradigm shift (see, e.g., Martuccelli, 2005).13. We can also displace this question of primary and secondary dispositions at the

level of the relation between individual and community:

Individuals internalize the norms of representation and the fundamental beliefs thatconstitute the principles of the world view of the communities in which they areengaged. But, once it becomes disposition, that is, once it is contracted in the form ofan individual law of behavior, this world view acquires, within the individual, a secondincarnation, relatively autonomous compared to the first and therefore not necessarilyfollowing its evolution because of its autonomy and its specific inertia, this second

incarnation of the instituted rule contributes to the existence and survival of the first,such that a relation of mutual dependence is established. (E. Bourdieu, 1998, p. 222)

14. Bourdieu (2001) draws on Kabyle tradition for his archaeological explanation ofgender relations. I will not get into a debate here with the highly questionableapproach according to which the ethnographic description of Kabyle society, a livingreservoir of the Mediterranean cultural tradition, provides a potent instrument for dis-closing the symbolic structures of the androcentric unconscious which survives in themen and women of our own societies (see back cover, Bourdieu, 2001).

15. Once again the pugilistic habitus described by Wacquant is a fruitful example:

Boxing is an individual sport, no doubt among the most individual of all athleticcontests in that it physically puts in play and in danger the body of the solitaryfighter, whose adequate apprenticeship is quintessentially collective (Wacquant,2004, p. 16)




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16. In the same line of thought, it is highly likely that his experience at the WoodlawnBoys Club affected the ways whereby Wacquant perceives and acts in academetoday.

17. Lahire (1998) has best studied the heterogeneity of socializing experiences and

notably what Bourdieu (1997/2000b) calls cleft, tormented habitus bearing in theform of tensions and contradictions the mark of the contradictory conditions offormation of which they are the product (p. 64).

18. For a critical reading of Alexanders incisive work (1995), see Wacquant (2001).19. On the relation between belief and dispositionalism see E. Bourdieu (1998,

pp. 195254).20. According to Lahire (1998), the plural dimension of the actor plays an essential

role in this impression of freedom:

One could say that we are too multisocializedand too multideterminedto be able to

be fully aware of our determinisms. If there were only one force of powerful deter-minations, which exerted itself on us, then maybe we would have an intuition, evena vague one, of determinism. (p. 235)

21. His social integration in the gym was not a foregone conclusion. Wacquant(2005) recounts:

During the first few months of my initiation, Ashante, a hard-nosed welterweight wholater became my regular sparring partner, used to ask the gyms old coach at what timethe Frenchie was coming so that he could arrange to train early, shower, jump back intohis clothes, and then sit in the backroom to laugh at Mister Magoo for an hour. (p. 448)

22. We find this distinction between two levels of freedom in Spinoza. He writes inhis famous Letter to Schuller (Letter LVIII, October 1674):

I say that that thing is free which exists and acts solely from the necessity of its ownnature; but that that thing is under compulsion which is determined by something elseto exist, and to act in a definite and determined manner. ... For instance, a stonereceives from an external cause, which impels it, a certain quantity of motion, withwhich it will afterwards necessarily continue to move when the impact of the externalcause has ceased. This continuance of the stone in its motion is compelled, not becauseit is necessary, but because it must be defined by the impact of an external cause. Whatis here said of the stone must be understood of each individual thing, however com-

posite and however adapted to various ends it may be thought to be: that is, that eachthing is necessarily determined by an external cause to exist and to act in a definiteand determinate manner. Next, conceive ... that the stone ... thinks, and knows that itis striving as much as possible to continue in motion. Surely this stone, inasmuch as itis conscious only of its own effort, and is far from indifferent, will believe that it iscompletely free, and that it continues in motion for no other reason than because itwants to. And such is the human freedom which all men boast that they possess, andwhich consists solely in this, that men are conscious of their desire, and ignorant ofthe causes by which they are determined. So the infant believes that it freely wantsmilk; the boy when he is angry that he freely wants revenge. ... Then too the drunkard

believes that, by the free decision of his mind, he says those things which afterwardswhen sober he would prefer to have left unsaid. ... Since this preconception is innatein all men, they are not so easily freed from it ... yet they believe themselves to be free.(Spinoza, 1928, pp. 294296; see also The Ethics, III.2 and V [Spinoza, 1677/1981])




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23. For Bourdieu, the agent is moved by a conatus, a tendency to persevere in onesbeing, which inclines him or her to make choices. The agent permanently actualizes,through practice, a being that fluctuates throughout action and experience andtoward which he or she tends.

24. The later Bourdieus growing attachment to elaborating of a theory of the fieldcan also be understood as a way to respond better to situations of discrepancybetween the model and reality. The analysis of situation and context makes itpossible to understand the divergences within habitus that Bourdieu emphasizesmore often in his later works, even though the inertia of habitus always assures ita certain autonomy relative to context (see, e.g., E. Bourdieu, 1998, pp. 143148).

25. This last clause follows the previous version of the sentences end, beforeSeptember 5, 2006: Bourdieu significantly stresses the importance of the distinctionbetween freedom prior to and following sociological consciousness.

References

Alexander, J. (1995). The reality of reduction: The failed synthesis of PierreBourdieu. In Fin de sicle social theory (pp. 128217). London: Verso.

Arnou, R. (1970) Lhomme a-t-il le pouvoir de connatre la vrit? Rponse de SaintThomas la connaissance par habitus [Does man have the power to know the truth?Saint Thomas answer: Knowledge by habitus]. Rome: Presses de lUniversitgrgorienne.

Arnou, R. (1971). La critique de la connaissance intellectuelle de lhomme dans la

philosophie de St. Thomas [The critique of intellectual knowledge in Saint Thomasphilosophy]. Gegorianus, 52, 273297.

Beck, U. (1997). Laudatio. Speech presented when Ernst Bloch prize was presentedto Bourdieu, November, Ludwigshafen.

Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality. New York:Doubleday.

Bourdieu, E. (1998). Savoir faire: Contribution une thorie dispositionnelle delaction [Savoir faire: Contribution to a dispositional theory of action]. Paris: Seuil.

Bourdieu, P. (1962). Clibat et condition paysanne [Celibacy and the peasantcondition]. tudes rurales, 56, 32135.

Bourdieu, P. (1967). Postface. In E. Panofsky, Larchitecture gothique et pensescolastique [Gothic architecture and scholasticims] (P. Bourdieu, Trans., pp. 136167).Paris: ditions de Minuit.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1972)

Bourdieu, P. (1982). Leon sur la leon [Lesson on the lesson]. Paris: ditionsde Minuit.

Bourdieu, P. (1990a). In other words: Essays towards a reflexive sociology (M.Adamson, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1990b). The logic of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford

University Press. (Original work published 1980)Bourdieu, P. (1991a). Language and symbolic power(G. Raymond & M. Adamson,Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP. (Original work published 1982)




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Bourdieu, P. (1991b). The political ontology of Martin Heidegger(P. Collier, Trans.).Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1993). Sociology in question (R. Nice, Trans.). London: Sage. (Originalwork published 1980)

Bourdieu, P. (1996). The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the literary field(S. Emanuel, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original workpublished 1992)

Bourdieu, P. (1999). Postscript. In P. Bourdieu et al. (Eds.), The weight of the world:Social suffering in contemporary society (P. Parkhurst Ferguson et al., Trans.,pp. 627630). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu, P. (2000a). Esquisse dune thorie de la pratique [Outline of a theory ofpractice]. Paris: Seuil. (Original work published 1972)

Bourdieu, P. (2000b). Pascalian meditations (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1997)

Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine domination (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press.

Bourdieu, P. (2002). Si le monde social mest supportable cest parce que je peuxmindigner[If the soci

Bourdieu - Habitus, Freedom and Reflexivity

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