The Concept of Habit and the Regularities of Social Structure (original) (raw)
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A definition of habit for socio-economics
Review of Social Economy, 2019
The paper argues that it is a mistake to define habit as behaviour or action; as a regular conjunction of actions; as a stock; as a form of automaticity (although habit is acquired and activated automatically); as a tendency, propensity or disposition (even though habit acts tendentially); as a mechanism; and as a process (even though habit is acquired and activated via several processes). A taxonomic definition is provided wherein habit is a cognitive representation of a cue-action response.
The Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2017
Analysis of the concept of habit has been relatively neglected in the contemporary analytic literature. This paper is an attempt to rectify this lack. The strategy begins with a description of some paradigm cases of habit which are used to derive five features as a basis for an explicative definition. It is argued that habits are social, acquired through repetition, enduring, environmentally activated, and automatic. The enduring nature of habits is captured by their being dispositions of a certain sort. This is a realist account of habits in so far as the dispositions put forward must fit with some recognizable underlying system-in the case of humans a biological system-to fill the role as set out by the definition. This role is wide-ranging; in addition to the familiar cases of habitual behavior, habitual activities also include thinking, perceiving, feeling and willing.
Habit: Time, Freedom, Governance
Body & Society, 2013
This article investigates the place that habit occupies in different ‘architectures of the person’, focusing particularly on constructions of the relations between habit and other components of personhood that are marked by time. Three such positions are examined: first, the relations between thought, will, memory, habit and instinct proposed by post-Darwinian accounts of ‘organic memory’; second, Henri Bergson’s account of the relations between habit, memory and becoming; and, third, the temporal aspects of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus understood as a set of hereditable dispositions. These different ‘architectures of the person’ are considered with regard to the role they accord habit in trans-generational mechanisms of inheritance; the historicised forms of embodied personhood that they propose; and the manner in which they account for the emergence of a capacity for freedom that can (partially) offset the weight of the inherited past. It is argued that the imputation of s...
Mind, Habits and Social Reality Introduction (2014)
The present volume of Phenomenology and Mind is dedicated to the topic of habit, especially in its personal and social aspects. The phenomenological tradition has produced a number of interesting and fruitful reflections on habits, importantly challenging the often too sharply drawn distinction between nature and culture. The notion of habit is crucial in understanding Husserl’s phenomenology. The ante-predicative framing of types in perception and the felt movement of the lived-body, the framing of position-takings in logically, evaluatively, and practically formed judgments, the rational stances one can adopt, e.g., in interpersonal discourse, or the attitudes shaping one’s conceptual grasp of the world – in all these instances conscious life decisively involves elements of habit (types, positions, stances, attitudes, etc.).
Schumpeter, Veblen, and Bourdieu on Institutions and the Formation of Habits
2021
As we know, Joseph Alois Schumpeter is one of the greatest economists of all times, while Thorstein Veblen is an economist and sociologist who made seminal contributions to the social sciences. Pierre Bourdieu, meanwhile, is one of the most famous structural sociologists, who has consistently worked on economic dynamics. These three scholars have laid the foundations of a socioeconomic perspective. However, several important aspects of their works remain less widely discussed, or even inadequately explored in a comparative manner. Of course, investigating the origins of their ideas in evolutionary and institutional economics and re-evaluating comparatively the influences that shaped their works is quite useful for promoting dialogue between Economics and Sociology. Within this framework, this essay focuses on the conceptual relationship between Schumpeter, Veblen and Bourdieu. Evolution and Change shape the economic life in their respective works and, in such a framework a central point of their analyses is the interdependence between the cultural, social and economic spheres. Furthermore, an economic sociology is built around the concept of habit formation. The three great authors' systemic views focus on the various institutions and other aspects of cultural, social and economic life, where habits are formed and cover diverse fields and notions such as Consumption, Preferences, Art, Knowledge, Banking and even Capitalism. For instance, all three social scientists acknowledged the fact that the internal dynamics of capitalism introduce structural instabilities into the economic system. Also, they recognized that research and knowledge development is a collective social process. However, from a methodological perspective, their main emphasis is on the emerging dynamic evolution of habits, which is perceived as the interruption of already existing social norms and the conflict between routine and change. Several differences between Schumpeter, Veblen and Bourdieu are observed and analysed and ideas for future research are presented.
Clarifying the Character of Habits: Understanding What and How They Explain
To appear in Habit: Pragmatist Approaches from Cognitive Neurosciences to Social Sciences. Caruna, F and Testa, I (Eds). Cambridge University Press.
This paper aims to set the record straight about special sort of intelligence exhibited by habitual doings. It defends an enactivist account of habitual doings which, at its core, depicts habits as flexible and adjustable modes of response that are world-directed and context-sensitive. So understood, habits are wholly unlike the exercise of blind mechanisms or mindless reflexes. Nevertheless, we resist the familiar forced choice of thereby understanding habits in standard cognitivist terms. Our proposal aims to avoid the twin mistakes of either underintellectualizing or overintellectualizing habits. In tune with our enactivist elucidation of the core character of habits, the paper also explicates how habits, so conceived, can support and thwart our larger projects.
A History of Habit: From Aristode to Bourdieu
Accordingly, I take the volume at hand as a landmark achievement in its field. If it is taken as such, it deserves to be evaluated by stringent criteria. If such criteria are applied, a few observations should be made. All fifteen contributions in the book, bar two, explicitly mention the pragmatist tradition of philosophy and Mead's membership in it. However, not one of the contributions makes any analytic use of the following pragmatist principles that are central in Mead's thought as well: (l) A fallibilistic basic conception of human action, resulting in (2) a replacement of theory of knowledge by a theory ofinquiry. Further consequences of the above suppositions are more indirect, but just as important: (3) a new conception of meaning, by which meaning is understood (3a) from the logical point of view as constituted by triadic relations and (3b) from an empirically descriptive point of view as a phenomenon that widely transcends the human mind and human language , a phenomenon "almost coextensive with life" as Mead once put it. Accordingly, there is still some further work to be done in showing how timeless a thinker Mead really was (and is) and how his thought has firm roots in a unique tradition. This task has become much easier thanks to the contribution of the present volume. Lanham, Lexington, 2013, xi + 315, incl. index. The collection by Sparrow and Hutchinson gathers together (mostly) philosophers and (a few) sociologists to discuss the ever fascinating yet surprisingly underplayed theme of habit: its history and place in the western philosophical tradition, from the ancients to the contemporary scene. A collection such as this has been long overdue, and surprisingly so, given the centrality of habits in our understanding and organization of ourselves and of the world. We human beings are in fact complex bundles of habits embodied in practices. Hence, our limits and possibilities are at least partially governed by the way in which we habitu-ate, dishabituate, and re-habituate ourselves. Although their presence is widely acknowledged, what such bundles of habits are and even more interestingly what we can make of them (and of ourselves through them)
Theologies of Habit: From Hexis to Plasticity
Body & Society, 2013
This article examines medieval and early modern theologies of habit (those of Augustine, Aquinas and Luther), and traces a theme of appropriation through the discourse on habit and grace. It is argued that the question of habit is central to theological debates about human freedom, and about the nature of the Godrelationship. Continuities are then highlighted with modern philosophical accounts of habit, in particular those of Ravaisson and Hegel. The article ends by considering some of the philosophical and political implications of the preceding analysis of habit.
Transforming Habit: Revolution, Routine and Social Change
Cultural Studies , 2017
Compelling recent scholarly work has explored the crucial role affect, emotion and feeling might play in activating radical social and political change. I argue, however, that some narratives of ‘affective revolution’ may actually do more to obscure than to enrich our understanding of the material relations and routines though which ‘progressive’ change might occur and endure in a given context - while side-stepping the challenge of how to evaluate progress itself in the current socio-political and economic landscape. Drawing on the work of Eve Sedgwick, John Dewey, Felix Ravaisson and others, this article asks whether critical work on habit can provide different, and potentially generative, analytical tools for understanding the contemporary ethical and material complexities of social transformation. I suggest that it habit’s double nature – its enabling of both compulsive repetition and creative becoming – that makes it a rich concept for addressing the propensity of harmful socio-political patterns to persist in the face of efforts to generate greater awareness of their damaging effects, as well as the material forms of automation and coordination on which meaningful societal transformation may depend. I also explore how bringing affect and habit together might productively refigure our understandings of ‘the present’ and ‘social progress’, as well as the available modes of sensing, instigating and responding to change. In turning to habit, then, the primary aim of this article is to examine how social and cultural theory might critically re-approach social change and progressive politics today.