Practice Theory

• Habitus tends to produce specific lifestyles
• Influences leisure pursuits, social circles, TV preferences, reading habits, value of education, food choices, etc.
• Develops out of economic position
• Working class habitus reflects lack of money and everyday struggle to make ends meet
• Higher classes habitus reflects economic security and concern for aesthetics
• Habitus structures the everyday life of individuals
• Not fixed and unchanging, changes with economic position and struggles for cultural acceptance
• Society's members draw upon sets of generative schemes called habitus
• Habitus is like a thematic riff that individuals improvise upon
• Provides a coherent thread to cultural experiences
• Not a precoded musical score
• Bourdieu's theoretical perspective on the social universe
• Practice Theory by Pierre Bourdieu
• Culture actively constructed by social actors from cultural dispositions and structured by previous events
• Social universe of practice is gamelike, combining rules, individual behavior, and strategy
• Anthropologists must inquire into their own practice and understand the social universe
• Theory of practice examines objective structures, motives, actions, and practical knowledge
• Anthropologists create conceptions and misconceptions of social reality
• Theory of practice requires anthropologists to examine their own practice
• Habitus is the common origin of shared practices within a group