The Dictionary of Human Geography

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habitus A term coined by French anthro-

pologist/sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to convey

the routinized, yet indeterminate, nature of

social practice. It mediates between objectivist

accounts, such as fromstructuralism, and

individualistic accounts, such as fromphe-

nomenology. The former would see individ-

ual practice as determined by social factors,

while the latter would emphasize the individ-

ual’s intentions. In essence, then, it speaks to

the oxymoronic nature of always improvised

yet repetitively predictable practices of every-

day life. Bourdieu himself defined habitus as

the system of:

durable, transposable dispositions, struc-

tured structures predisposed to function as

structuring structures, that is as principles

which generate and organize practices and

representations that can be objectively

adapted to their outcomes without presup-

posing a conscious aiming at ends or an

express mastery of the operations necessary

in order to attain them. Objectively ‘regular’

and ‘regulated’ without being in any way the

product of obedience to rules, they can be

collectively orchestrated without being the

product of the organizing action of a con-

ductor. (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 53)

This definition, then, emphasizes that prac-

tices are not (generally) subject to the anarchy

of individual intentions. He plays down the

role of intention, rejecting conscious planning

as a principle, in favour of routinization. He

also stresses that there are collective patterns

without implying there is a conscious plan or

conformity.

Rather, there is adaptation to a constricted

set of opportunities presented to each actor in a

‘social field’. These have been variously inter-

preted, but usually represent a social domain in

which there are shared rules of operation.

These can be defined by institutions but can

be more open, and are defined by the circula-

tion of specific forms and practices. Bourdieu

himself worked with the ‘artistic field’, or what

he more broadly defined as the field of cultural

production, the field of consumption and the

‘educational field’. Clearly, a critique is that the

edges of these can be vague and that applied

mechanically they merely render a institutional

sociology. However, the virtue of his approach

is that these fields are relatively autonomous

from each other – thus advantage in one field

does not automatically mean advantage in an-

other. Most famously, he thus developed a no-

tion of the accumulation ofcultural capital

as separate from economiccapital. The plur-

ality of fields provides for multiple dimensions

ofpowerand status in society. Each field has its

own tacit rules and continual adaptation pro-

duces ingrained dispositions. For example, in

Bourdieu’s study of amateur photography –

a voluntary activity, in which few people

have any training – he found people’s pictures

remarkably similar, so ‘there are few activities

which are so stereotyped and less aband-

oned to the anarchy of individual intentions’

(Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 19). Bourdieu has been

criticized for being reductive and emphasizing

the structural side of practices, and his work

has an unfashionable belief in the ability to

objectify the conditions of the emergence of

practices.

Withingeography, his work was first taken

up as a way of mediating in debates between

structuralism’s focus on determinations of ac-

tion and accounts focusing onhuman agency

(e.g. Thrift, 1983). Along withstructuration

theory, it offered a middle way in debates of

the 1980s. In the 1990s, his work on cultural

capital was heavily invoked in studies ofcon-

sumption, connecting habitus to the lifestyles

of different class fractions (e.g. Bridge, 2001).

Finally, from the 1990s interest in his notion

of habitus has focused around how tacit know-

ledge might connect with work on thebody

and routinized habit, and embodiedmemory

(e.g. Alsmark, 1996). mc

Suggested reading

Alsmark (1996); Bourdieu (1995); Bridge

(2001); Thrift (1983).

hazard An event or phenomenon that does

harm to human lives. Today, most researchers

view hazards as the joint product ofrisk(the

potentiality or probability of harmful events)

and vulnerability (the degree to which risk-

affected populations are likely to suffer from

the event occurring) (Mitchell, 2003b, p. 17).

The field of hazard research opened up in

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