29,122 research outputs found
Revealing habitus, illuminating practice: Bourdieu, photography and visual methods
Full text linkHaving taken taking as one of its starting points a concern to avoid fetishising method – or employing any form of method for its own sake – this paper then argues that visual methods of research may be particularly helpful in investigating areas that are difficult otherwise to verbalise or articulate. These include Bourdieu's understanding of habitus; our predisposed ways of being, acting and operating in the social environment that Bourdieu himself suggests are 'beyond the grasp of consciousness, and hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot even be made explicit' (Bourdieu, 1977: 94). Having outlined what Bourdieu means by habitus and considered some of the difficulties surrounding its operationalisation, the paper goes on to consider Bourdieu's own use of photography and understanding of photographic practice. It is then argued that we can move beyond Bourdieu's position by employing visual methods specifically to uncover and illuminate aspects of habitus. Where research participants are directly involved in this process this also means that visual methods can be potentially transformative, allowing for the development of forms of critical self-awareness amongst research participants of the sort that Bourdieu attributes to 'socioanalysis' (Bourdieu, 1999: 611).<br/
Twenty-first century dis-ease? habitual reflexivity or the reflexive habitus
No full textWhile certain theorists have suggested that identity is increasingly reflexive, such accounts are arguably problematised by Bourdieu's concept of habitus, which – in pointing to the 'embeddedness' of our dispositions and tastes – suggests that identity may be less susceptible to reflexive intervention than theorists such as Giddens have implied. This paper does not dispute this so much as suggest that, for increasing numbers of contemporary individuals, reflexivity itself may have become habitual, and that for those possessing a flexible or reflexive habitus, processes of self-refashioning may be 'second nature' rather than difficult to achieve. The paper concludes by examining some of the wider implications of this argument, in relation not only to identity projects, but also to fashion and consumption, patterns of exclusion, and forms of alienation or estrangement, the latter part of this section suggesting that those displaying a reflexive habitus, whilst at a potential advantage in certain respects, may also face considerable difficulties simply 'being themselves'.'I noticed how people played at being executives while actually holding executive positions. Did I do this myself? You maintain a shifting distance between yourself and your job. There's a self-conscious space, a sense of formal play that is a sort of arrested panic, and maybe you show it in a forced gesture or a ritual clearing of the throat. Something out of childhood whistles through this space, a sense of games and half-made selves, but it's not that you're pretending to be someone else. You're pretending to be exactly who you are. That's the curious thing.' (DeLillo, 1997: 103
Everything starts with an E: fashions in theory, fashion theory and the cultural studies debate
No full textCyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: cultures of technological embodiment. Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, (eds), Sage, London, 1995, £13.95, 280 pp.
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Marked bodies, oppositional identities? Tattooing, piercing and the ambiguity of resistance
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Bodies, boundaries and corporeal artefacts: some thoughts on body modification and public art
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