Avant Bourdieu: notes on the (half-forgotten) history of the concept of habitus
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7984.2025.e85978Keywords:
Pierre Bourdieu, habitus, history of the social sciencesAbstract
In large measure due to the impact of Bourdieu’s oeuvre, the notion of habitus has become one of the most influential analytical tools in contemporary social theory. The article focuses on the historical trajectory that this concept and akin notions have followed within philosophy and the human sciences, so as to show that the idea of habitus condenses accounts of human subjectivity and conduct that have been formulated by authors such as Aristotle and Thomas Acquinas, Durkheim and Weber, Husserl and Mauss, Elias and Merleau-Ponty, among others. By following the pathways of a concept and the constellations of themes related to it, the study intends to contribute to a history of social-scientific ideas that is attentive not only to authorial initiatives, but also to historically sedimented semantic inheritances in the vocabulary of the social sciences.
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