O pojmu habitusa – feministička kritika teorije o društvu Pjera Burdijea

Abstract

Key contemporary sociological theorists, such as Foucault or Habermas rarely explicitly discussed gender in their studies. This fact has not caused a lack of interest in the critical examination of the theoretical systems of these authors within a feminist perspective. During the 1990’s feminists’ attention was drawn to Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory. French sociologist’s study Masculine Domination deals with issues of gender dynamics and its reproduction. In this study the persistence of the asymmetric distribution of social power between women and men is explained by concepts of habitus and symbolic violence. As this article will show, social change cannot be explained by Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, as a key link between social structure and action, due to its reduction of actors to socialized bodies, which are practically deprived of any true action potential. On the other hand, with regard to social activism as a permanent feature of feminist theory, this paper seeks to examine whether critical examination of Bourdieu’s conceptual apparatus achieves to provide the means to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the theoretical system of French sociologist. In other words, this article seeks to answer the question whether such a modification of habitus is possible, which will allow for actors whose action is truly structured and structuring, and lead to possible change of existing power relations.