Re: [xmca] ego, self, etc.

Martin,
   
  I enjoyed your synopsis of habitus and field very much. However I think that Bourdieu's framework actually can provide for developmental understandings and I'm not sure Bourdieu would have viewed theoretical compatibility with Hegel's philosophy of history qua spirit as a theoretical necessity or desirable objective.
   
  As I understand it, the concept of habitus only acquires theoretical meaning in relation to a specific field of activity developed around the acquisition of different types of capital. Habitus would be totally abstract without field and of course incapable of providing an alternative to anything.
   
  I think a case can be made for studying activity systems as fields and vice versa. Activity systems/fields have become more complex over since proto-hominids began using tools and the creation of new needs and systems for satisfying them have accompanied the extinction of old activity system/fields as this social differentiation has unfolded. The "unfolding of the spirit" within this dialectical field-habitus unity within a specific object oriented practices as the resolution of contradictions of different kinds. It would not be found in some abstract, free-floating habitus detached from reference to any specific field of practice.
   
  Paul.
   
   
   
  I'm not completely convinced that habitus provides an adequate
 alternative account of the human subject - alternative to the Kantian one, I mean.
 It doesn't seem to have room for some of the complexities of, for example,
Hegel's account of the unfolding of the subject.

       
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Received on Fri Feb 1 21:23 PST 2008