ABSTRACT
There are a couple of deviations from Pierre Bourdieu’s approach within this study that are needed in order to make use of the previous insights 1) on the sociological analysis of civil wars and conflict, and 2) on the analysis of social structures in general and outside of Europe and the US in particular. Many of them relate to Bourdieu’s concept of social space, but, for the most part, they may be resolved – with some slight changes – using his concept of a ‘field’. The first point of deviation is that the current study places a stronger emphasis on the lifecourse of agents as a diachronic factor that accounts for differences in habitus formation. While Pierre Bourdieu highlights diachronic aspects of habitus formation in his theory, he mainly uses statistical methods (correspondence analysis, in particular) to detect differences between individuals that matter for their habitus formation. Within his seminal study ‘Distinction’ (2010), variations in habitus formation within the French social structure are analyzed through the construction of a two-dimensional social space. Using correspondence analysis, Bourdieu structures a society’s social space along two dimensions defined by economic and cultural resources on its x-axis and y-axis, respectively. Depending on the number of resources at an agent’s disposal, their composition, and their current tendency (e.g., increasing/decreasing) at a given moment in time, his position on the table and the corresponding habitus can be determined alongside likely lifestyle patterns. According to Bourdieu, positions within this social space are homolog, that is, the distance between agents in all fields of practice remains the same. The social distance on the flat space of the social structure becomes reiterated within all social practices across all fields and even inscribed into physical space (Bourdieu, 1996). It is a nation’s current space of social structure that matters most for the formation of the habitus, not participation in different fields during the lifecourse of the individuals. By using a snap-reading method such as statistics – specifically correspondence analysis, in this case – Bourdieu tends to overemphasize synchronic aspects of habitus formation and also binds them to unambiguous positions within a nation’s social structure. However, as Bourdieu himself constantly highlights and also tries to make use of using additional qualitative methodologies such as more or less structured interviews, “The social world is accumulated history” as well (1986, p. 241).
