Habitus: the ill-adjusted disposition

Habitus is a set of the acquired dispositions based on the experiences one has passed through. Although relatively durable, habitus evolves with time as individuals encounter different experiences, hence it is a combination of past and present. However it can predict the future actions and provides a sense of how to act and respond in daily life without consciously obeying explicitly posed rules thus working below the level of consciousness.

While working below the level of consciousness, habitus can direct moves which can be called organized strategies without intending to be strategic. These strategies can anticipate the future of its own consequences – how?

These strategies produce practices that are governed by such a habitus which has adapted to the objective condition in advance so long as these conditions remain the same or are identical. In this condition the habitus successfully adapts to the objective condition. In this way the past is used by the habitus to anticipate the future, especially of its own consequence.

In case the conditions change and is no more identical or same in which the habitus was constituted, the future anticipation will be false and is belied. In this changing scenario the relatively durable dispositions is ill-adjusted to the objective chances. Now the environment the agents encounter will be different than the one the habitus was adjusted. So in cases where the habitus has to function out of normal routine, the practices are ill-adapted to the present conditions.

A case in hand

Kala is working in a school for a long time. She had been used to the working conditions and her habitus was well adjusted to what is required in teaching/learning. Using her past through her habitus she was able to anticipate the future and adapt her practices. The habitus was in accordance with the objective conditions, thus successfully adjusted and adapted. Imagine a reform in the curriculum changes the conditions by requiring differently organized content, new assessment criteria, hence demands a change in practice. In this case the habitus is not matched to the social conditions. Kala finds it hard to adapt as she thinks that the process of adapting to the reform is ‘frustrating’, ‘exhausting’ and ‘causes fatigue’. Here is her account.

She says that when they were ‘first introduced to the idea of big change’ she was ‘under the impression’ that ‘it is all going to be very straightforward’; that ‘it was put across as if it is all going to be very well organized’ with clear ‘expectations’, well ‘specified content requirements’ and ‘prepared program’; that the ‘assessment was under control’; and a sense that this change was ‘supposed to be making’ their ‘lives easy.’ However she ‘ends up finding’ that it was ‘completely the opposite’. She thinks that they found that a lot of the ‘program weren’t very well done, very unclear, they dint really make sense’ and that ‘the assessment that was suggested really wasn’t suitable and satisfactory.’

This was a predisposition that Kala had in her habitus, but she had falsely anticipated the future and thus an ill-adjusted habitus which can cause ill-adapted practice.

“The tendency of groups to persist in their ways, due inter alia to the fact that they are composed of individuals with durable dispositions that can outlive the economic and social conditions in which they were produced, can be the source of misadaptation as well as adaption, revolt as well as resignation.”(Bourdieu, 1990: 62).

In case of Kala, the misadaptation and resignation is evident. For Kala, ‘having been a teacher for a very long,’ she feels that is the reason ‘why sometimes it is hard to take it serious, because I had been through so many new ideas, and quite often it’s just a new idea new name often doing something that’s very similar, sounds a bit different. It cause fatigue, because you put so much time and energy into it.’ She admits that ‘the reform is exhausting’ because in an attempt to ‘understand’ and do the ‘job correctly’  she found that it is a lot ‘more hard work’ without ‘necessarily   better’ as it is ‘not necessarily making things better’.