Cycles of shame: Menstrual shame,body shame,and sexual decision‐making

Although numerous factors have been implicated in women's sexual decision‐making, less attention has been focused on how their feelings about their bodies and reproductive functions affect these processes. Recent findings link menstrual shame to lower levels of sexual activity and higher levels of sexual risk; however, the mechanisms behind these relations remain unexplored. Accordingly, this study investigates the contributions of menstrual shame and global body shame to sexual decision‐making among 199 undergraduate women. Using structural equation modeling, we evaluated a mediated model, whereby menstrual shame is indirectly associated with sexual decision‐making via body shame. As expected, women who reported feeling more comfort about menstruation also reported more body comfort and, in turn, more sexual assertiveness, more sexual experience, and less sexual risk.     

Anchors,Habitus, and Practices Besieged by War: Women and Gender in the Blockade of Leningrad

As war challenges survival and social relations, how do actors alter and adapt dispositions and practices? To explore this question, I investigate women's perceptions of normal relations, practices, status, and gendered self in an intense situation of wartime survival, the Blockade of Leningrad (1941–1944), an 872‐day ordeal that demographically feminized the city. Using Blockade diaries for data on everyday life, perceptions, and practices, I show how women's gendered skills and habits of breadseeking and caregiving (finding scarce resources and providing aid) were key to survival and helped elevate their sense of status. Yet this did not entice rethinking “gender.” To explore status elevation and gender entrenchment, I build on Bourdieu's theory of habitus and fields to develop anchors: field entities with valence around which actors orient identities and practices. Anchors provide support for preexisting habitus and practices, and filter perceptions from new positions vis‐à‐vis fields and concrete relations. Essentialist identities and practices were reinforced through two processes involving anchors. New status was linked to “women's work” that aided survival of anchors (close others, but also factories and the city), reinforcing acceptance of gender positions. Women perceived that challenging gender relations and statuses could risk well‐being of anchors, reconstructing gender essentialism.     

Bourdieu,Wharton and Changing Culture in The Age of Innocence

Although critics often attribute the failure of Edith Wharton's characters to achieve happiness to dichotomous, even mutually exclusive causes - that is, to deficiency of character or to force of circumstance - the theories of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu help to illuminate the more complex cultural and literary project at the heart of Wharton's work. Bourdieu's notions of field, habitus and capital speak to the dynamic rather than static nature of social relations in The Age of Innocence, Wharton's penultimate novel about conflict between stultifying social conventions and imagined but seldom realized escapes from such restrictions. Bourdieu's work helps us to see how Wharton embraces fluid rather fixed notions of culture in both her fiction and life. Vacillating throughout the novel between love for May Welland and for Ellen Olenska, Newland Archer stands at a crossroads between the fields of marriage and romance - between social convention and individual desire. Pulled by the competing demands of these fields, he progressively loses capital in both. Wharton documents the process by which Archer becomes constrained by a habitus shared with May; she also demonstrates - through multiple examples of cultural transformation - the degree to which he creates his own experience of having missed ‘the flower of life’. Archer's problem, then, is not only the field in which he operates but his acceptance of the narrowness of this field. In contrast, through the character of Ellen Olenska as well as minor figures such as Catherine Mingott, Bob Spicer, Julius Beaufort, Emerson Sillerton and Dallas Archer, Wharton affirms the processes of social change and shows that, although one cannot help replicating social hierarchies and taste, one can participate in the constructing one's social destiny.     

Young people’s leisure patterns: testing social age,social gender,and linguistic capital hypotheses

We analysed young people’s leisure activities in order to identify their leisure habitus, discover how they combined activities into leisure patterns, and examine how leisure patterns were socially structured. We argue that the effects of age, gender, and language on how young people’s leisure patterns are structured are mediated by social class. We found that leisure practices could be classified in terms of three habitus: the frequent leisure habitus, the cultural activity habitus, and the social vs. entertainment habitus. The different combinations of these three leisure habitus by young people resulted in four patterns which we refer to as social, omnivorous, entertainment, and religious leisure patterns. The association of leisure patterns with indicators of social position suggests that, as predicted by our theoretical framework, age, gender, and language effects are diminished once we take into account the mediating role of social class. Young people’s leisure practices are therefore socially differentiated, with young immigrants forming a vulnerable group that should be the particular focus of youth leisure policies.     

Conflicts in the habitus: the emotional work of becoming modern

This article argues that Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and, in particular, the way habitus is transmitted intergenerationally, can be enhanced by considering conflictual conscious and unconscious processes that emerge in relationships. We suggest that Christopher Bollas's discussions of the ‘unthought known’ and of ‘transformational objects’ add relational depth to the concept of habitus and thus contribute to developing a more psycho‐social understanding of the relation between agency and change. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with a socially mobile chain of a middle‐class grandmother, mother and daughter in a period of rapid change, we describe how conflicts in the habitus are produced relationally and can either impede or motivate desires for change. Relational and object relational psychoanalytic theories offer a way to move beyond what we consider a problem in Bourdieu's theory of habitus that derives from his assumption of a subject who either consciously opts for change in habitus when faced with new social demands or non‐consciously and unconflictually reproduces habitus.     

Elias and habitus: explaining bureaucratisation processes in the Gaelic Athletic Association

Based on a case study of the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland, this paper examines how bureaucratisation advanced and the specific structure it took. Drawing on Elias's concept of habitus, and the wider theoretical framework that informs it, the paper explains how an ambivalent attitude amongst the organisation's administrators towards volunteerism emerged and became deeply sedimented within the habitus of administrators. Over time, the habitus of administrators also became more self-steering. This more self-restrained habitus facilitated a capacity for greater calculation, foresight and coordination, a necessary precondition for more expansive bureaucratisation. As such, the main contribution of this paper is to expand existing theoretical explanations of bureaucratisation by connecting shifting inter- and intra-organisational interdependencies at different planes of integration with habitus change.     

Farmers,the Practice of Farming and the Future of Agroforestry: An Application of Bourdieu's Concepts of Field and Habitus

Abstract Agroforestry, the practice of raising crops and trees together in ways that are mutually beneficial, provides farmers with an alternative to more conventional farming practices. In this paper, we apply Bourdieu's concepts of “field” and “habitus” in an attempt to better understand the practice of farming and the role that agroforestry may have in farming systems. Analysis is based on qualitative and quantitative interviews of farmers and other key informants in two regions, Fox‐Wyaconda Watershed in northeast Missouri and Scott County in southeast Missouri. Within the field of farming, farmers emphasized the importance of economic, family and rental relations. Important habitus considerations include different interpretations of what constitutes farming and what constitutes forestry. Based on Bourdieu's theoretical framework, we offer three alternative paths of social change that may lead to more widespread utilization of agroforestry.     

SO,HOW DID BOURDIEU LEARN TO PLAY TENNIS? HABITUS,CONSCIOUSNESS AND HABITUATION

Bourdieu's development of the notion of ‘habitus’ has proved a rich vein for cultural theory. Habitus has been useful, with the growing interest in processes of embodiment, in countering the cognitive and representational bias in much cultural analysis, and in providing a basis for avoiding the dualisms - of mind and body, structure and agency - that trouble social theory. However, in stressing the unconscious nature of embodiment, and refusing to engage with the question of consciousness, an implicit form of mechanistic determinism has crept into Bourdieu"s implementation of habitus. By returning to the Spinozan monism that informs Bourdieu's work, this paper elaborates a productive conceptualization of habitus that attends to the various intensities of consciousness, the relations between multiple mind-bodies and processes of habituation through a focus on the literature of sports training.     

Homology and isomorphism: Bourdieu in conversation with New Institutionalism

Bourdieusian Field Theory (BFT) provided decisive inspiration for the early conceptual formulation of New Institutionalism (NI). This paper attempts to reinvigorate the stalled intellectual dialogue between NI and BFT by comparing NI's concept of isomorphism with BFT's notion of homology. I argue that Bourdieu's understanding of domination‐oriented social action, transposable habitus, and a non‐linear causality, embodied in his neglected concept of homology, provides an alternative theorization of field‐level convergence to New Institutionalism's central idea of institutional isomorphism. To showcase how BFT can be useful for organizational research, I postulate a habitus‐informed and field‐conditioned theory of transference to enrich NI's spin‐off thesis of ‘diffusion’. I propose that while NI can benefit from BFT's potential of bringing social structure back into organizational research, BFT can enrich its social analysis by borrowing from NI's elaboration of the symbolic system of organizations.     

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS AN ONLINE HEALTH LIFESTYLE?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of the Internet for health-related purposes and whether this usage is part of larger pattern of health-promoting behaviors, or health lifestyle. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus provides the key theoretical concept that links health lifestyle and the digital inequality framework to explain how social conditions (i.e. social status and quality of Internet access) influence attitudes and behaviors. Path analysis is used to examine the relationship between key endogenous variables on attitudes, health behavior, health status, and online health-related activities, while controlling for demographics and other factors. Data comes from the National Cancer Institute's 2007 Health Information National Trends Survey. The results demonstrate that online health behaviors can be usefully conceptualized as elements of health lifestyle. The combination of health lifestyle and digital inequality provides a broader theoretical framework that highlights the importance of social conditions to influence people's Internet habitus and routine health-promoting behaviors. The combination of health lifestyle and digital inequality provides a useful theoretical framework for future research investigating persistent social disparities in health and the potential for the growing reliance on information and communication technologies to contribute to socially patterned health outcomes.     

Researching others: epistemology,experience, standpoints and participation

This paper discusses a longitudinal, interview-based study of Australian secondary school students that explores the interaction between school ethos and forms of subjectivity. The study was designed to enable prospective and retrospective understandings of identity over time. It is suggested that this methodology encourages a reflexive self-positioning for both participants and researchers and, in the accumulation of an archive of perspectives, responds to poststructuralist critiques of contingency and construction in research interviews. Second, it is argued that the richness of longitudinal research invites more than one kind of analysis, and that working with and across conventionally divergent theoretical approaches can be fruitful. This is discussed with reference to Bourdieu's account of social field and habitus, and Hollway and Jefferson's notion of the 'defended subject'.     

Capital,distinction, and racialized habitus: immigrant youth in the educational field

Chinese Canadian youth are usually represented as a model minority and are therefore rendered invisible in identity debates. Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of capital, field, habitus, and distinction, this paper examines how racism affects the identity construction of Chinese youth in different school fields. Particularly, I raise and discuss a theoretical concept, racialized habitus, which is manifested as both intergroup exclusion and intragroup distinction. This theorization is grounded in interview data with 36 first- and second-generation Chinese Canadian youth in Alberta, Canada. This study indicates the continuing significance of research on racism. It calls for challenging racism as an act of distinction, habitus, and action, as well as a discursive practice of discourse.     

Shame in Self and Society

This article proposes that shame is the master emotion of everyday life but is usually invisible in modern societies because of taboo. A review of shame studies suggests a taboo that results in denial and silence. The studies by Cooley, Freud, Elias, Lynd, Goffman, Lewis, and Tomkins have been largely ignored. Their work suggests a vital connection between shame and social life: shame can be seen as a signal of a threat to the bond. If so, understanding shame would be necessary for the study of social systems. The taboo on shame in English still holds: current usage, for the most part, assigns an intense and narrow singular meaning. This meaning offends, on the one hand, and misses the everyday function of shame, on the other. Perhaps the problem can be approached, as it is in traditional societies, by the use of a broader term, such as “bond affect” or “Shame.” Such a concept could lead to discovery of the emotional/relational world.     

Mapping the role of ‘transnational family habitus’ in the lives of young people and children

In this article, we develop the concept of ‘transnational family habitus’ as a theoretical tool for making sense of the ways in which children and young people from a migrant background are ‘doing families’ transnationally. Drawing on over a decade of cumulative research on Caribbean and Italian families in the UK, as well as on a new joint research project, we first investigate the opportunities and consequences of a transnational family habitus on family arrangements, kinship relationships and identity within a transnational context. Second, we analyse the role of these young people's structural location in Britain in shaping the boundaries of their transnational family habitus. We argue that one should see a transnational family habitus as an asset that can potentially disrupt conventional understandings of belonging and processes of inclusion and exclusion. However, we also detail how social divisions of class, race, and increasingly migration status, shape such a habitus.     

Bourdieu and Social Movements: Considering Identity Movements in Terms of Field,Capital and Habitus

This article examines the explanatory capacity of Pierre Bourdieu's work in relation to social movements and, in particular, identity movements. It aims to provide a theoretical framework drawing on Bourdieu's central concepts of field, capital and habitus. These concepts are viewed as providing a theoretical toolkit that can be applied to convincingly explain aspects of social movements that social movement theories, such as political process theory, resource mobilization theory and framing, acknowledge, but are not able to explain within a single theoretical framework. Identity movements are approached here in a way that relates them to the position agents/movements occupy in social spaces, resources and cultural competence. This enables us to consider identity movements from a new perspective that explains, for instance, the interrelatedness of class and identity movements.     

Danger,Pleasure, Vulnerability,Shame: Reply to Commentaries

Hartman's and Blechner's responses to my essay highlight some illuminating differences with my own theoretical and clinical inclinations. In particular, Hartman's postmodernism and Blechner's empiricism allow me to clarify my own thinking, in particular the centrality of my concern with vulnerability. Sedgwick's challenge to my clinical case says much of interest about shame. It also permits me to address misunderstandings that can take place between analysts and patients, as well as between psychoanalysts and academics.     

Social Worker Shame in Child and Family Social Work: Inadequacy,Failure, and the Struggle to Practise Humanely

Social workers operate within a complex environment where the failure to live up to expectations can lead to negative self-judgements or negative judgements from others, a sense of inadequacy and not feeling ‘good enough’. This paper conceptualises such issues through the lens of ‘social worker shame’ defined through a psychosociocultural understanding of the emotion. The effect of social worker shame on social workers' well-being and practise is considered and begins to conceptualise how an organisation can become shame-sensitive and practitioners shame-resilient with the aim of reducing the potential impact of social worker shame on practise.     

Inequality and 21-year-olds' negotiation of uncertain transitions to employment: a Bourdieusian approach

Faced with uncertainty, how do young people navigate the transition from school to work? Applying Bourdieu's concept of habitus to the ‘fields’ of education and employment, I argue that past experience, family background and unequal access to economic, social and symbolic forms of capital differentiate their transitions. Drawing on the tenth wave of the Australian longitudinal Life Chances Study, we found that all of the twenty-five 21-year-olds interviewed expressed uncertainty when discussing their futures. However, those from high-income backgrounds with access to strong social, economic and cultural resources were better able to manage the risks arising from uncertainty than their counterparts from low-income backgrounds. The following article seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of young people's experiences at age 21 through the application of Bourdieu's conceptual framework. The interviewees’ habitus and cultivation of varying forms of capital tend towards social reproduction, yet also reveal opportunities for those considered ‘disadvantaged’ to mobilise their cultural resources. Bourdieu's model of the field, and its component conceptual tools, provide an explanatory frame to make sense of the seemingly incoherent paths that young people trace between education and employment.     

Everyday shame

This article explores aspects of the everyday through a consideration of shame. Drawing on and extending Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus, notably in relationship to Silvan Tomkins’ affect theory, and to Bourdieu’s predecessor Marcel Mauss, the paper argues for the positivity of everyday shame. The very different although complementary privileging of the physiological in Tomkins and in Mauss allows for a radical rearticulation and understanding of the habitus and of everyday life. In this article, their understandings serve to provide a model that more fully comprehends the productive nature of shame within postcolonial societies.     

Shame and the Social Bond: A Sociological Theory

Emotion has long been recognized in sociology as crucially important, but most references to it are generalized and vague. In this essay, I nominate shame, specifically, as the premier social emotion. First I review the individualized treatment of shame in psychoanalysis and psychology, and the absence of social context. Then I consider the contributions to the social dimensions of shame by six sociologists (Georg Simmel, Charles Cooley, Norbert Elias, Richard Sennett, Helen Lynd, Erving Goffman) and a psychologist/psychoanalyst (Helen Lewis). I show that Cooley and Lynd, particularly, made contributions to a theory of shame and the social bond. Lewis's idea that shame arises from threats to the bond integrates the contributions of all six sociologists, and points toward future research on emotion, conflict, and alienation/integration.