The Habitus Process

A Biopsychosocial Conception

Andreas Pickel






Working Paper CSGP 05/1

www.trentu.ca/globalpolitics
Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada




Abstract
The concept of habitus, popularized in the last two decades of the twentieth century
especially by the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias, is frequently employed in
the social and biosocial sciences. The concept of habitus seems to offer a fruitful way of
dealing with some fundamental problems in social theory today by providing a promising
conceptual linkage between cultural, social, psychological and biological dimensions of
reality. The task of this paper is to work towards a clearer and more systematic
conception of habitus based on a systemic and mechanismic philosophy of science. The
paper surveys the various forms in which habitus appears in the social world, presents a
systematic account of the structures and effects of habitus, and sketches a dynamic model
of how habitus as process in biopsychosocial systems works. The illustrative case to be
discussed is that of national habitus and homo nationis as a biopsychosocial system.
2
The Habitus Process
A Biopsychosocial Conception

I agree that cultures are not immutable essences and that they have no fixed
contours. I also agree that their content is not self-evident. But to deny the
reality of that content altogether and reduce us all, as cultural beings, to
members of myriad groups cross-cutting, overlapping, and ever-evolving,
means to overlook the central reality. . . no on is more acutely aware of this reality
than a bilingual who lives his or her life in two languages and two cultures, and the
testimony of bilingual and bicultural writers is loud and clear (Wierzbicka 1997,
p.18).

Introduction
The study of habitus has both a long tradition and a short history. Matters that fall under
the conception of habitus as presented here have been examined in general terms such as
customs and cultures at least since Montesquieu, and under the headings of ideology
(Marx), milieux (Durkheim) and indeed habitus (Weber) by the classics of modern
sociology. Webers famous thesis about the relationship between capitalism and the
Protestant work ethic was only one aspect of social reality for which he considered
habitus sociologically significant. Others concerned such fundamental matters as
political legitimation and modern bureaucracy. Not only Durkheim and Weber, but also
Marx, Comte, Tnnies, Simmel and other social theorists of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century (Camic 1986, p.1050) employed the concepts of habit and habitus
1
in
the broad sense of guiding action. But what is the sociological significance of habitus
today? And what does it add to the social scientists toolbox that is not already covered
by other concepts of normatively and rationally guided patterns of conduct? The
argument to be defended here is that unlike other conceptions, the concept of habitus
provides a promising conceptual linkage between cultural, social, pychological and
biological dimensions of reality.
The concept of habitus, long neglected or ignored, made a comeback in the
scholarly literature starting in the 1980s. The contributions of two scholars can be
credited for the revival of the study of habitus, Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias.
3
Bourdieu, whose work has been published since the late 1960s, has been the more
successful of the two in terms of frequency of citation of his work. Norbert Eliass key
work The Process of Civilization (first published in German in 1936 and in English in
1939) was not widely recognized as a classic until the 1990s. However, there is little
doubt that Elias has strongly influenced Bourdieus own work on habitus. The work of
both on habitus has found strong resonance in traditional disciplines as well as in a
surprising range of applied and multidisciplinary fields. Applied fields include law and
management studies, medical anthropology and educational ethnography, the sociology
of sports and health psychology, environmental policy and biomedical engineering.
Multidisciplinary fields include political economy, social psychology, and historical
sociology.
I myself have become attracted to this concept in my work on nationalism and
national identity for which habitus in this case national habitus seemed to capture
important cultural dimensions in political and economic change processes for which I
have been unable to find an adequate conceptual framework. When I employed the
concept of habitus in a paper on the continuing significance of the national in the age of
globalization, some readers rightly criticized that I had not provided an explicit
definition, let alone a systematic conception, of habitus. Regrettably, notwithstanding the
richness of their contributions, neither Elias (Smith 2001) nor Bourdieu (King 2000) have
provided such a clear and systematic conception of habitus. As Crossley (2001, p.81) has
put it with respect to Bourdieus concept of habitus, there is more potential for an
elaboration and deepening of this concept than his work to date has achieved.
2
The
present paper tries to make a contribution towards this goal. The paper, however, is not
designed as an internal critique or elaboration of Bourdieus and Eliass conceptions of
habitus. Instead, it approaches the question of habitus from a systemic and mechanismic
philosophy of science perspective based primarily on the work of Mario Bunge (2003).
3

The conception of habitus presented here may suggest new ways to approach a
number of widely recognized, unproductive divisions, both conceptually and in scientific
practice. The conception of habitus to be presented here provides an example of a
conceptual linkage between cultural, social, psychological and biological dimensions of
reality that have proved difficult to incorporate into one general framework or approach.
4
The conception of habitus as process to be developed in this paper claims to identify
and conceptually bring together crucial cultural mechanisms at work in interconnected
social, psychological, and biological systems the linkage of which has not been
systematically studied.
The paper proceeds in four steps. I begin by discussing the various forms in
which habitus appears in the social world. Next comes a systematic account of the
structures and effects of habitus. The third section presents a dynamic model of how
habitus as process works, along with an empirical illustration. A summary of the major
points and arguments precedes the final two sections, a discussion of national habitus and
concluding remarks on homo nationis as a biopsychosocial system.

5
Phenomenology: What forms does habitus take?
Since several elements of habitus are in fact at least partially observable in individual and
social behaviour, it might be useful to start the analysis by identifying some of them.

[Figure 1 about here]

As figure 1 illustrates, a habitus takes a variety of different forms from simple automatic
behaviours such as holding open a door to generalized and complex forms of interacting
with others in a particular professional setting. The proper handshake in a particular
social situation, general ways of identifying and solving problems at a workplace, and
even what happiness or the good life means and entails, are other examples. Some of the
many forms that a habitus can take in individual persons as represented in figure 1 may
suggest that the concept of habitus refers primarily to the characteristics of individuals
patterns of thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, and interacting
4
in short, that habitus is an
individual thing. But the theoretical significance of habitus lies in the fact that habitus is
above all a social thing. A habitus emerges in concrete social systems a family, a firm,
an artistic subculture, a political organization, or a society. (I use a very broad concept of
social system that includes anything from loose social networks and groups to
organizations and state-societies.) It is this concrete social system that marks the context
in which we can draw up a model (or ideal type) of a system-specific habitus, based on
a wide range of observations and conjectures.
5
Thus from a macrosociological point of
view it does not make sense to conceptualize habitus as the property of an individual.
Instead, habitus should be seen as the property of a social system. The habitus of a social
system is reflected in different ways in the personalities and behaviours of the
individuals comprising the system (i.e. in their unique personalized habiti). But a
habitus is generated by the system, i.e. it emerges from the joint activities and
interactions of the individuals making up a system, not from the characteristics of its
individual components.
6
It is a key proposition of this paper that a habitus is the
emergent property of a social system. This proposition implies strong structural
causation in the matter of habitus, that is, from properties of the social system to the
behaviour of its individual components. The process of causation from individual
6
persons to social and symbolic systems exists, but given the emergent nature of many
systemic properties, such properties cannot be explained in terms of individual
behaviour. Moreover, the nature of the individual components of social systems is
certainly not as unproblematic as many approaches in the social sciences tend to assume.
What both individualist and structuralist approaches in the social sciences treat as
individuals are in fact biopsychosocial systems. To say that an individual person is a
biopsychosocial system means that individual behaviour and action, thought and emotion,
can be accounted for only if we know something about each of the systems involved and
even more importantly how specific biological, psychological and social systems interact
with each other. Neither methodological individualism nor methodological holism in the
social sciences approach individual persons in this fashion. They differ mainly with
respect to the direction of causation they presuppose as primary in the relationship
between individuals and society. For both types of methodology the individual is
either unproblematic (holist or structuralist approaches) or subject to a priori assumptions
of rationality that ignore the relevant results of the biological and psychological sciences
(individualist approaches).
The conception presented here does not speak of individuals and society.
Instead there is agency in a number of different systems. I have proposed that habitus
is the property of a concrete social system a family, a church, a school, a firm, a
government institution or an entire nation. Being in large part mediated through social
representations in discourse, ritual, everyday practice a habitus is at the same time
always part of semiotic or symbolic systems. Of course a habitus is also part of an
individual, but I will speak here instead of psychological and biological systems, i.e.
minds and brains. This gives us a total of four types of systems relevant for habitus:
biological, psychological, sociological, and semiotic. Figure 2 indicates what habiti are,
where they are situated, what they do, and what major effects they have. It is important
to note that a habitus, although defined here as a property of a social system, exists
simultaneously in all four types of systems. In other words, the habitus process occurs
and therefore needs to be examined in social systems, symbolic systems, individual
minds and brains. Properties of all four types of system can be causally relevant, which
rules out social, semiotic, psychic or biological reduction. We will begin by considering
7
each of the four system types separately and in a subsequent step focus on the major
linkages between them.

8
Statics: structures and effects of habitus
What habiti are and where they are situated (lines 1 and 2 in figure 2).
Habiti are emergent properties of social systems. These properties are manifested in
individual and collective actions and representations by components of the system in
question. Put more simply, they are system-specific patterns of behaving: wanting,
feeling, thinking, doing, and interacting.
7
A simple example is: wanting to make it to
the big leagues in the social system of Canadian hockey; feeling good about that dream;
thinking that it is a realistic possibility; training and playing hard; using hockey-specific
walk and talk. Social systems have their own or shared symbolic systems that depict
the habitus of the social system. These are discursive and non-discursive social
representations of the system concerning, among others, its origins, functioning, place in
the social world, mission, and appropriate ways of behaving.

[figure 2 about here]

We move next to the biopsychic systems relevant for habitus, i.e. mind and brain. Rather
than speaking abstractly of individuals, I refer to persons as biological and
psychological systems, with consciousness and a personality as emergent properties
(Searle 2000). This, as we will see, facilitates an analysis of the habitus process in all
four systems (see next section). The mind as the relevant psychological system reflects a
habitus in specific cognitive, emotional and volitional processes. Some psychologists
(e.g. Lester 1993, 1997, 2003; Aijzen 2001; survey in Mayer 2001) have proposed that
the self is composed of subsystems (subselves). As the social psychologist Pierre
Moessinger (1999, p.53) puts it: A subself is an interconnected system of attitudes,
values, cognitions, and behaviors. Some subselves are coherent and well-integrated (the
cognitive and moral subselves, for example), and others are poorly integrated and not
very autonomous, such as the affective subself. (For another, sociological conception of
the self compatible with the present argument, see Wiley 1994; cf. also Callero 2003.)
Thus habiti at this level can be represented by widely used concepts such as cognitive
schemata and cultural scripts (Wierzbicka 1993). While current psychological
research on personality is an active field in the discipline with several established and
9
new approaches, it is far from a consensus on the ontology of the mind (Funder 2001). It
is important to note, however, that personality psychology, as well as social psychology,
are likely to be the most relevant fields for the study of habitus and mind since they
recognize, at least in principle, that individual minds do not only think, but at the same
time also act, and that they do so in particular social contexts. That is not the case with
many other parts of contemporary psychology, especially cognitive psychology. This is
not to say that such approaches do not generate useful insights for the study of habitus.
Thus research on reasoning, judgment and choice seems to have settled on dual process
models which distinguish between automatic and controlled processing, that is,
between immediate affective responses and more effortful cognitive responses (Shafir
and LeBoeuf 2002). While habitus might seem to fall into the former, more automatic
type of process, it is according to the conception presented here clearly also involved in
controlled reasoning and analytic intelligence for which both cultural frames and
cognitive schemata play a significant role.
8
Marshall (2002 ) and Hammond (2003), for
instance, attempt to link the social phenomena of ritual and of solidarity, mainstays of
classic, especially Durkheimian, sociology, to neurophysiological and social-
psychological mechanisms.
The brain as a biological system is involved in habitus insofar as psychological
processes are (also) brain processes, specifically neurophysiological and
neuropsychological processes. Neurological research on learning, and specifically on
habit learning, for instance has found that two memory systems, in the basal ganglia and
the medial temporal lobe, are simultaneously activated in learning processes and under
certain conditions competitively interfere with each other (Packard and Knowlton 2002).
Recent studies in neurophysiology, neurobiology, neuroimaging, and computation have
made progress in modeling the neural basis of the functioning of the prefrontal cortex,
which is assumed to play a central role in cognitive control (Miller 2001). The study of
brain processes involved in habituation, including in non-primate species (Zaccardi et al.
2001), obviously has implications for the habitus process. Smith and Stevens (2002), for
example, attempt to map the neurosociological mechanisms of how activity in core brain
systems constrains deep patterns in social life, such as altruism and reciprocity. Having
10
surveyed what habiti are and where they are situated, we turn now to some of their major
effects.

Major effects of habitus in biological, psychological, social and symbolic systems
(see lines 3 and 4 in figure 2)
I have proposed that habitus is an emergent property in a social system. While some
elements of a habitus can remain stable for a long time (e.g. the high value placed on
certain behaviours in a culture
9
), habiti are constantly changing. A social habitus may
in fact change more quickly than the personalized habiti in individuals, which seeem to
ossify over time (more accurately, there is an age-related reduction in cultural efficacy
or efficiency; Baltes et al. 1999). At the same time, carried by individuals and groups,
habiti can move to new social systems where they survive (usually in hybrid form) or
quickly disappear. Immigrant communities provide rich empirical evidence for such
processes (Portes 2001).
A habitus can be mapped as a property or set of properties, that is, as a pattern of
typical modes of thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, and interacting in a particular social
system. Such descriptive maps
10
are a precondition for developing models of a habitus,
which in turn can serve a variety of explanatory purposes. Such habitus models will be
by definition static, since they describe a given pattern under specific spatio-temporal, i.e.
historical conditions. Habitus, however, can also be conceived as process, that is, as part
of the processes with which typical modes of thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, and
interacting are bound up. This process conception is the precondition for making a
habitus model dynamic. While habitus as process does not exclude recognizing stability
of habitus patterns or stability of the social systems in which it occurs, the theoretical
significance of the process view lies in the fact that it allows us to deal with change
changing habitus and/or changing systems. In contrast to viewing habiti as sets of
properties only, the process perspective creates the precondition for examining
theoretically and empirically not simply whether but how such change processes occur. I
will present a general model of habitus as process in the next section. In the remainder of
this section, let us briefly look at effects that major habitus processes have in the four
systems under study.
11
At the most basic level, i.e. in biological and psychological systems, processes of
habituation and dehabituation play a central role processes that occur in many
biological organisms. Specific habiti are bound up with basic needs for food, shelter, and
security, though they are not necessarily functional for satisfying those needs. Clearly,
a person may be or remain unaware of a particular habitus and its actual consequences.
She may fail to recognize its dysfunctionality; fail to mobilize the requisite will to
change; miss the more complex cognitive skills to make a change; or be caught in a social
situation that severely constrains the room for change. While processes of habituation
and dehabituation are biologically grounded, the habitus process in psychological
systems also involves certain patterns of thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, and interacting
of which a person is conscious.
11
It further involves cognitive schemata, specifically
cultural scripts, through which reflective action is organized. For instance, certain
moral schemata contain presuppositions that guide reflections on such matters as, what
is the right route to take in this situation?, or what is my role in this group? There are
also evaluative schemata that may lead persons to analyze situations in terms of
maximizing personal utility (e.g. rational choice) or in terms of Gods word (religious
doctrines). Contrary to the claims of rational choice theorists (e.g. Becker 1992), not all
habiti have been adopted or are retained because of their individual utility, nor is it
possible to undertake such complex tasks as the calculation of utility in the absence of
already existing cognitive schemata that are logically and empirically prior to reflection
and domain-specific.
12
Since the present conception of habitus encompasses both simple
behaviours and complex evaluative schemata, it becomes possible to pose related
theoretical and empirical questions rather than adopting one or the other a priori
assumption. In the corresponding analyses, the problem of habitus vs reflection, or
reason vs passion, or free will vs determination would not be approached as an abstract or
general philosophical question, but rather would be placed in a multisystemic context.
This means that habitus processes occurring in social and symbolic systems become part
of the analysis.
While the functional significance of a habitus in biological and psychological
systems relates to a persons basic and more complex needs and wants, their functional
adequacy will further depend on realities in the corresponding social and symbolic
12
systems. Significance and standards of adequacy of habiti, possibly even for the most
basic human needs, are themselves defined in the symbolic system which sets relevant
constraints and supplies symbolic resources. Needs and their satisfaction are of course
not merely symbolic constructs but material realities in particular social systems. The
habitus process is centrally involved in the reproduction of social and symbolic systems,
and thus in their stability over time. However, the habitus process is also involved in
adaptation and breakdown of social and symbolic systems. Think of the changing role
and gradual breakdown of Marxist-Leninist ideology, as well as the more sudden regime
breakdown, in Communist countries. Both rapid habitus change and long-term habitus
stability can be a source of systemic stability or breakdown. The process view of habitus
makes it possible to examine the mechanisms underlying such inertia as well as changes
in social, symbolic, and psychological systems and their interactions. Having surveyed
some of the systemic functions and effects of habitus, it is now time to describe how
habitus as process works.

Dynamics: How the habitus process works
Figure 3 provides a schematic model of the habitus process. Clearly, this is a bare-bones
representation of the process, but one that I hope serves to emphasize the potential value
of this conception of habitus. The first thing to note is the basic structure of the diagram.

[Figure 3 about here]

The box in the centre of figure 3 outlines the habitus process, in what I call the habitus-
personality complex. The habitus-personality complex is linked (at the top) to a social
system. As I have proposed earlier, habitus is an emergent property of a social system.
The habitus-personality complex is also linked (at the bottom) to a biopsychic system
which generates a personality as an emergent property. Thus there is a bottom-up
causality and a top-down causality at work. The habitus-personality complex, while
composed of two emergent properties (bottom-up: personality; top-down: habitus), can
also be seen as a process. In this view, the habitus mechanism refers to the working of
system-specific patterns of wanting, feeling, thinking, doing and interacting, while the
13
personality mechanism refers to individual forms of wanting, feeling, thinking, doing and
interacting. The two simultaneously operating mechanisms produce self-consciousness
and identity, and what Elias calls the we-I balance in a personality (Elias 1991).
The habitus-personality complex is only one, albeit fundamental process linking
social systems and individuals (i.e. biopsychic systems). Another fundamental one is
the production-consumption process. For instance, food scarcity affects social systems
regardless of particular habitus structures. Of course the specific effects of such
economic processes on social systems and their components are in part determined by
established habiti. Thus it will make a significant difference whether existing habiti
relating to just distribution are peaceful and egalitarian or violent and class-based. A
further fundamental process is the political power-authority process. For instance, a
political regime conducting war affects social systems above all by killing and injuring
people, again regardless of these systems particular habitus structures. The specific
effects of such political processes on social systems and their components will however
be strongly influenced by established habiti. Thus it will make a significant difference
whether or not existing habiti relating to legitimate power can and are likely to call the
regimes war policies into question or whether they will impose a patriotic consent.
The conception proposed here therefore analytically distinguishes (but does not
theoretically separate) the habitus process from other economic, political, and natural
(environmental) processes. The theoretical challenge is to identify and explain the
working of particular concatenations of habitus mechanisms and other (economic,
political, ecological) mechanisms giving rise to specific social phenomena. This paper is
limited to discussing the habitus process.
The causal relationships in the habitus process flow in both directions, and the
general nature of these relationships can now be specified. (1) A system-specific habitus
shapes the individuals making up that system (top-down causation). More specifically,
the system-specific patterns of wanting, feeling, thinking, doing and interacting reach a
persons subselves through social experiences and are processed in affective, cognitive,
and moral subsystems (or their equivalents; see above). This processing involves the
interaction between subselves (minds) and neural networks (brains). (2) An individual
personality affects the social systems of which it is a part (bottom-up causation). More
14
specifically, individual forms of wanting, feeling, thinking, doing and interacting shape
social systems. Social systems of course have in addition non-reducible, emergent
properties and are causally affected by their social environment (i.e. other social systems)
and their natural environment. The habitus process therefore, to repeat, represents only
one set of mechanisms in large social processes by which most social systems are
affected. Before defending the usefulness and relevance of the conception presented
here, let us briefly consider an example.
At the top of figure 3 there is the category of social system used in the
broadest sense to refer to any social formation from families to state-societies, and from
fleeting groups such as a crowd of demonstrators to permanent institutions such as the
Catholic Church and General Motors. Such a broad conception of social system is not
widely used, at least not in the social sciences, and generally elicits skeptical reactions. It
should not be confused with systems theories, such as those of Parsons or Luhmann. The
best philosophical exposition of systemism can be found in the work of Mario Bunge
(1998; 2003). The concept of social system as used here is compatible with other, though
sometimes vague concepts such as fields, domains, and games (see e.g. Fligstein 2001)
and the concept of institution in the new institutionalism (Hollingsworth 2000). This
broad conception is particularly useful for present purposes since any social system thus
understood may give rise to a particular habitus process, as the following case of an
unstable and short-lived social system illustrates.
The habitus of todays crowd of demonstrators was probably not much different from
those of other, similar protest events. As people follow the organizers call for a protest
march along a predetermined route, most participants will be familiar with the habitus of
such an event while others will be familiarized with the habitus by participating in this
particular event. Protesters will bring signs and whistles, sing and shout, and generally
respect that the event should be peaceful. They feel concerned enough about what they
perceive to be at issue to participate, and they expect to feel good by participating. They
may interact with other demonstrators, though anonymity will remain the general
condition. The crowd may briefly assemble at some point during the march to listen to
speakers, but at the end it will quickly dissolve. This rough model of the demonstration
habitus will be followed with some variations at every event of this kind that is,
15
because of the nature of the social system which the participants see themselves joining.
Of course there may be deviations some demonstrations may end in violence, or some
groups of demonstrators will refuse to disperse. This does not change the demonstration
habitus as such, for most people will continue to join protest marches expecting to take
part in a non-violent event and to go home after.
Not all deviations from an existing habitus, however, will remain such. Some may
turn into lasting innovations (Tarrow 1998). The innovation comes about on the initiative
planned and/or spontaneous of some demonstrators (usually themselves concrete
groups, i.e. social systems), and it will be replicated in future demonstrations by others
depending in part on the perceived success of the new practice. Whether or not the new
practice will be adopted also depends on the nature of each subsequent demonstration as
a particular social system and event: the number of people who turn up, the weather,
police presence, activities of extremists, the current political climate, etc. It will therefore
not be fully explainable in terms of the behaviours of all the individuals at one of those
subsequent demonstrations, let alone their preferences. Ultimately the changed habitus
(i.e. the addition of the new practice to the repertoire) will be an emergent property of a
particular social system under all of those specific conditions (though other conditions or
configurations might have had the same effect, a fact referred to as multiple
realizability (e.g. Sawyer 2004)). Fundamental innovations are those that at some point
become part of the standard demo habitus, i.e. when they no longer depend on all those
contingencies but are now routinely practiced. It is obviously much easier to ascertain
such habitus changes than to explain them in terms of individual actions and context.
This is of course true for all systemic properties that are not reducible to individual
components (Bunge 2003). An unstable and short-lived social system like a
demonstration provides a good example of habitus as an emergent property of a particular
type of social system. What makes a demonstration a demonstration rather than a riot or
a leisure walk is the expectations of the participants, and thus the appropriate habitus
informing their actions. These expectations are part of a larger knowledge system which
contains the description of a demonstration and its corresponding habitus. The mass
demonstration has become a global form of collective action, though national and other
specificities remain central (Tarrow 2001). When demonstrations turn into riots, as is
16
sometimes the case, this is usually in spite of the expectations and goals of most
participants. It is the result of police action and/or small groups of demonstrators setting
off an escalation mechanism. With the nature of the event having changed from
demonstration to riot, demonstrators can then decide either to leave or to join the riot with
its own particular habitus.
13

More stable social systems tend to have clearer enforcement mechanisms for their
habitus established processes, rituals and routines that are usually difficult or costly to
challenge or ignore. An example in most contemporary modern families is the
increasing rejection of elements of the family habitus, especially the specific authority
structure, as children become adolescents a normal part of the individualization process
on which modern culture places such emphasis. While certain modifications may be
negotiated between parents and children, no one expects the working out of a new family
habitus as grown-up children establish their own households and families. In social
systems such as organizations with written rules and bureaucratic procedures, habitus
also matters greatly (which is why it is not enough to analyze formal institutions and
procedures), a fact that is reflected in such phrases as organizational culture, political
culture, economic culture, etc.
Most social systems overlap with others some hierarchically, some horizontally.
The same applies to system-specific habiti. The more powerful and socially significant a
social system, the more important its habitus for its members (functionally and/or
symbolically) relative to other social systems to which they belong. Especially in larger
social systems, a dominant habitus is usually confronted by challengers. The relationship
of different habiti with each other is of course crucially important but will remain a loose
end in this paper. My hunch, and my hypothesis in the last section of this paper, is that
there are first-order or meta-habiti in and through which other, more minor habiti are
integrated (see also Frank and Meyer 2002).
What is the point of this model? Most important, it sheds light on processes that in
most approaches end up in a black box. The habitus-personality complex models
psychocultural and sociocultural processes that both social science and psychological
approaches find difficult to account for. In psychology, the psyche-culture linkage is
recognized as of fundamental importance only in somewhat marginal subfields such as
17
social psychology and personality psychology. In the social sciences, the basic
significance and the methodological implications of studying cultural variables have
always been controversial. Mainstream approaches in sociology, political science, and
economics have tended to steer clear of psychocultural and sociocultural dimensions of
reality, leaving the field since the 1980s to postmodern approaches and cultural studies,
which have little sympathy for scientific standards. However, the widespread use of such
psychocultural and sociocultural concepts as discourse, identity, meaning and
reflexivity by many social scientists underscores the perceived importance of the
cultural dimension. The argument presented here is a philosophically and
methodologically self-conscious effort to conceptualize sociocultural phenomena by
specifying key systems and mechanisms as well as emergent properties and processes
(Bunge 2004). The biopsychosocial model of the habitus process proposed here
establishes explicit conceptual links between types of processes that are under the
jurisdiction of different disciplines and their specialized approaches. How, then, does
this conception improve on those of other basic approaches?
Rational actor models, for instance, rest on a priori assumptions that cut them off
from cultural dimensions of reality in two directions. Upward by denying
methodologically and sometimes even ontologically the existence of social systems,
hence ruling out the explanatory significance of sociocultural macroprocesses in
principle. Downward by postulating a rational actor as a methodological device and
sometimes as an ontological fact an ideal type that is immune from the findings of
psychology and in effect denies the explanatory significance of psychocultural processes
in principle. The model of the habitus process proposed here links up at both severed
ends of the rational actor model, i.e. to sociocultural and psychocultural dimensions.
The model thereby does not deny the explanatory significance of rational action in
principle, but problematizes this dimension by contextualizing it in the habitus-
personality complex (see figure 3 above). The framework of rational individual action
under constraints is replaced with a biopsychosocial conception of a habitus process that
provides an alternative framework allowing us to search for rather than assume major
mechanisms underlying social life.
18
Structuralist approaches, by contrast, are all about social systems but often do not
take the system components sufficiently seriously. The causal efficacy of individual
actors, for example, is considered low in structuralist models, shifting the major weight of
the explanation on the logic (in my terms: on the emergent or systemic properties) of
social systems. But what is rarely spelled out are the processes and mechanisms by
which social structures shape individuals without at the same time depriving them of their
agency. While structuralist approaches are in principle open to examining sociocultural
processes, they are not conceptually equipped to link up to psychocultural processes. The
habitus conception presented here provides this conceptual link with the view of
individuals as biopsychosocial systems as well as the dynamic or process connection in
the form of the habitus-personality complex.
If habitus as conceived here encompasses neural networks and brain processes;
feelings, thoughts, and actions; a range of psychological dispositions; as well as social
systems, power, economics, institutions, cultures, and languages, isnt this conception of
habitus much too broad? It is important to note that only a broad, philosophically tenable
conception of this major dimension of social processes allows us to move beyond the
confines imposed by disciplinary boundaries and methodological conventions such as
those of rational actor and structuralist approaches discussed above. The systemic
perspective underlying this broad conception of habitus as a process running both ways
between social and biopsychosocial systems via symbolic systems provides a
transdisciplinary framework within which to relate and integrate known
neurobiological, biopsychological, psychosocial and social habitus mechanisms and
formulate problems leading to the discovery of new mechanisms. The point is not to
work towards some general social theory of habitus but rather to develop a general
framework within which to handle biopsychosocial processes and mechanisms. Far from
an exercise in abstract theorizing, such a framework responds to the needs felt perhaps
most strongly by those studying practical problems such as health, mental disorders, or
substance abuse (e.g. Leukefeld/Leukefeld 1999; Kordon/Hohagen 2000; Egger 2001)
problems that require a broad biopsychosocial conception of habitus. At this point it may
be useful to review some of the major results of the discussion so far before discussing
how they apply in a concrete case.
19

Summary
The conception of the habitus process presented here has distinguished between systems
of different kinds, the most basic distinction being that between social systems and
biopsychosocial systems. The following propositions recapitulate the major points made
for each, and one (proposition 7) still to be made in the next section.

Social Systems
1. A habitus is a property of a social system.
2. To each concrete social system may correspond a particular habitus. If there is
more than one habitus, there will be a dominant one, since habitus is closely
related to power.
3. Lower-level social systems (e.g. households, schools), in addition to having their
own habiti, will share the habitus of higher-level social systems (esp. state-
societies/nations) to which they belong.
4. Since most people simultaneously belong to several social systems, habiti overlap
and intermix.
5. There are more and less significant social systems and habiti defined in power,
authority and functional terms in relation to particular individuals and groups.
6. Habiti strongly shape but do not exlusively determine individual personalities.
Put differently, habiti loosely structure personalities.
7. The single most important habitus in the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries is the national habitus, corresponding to the significance of state-
societies. Pervading most other social systems, the national habitus can be
described as a meta-habitus (see the following section).


Biopsychosocial systems (individuals)
8. Individuals are biopsychosocial systems.
20
9. Individuals develop personalities, that is, typical forms of feeling, thinking, doing,
and interacting. A personality can be conceived as a biopsychosocial system at a
particular point in time.
10. Individuals are subject to biological, psychological and sociological laws of
personal development (re: age, socialization into and appropriation of particular
habiti) and personality change (voluntary and involuntary).
14
These processes of
development and change strongly shape how habiti are acquired (both actively
and passively).
11. A personality is composed of subsystems (or subselves), such as cognitive,
emotional, and volitional subsystems. While the activity in the subsystems is
shaped by particular habiti, a person is capable of adopting/reshaping/abandoning
parts of a habitus. The degree to which this is possible depends in part on the
significance of the habitus and social system in question, in part on individual
characteristics of the person.
12. An individual person has a unified consciousness, that is, one psychic space
(Searle 2000) in which feeling, thinking, and wanting occur, i.e. in which the
subsystems operate.
13. A unified consciousness (a self) is an emergent property of brain activity, that is,
of neurophysiological processes in and between particular areas (subsystems) of
the brain.

National Habitus as Meta-Habitus
In this section of the paper, I will try to strengthen and further illustrate my conception of
habitus as process in social and biopsychosocial systems by discussing the case of
national habitus. Since there is a great deal of interest in questions of national identity,
nationalism, etc. in numerous scholarly literatures employing a variety of different
approaches, the area is particularly useful for demonstrating the potential relevance of the
habitus conception that so far in this paper has been presented in mostly general and
abstract terms.
The phrase national habitus is not common currency in the social sciences. In
fact, most social scientists would probably be either skeptical or simply dismissive in
21
response to the suggestion that national habitus is a useful concept referring to a powerful
social reality. It is perhaps no coincidence that Bourdieu, the most well-known and
influential theorist of habitus, nowhere speaks about national habitus. In fact, outside the
specialized and somewhat insular nationalism literature
15
, related concepts such as
national culture and national character are eyed with suspicion as politicized,
essentialized, and theoretically questionable. The concept of national identity is taken
more seriously and is more widely used, though many argue that the significance of
national identity should not be overrated. In postmodern, globalizing times national
identity is at best one among other basic collective identities, and perhaps one that is
being quite rapidly eclipsed by larger global and transnational identities, on the one
hand, and more particularistic collective identities, on the other. In this section of the
paper, I will argue that conceiving the national as simply a collective identity misses
important dimensions of social reality that a conception of national habitus is able to
capture. National habitus does indeed exemplify all the manifestions of habitus presented
in figure 1. The following discussion of national habitus will stay as closely as possible
with the major points summarized above, noting where I believe this conception has the
potential to add something to the debate.
If, as proposition 1 asserts, a habitus is an emergent property of a social system,
then what are the social systems that give rise to a national habitus? My conception of
habitus as process rejects what is widely taken for granted, i.e. that nations are concrete
social systems in their own right. The fact that the nationalism literature has failed to
reach anything approaching a consensual definition of nation (Smith 2001) suggests that
the ontological status of nation remains essentially contested. Rather than adopting one
or another contested definition of what the nation is, the habitus model reconceptualizes
the nation as a process. This means that the nation is not a social entity, but a property of
certain social systems (real social entities), a property generated by a nationalizing
process. Which systems are in question? The widely used phrase nation-state suggests
that there are two systems, a state and a nation, that come together in the nation-state.
Since however most contemporary states contain more than one national group while
numerous national groups do not have their own state, the phrase nation-state has been
increasingly considered problematic. Analytical distinctions such as those between
22
Staatsnation, Kulturnation and Volksnation or between state-nations (i.e. nations
dominant in a particular state) and stateless nations or state-seeking and non-state
seeking illustrate the complexity of the problem. But they are unsatisfactory conceptual
solutions since they presuppose that, whatever their relationship to a particular state,
nations are concrete social systems. The habitus process approach to the nation, by
contrast, rejects this view. Modern societies bounded by a territorial state are real social
systems, they are state-societies in which nationalizing processes occur. But they are not
the only ones. Nationalizing processes also occur in educational institutions, political
organizations, economic organizations, clans, families and social networks from the
global level to the local level. Thus to say that a national habitus is an emergent property
of a social system makes it possible to avoid the problem of having to define a nation as a
real social entity while at the same time taking account of the fact that not only modern
state-societies, but also many other social systems, are part of nationalizing processes.
This, perhaps surprisingly, includes social systems that are referred to as international,
transnational, and global. For instance, a multinational/transnational/global corporation
is to a significant extent shaped by the national habitus of the originating country
(Doremus et al. 1998). Of course such a social system is also shaped by other habiti,
such as a firm-specific habitus, an industry-specific habitus, or the habiti of specific
groups and networks within the corporation. So-called transnational migrants, to take
another example, can be best understood in terms of a combination of nationalizing
processes: the national habitus of the home country in its interaction with the national
habitus of the receiving society under specific conditions with creolization as an
emergent property. The concept of transnational communities is merely an analytical
category; real communities are subject to specific nationalizing processes. The point is
that the habitus process approach does not need to pose the question whether a particular
system is national, transnational, or global but asks which particular habiti shape the
behaviour of particular concrete social systems.
Proposition 2 asserts that to each concrete social system may correspond a
particular habitus. If there is more than one habitus in a system, there is likely to be a
dominant one since habiti are closely related to power. The overriding importance of
national habitus leads me to suggest that national habitus is a meta-habitus. This should
23
not be surprising since modern states are among the most powerful sets of institutions,
controlling with more or less success all other social systems in the state-society.
Nevertheless, some supporting arguments for this claim are called for.
The long-term historical trend towards increasing social differentiation and
integration into ever larger social units culminated in the creation of a global system of
nation-states in the twentieth century. This has given rise to a historically specific
personality structure, homo nationis: the individual who is born and raised in a particular
national culture, and who lives most of her life in a nation-state of which she is a citizen.
As a product of the emerging global order composed of nation-states, homo nationis
became a truly global phenomenon in the second part of the twentieth century after two
world wars and numerous anti-colonial struggles, all fought in the name of the nation.
While it is not necessarily the dominant habitus in every contemporary state-society
some societies have little national coherence and strong regionally, religiously or
linguistically based subcultures the nationalized personality structure is fundamental
in most state-societies today. Homo nationis is driven, like homo oeconomicus, by
individual interests and, like homo sociologicus, by social norms. However, a particular
nationality or national identity in a broad sense gives a crucial and distinct
psychocultural specificity and political and economic context to peoples individual
interests and societys social norms at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
The fragmentation of identities described by postmodern theorists
16
would
suggest that all-encompassing collective identities and habiti, especially national ones,
are similarly being weakened and undermined. Individuality, it appears, is increasingly
becoming a unifiying characteristic and source of common identification for many people
of different nationalities.
17
While at one level this commonality is real,
18
it does not
follow that it occurs at the expense of or transcends the framework of the national culture.
Norbert Elias, one of the few sociologists who uses the concept of national habitus,
writes:
Powerful as the advance of individualization has been in recent times, in relation to the nation-
state plane we-identity has actually strengthened. One often finds that people try to overcome the
contradiction between their self-perception as a we-less I, as a totally isolated individual, and their
emotional involvement in the we-group of the nation by a strategy of encapsulation. Their self-
perceptions as an individual and as a representative of a we-group, as a Frenchman, Englishman,
24
West German, American, etc., are assigned to different compartments of their knowledge, and
these compartments communicate only very tenuously with each other (Elias 1991, p.209).

This radical separation diagnosed by Elias is facilitated by the taken-for-grantedness or
second nature that national habitus represents for most people most of the time.
19

Much the same seems to hold for individuality as a part of habitus. The timeless,
placeless self, personally experienced by a growing number of people the subjective
part of individualization processes is however firmly tied to its national culture as
source and reference point.
The deeply rooted nature of the distinctive national characteristics and the consciousness of
national we-identity closely bound up with them can serve as a graphic example of the degree to
which the social habitus of the individual provides a soil in which personal, individual differences
can flourish. The individuality of the particular Englishman, Dutchman, Swede or German
represents, in a sense, the personal elaboration of a common social, and in this case national,
habitus (Elias 1991, p.210).
The concept of national habitus highlights that, in addition to formal and informal
institutions and abstractly rational individuals, the modern order rests on psychosocial
foundations. These foundations may be strong and evolving, or they may be brittle and
dissolving. In either case, they exist in every modern state.
20
They cannot be reduced to
individual choices or systemic structures, though both are involved. The development of
national habitus is structurally favoured by the global state system.
21
It is functionally
significant since national habitus plays a fundamental role in many social processes. A
social process like the development of a national habitus is a cultural fact, produced for
the most part not by design but the result of unintended consequences of human action.
Propositions 4 and 5 underscore that since most people belong to several social
systems, habiti overlap and intermix. However, the power, authority, and prestige of a
particular habitus derives from the political, economic or cultural significance of the
social system in which it emerges. The national habitus provides a common cultural
basis for the different habiti and their configurations. Proposition 6 acknowledges that
habiti loosely structure personalities rather than fully determining them. The national
habitus process is perhaps the single most powerful and pervasive structuring process in
the world today. (Obviously, there are significant variations among particular state-
25
societies and other social systems in this respect.) What is new in these arguments?
There are two major points that may perhaps add something to the debate. First and
most important is the process conception of habitus. A habitus process needs to be
studied with reference to the social system in which it emerges. Habitus is an emergent
property in any social system. Some habiti are more important than others in
political, economic or cultural terms. This is not a reduction of habitus to the social
system but rather indicates the material basis from which habiti emerge. The system-
specific patterns of feeling, thinking, doing and interacting loosely structure individual
personalities. How (top-down mechanisms), to what extent etc. are empirical
questions. The second point of importance is the argument that a national habitus is a
meta habitus. Not all habiti are of equal explanatory significance for social processes.
The national habitus is one that has not been conceptualized as such, and its
significance has not been widely recognized, especially in the globalization debate.
22


Homo nationis as a biopsychosocial system
In addition to social system-specific patterns of behaving that loosely structure
individual persons, the conception of habitus presented here also has a bottom-up
causal flow. For individual persons are not just loosely structured through habitus
processes from above. They possess personalities, which means individual forms of
feeling, thinking, doing, and interacting. That is because the individual actor or
individual member of a social system is at the same time a complex system itself, i.e. a
biopsychosocial system. This implies that in addition to social mechanisms, individuals
are subject to biological and psychological mechanisms shaping personal development
and personality change. These processes of biopsychic personality development and
change shape how social habiti are acquired and applied. It may seem that this
renders individual agency so hopelessly overdetermined that it makes no longer sense
to speak of individual actors. This, however, is not the case. The phrase loosely
structured with respect to the social mechanisms of the habitus process suggests the
opposite, i.e. underdetermination. But does including biopsychic mechanisms in
personality development lead to the feared overdetermination? I will conclude that it
does not, but that it may well undermine conventional conceptions of the individual.
26
As proposition 11 maintained, a personality is composed of subsystems (or
subselves), such as cognitive, emotional, and volitional subsystems. While the activity
in the subsystems is shaped by particular habiti from above, a person is capable of
adopting, reshaping, and abandoning parts of a habitus. The degree to which this is
possible depends in part on the significance of the habitus and social system in
question, in part on individual characteristics of the person and the situation at hand.
The individual forms of feeling, thinking, wanting, doing, and interacting that make up
a personality are emergent properties of the underlying biopsychic system (i.e.
brain/mind). What is left for the active agency of the individual?
As propositions 12 and 13 suggest, a unified consciousness (a self) is an emergent
property of brain activity, that is, of neurophysiological processes in and between
particular regions or subsystems of the brain. An individual person has a unified
consciousness, that is, one psychic space in which feeling, thinking, and wanting
occur, i.e. in which the subsystems operate. It is this psychic space or unified
consciousness that perhaps corresponds most closely to our conventional view of
individual actors. Be that as it may, the objective of this paper has been to rethink
habitus as process by conceptualizing individuals as biopsychosocial systems. The
promise of this kind of conception is to facilitate linkages between the various
disciplines and applied fields in which conceptual problems of the sort discussed here
arise.
27
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Figure 1: Individual manifestations of habitus

from: simple and circumscribed . . .

simple automatic behaviours,
e.g. facial expressions,
social touching

perceiving, speaking, writing,
evaluating, task execution,
problem solving

interpersonal interaction,
economic, political, religious,
domestic behaviour
freedom, obedience, restraint

durable and generalized
predispositions in a domain of
life, or in all of life (e.g. national habitus)

. . . to: generalized and complex



Figure 2: Systems and processes in the study of habitus

Brains Minds Social Systems Symbolic Systems

1.What? neurophys.+neuropsych. individ +collective
processes cultural scripts behaviour habitus models
2.Where? diff.areas of brain personality subsystems individual and collective actors social representations
3. How? indiv.patterns of feeling, individual strategies social institutions/norms
thinking, wanting
4. Effects basic needs complex wants reproduction, adaptation, breakdown

Note: Some of the systems and processes in this figure do not fall neatly into one of the categories of
brains, minds, social systems, or symbolic systems since they seem to me better represented as overlapping.
This is no problem for the conception of habitus as process in biopsychosocial systems proposed here,
which does not depend on demarcations of this sort.
32


Figure 3: Habitus in systemic perspective: How the habitus process works



state-society (nation)
social system family, workplace, etc.



emergent property: habitus
process: system-specific patterns of behaving, feeling,
thinking, doing, interacting


self-consciousness, identity (we-I balance)


individual forms of behaving, feeling, thinking,
process: doing, interacting (automatic and reflective)
emergent property: personality at t (the individual)



bio-psychic system: subselves: affective, cognitive, moral


biological system: neural networks


33
34

Endnotes

1
Camic speaks only of habits, not of habitus. In the present analysis, the concept of
habit is rarely used and subsumed under the concept of habitus. A sharp distinction
between the two is not necessary or useful, as the conception presented below (see esp.
figure 1) will suggest.
2
Crossley himself has subsequently presented several contributions towards this goal.
See e.g. Crossley 2004; 2003). For an analysis of the cognitive origins of Bourdieus
habitus in the work of Piaget, see Lizardo 2004.
3
A recent symposium in the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences (2004) on systems
and mechanisms debated the significance and usefulness of Bunges philosophy of
science for the social sciences.
4
I follow the Natural Semantic Metalanguage developed by Polish-Australian social
linguist Anna Wierzbicka (1999; 1997; 1992) as a tool for cross-cultural analysis to
define the basic components of habitus.
5
Methodologically highly sophisticated analyses of aspects of habitus can be found in the
works of Michele Lamont (2002) and Anna Wierzbicka (1999; 1997).
6
For a clear discussion of emergence and systems, see Bunge (2003).
7
For the sake of brevity, though at the risk of being misleading, I will occasionally use
behaviour in quotation marks to refer to thinking, feeling, wanting, doing, and
interacting.
8
As McGrew (1998) in his discussion of culture in nonhuman primates suggests, more
sophisticated habits (and thus habiti) are not confined to the genus homo.
35

9
For the to my knowledge most advanced approach to the study of culturally specific
emotions and cognitions (cultural scripts) and fascinating empirical studies, see the
work of Anna Wierzbicka (e.g. 1999; 2002; 2003).
10
Some of the work produced in the humanities, as well as some fictional literature, can
provide significant material for the construction of such maps.
11
In a recent discussion in Annual Review of Neuroscience, Searle (2000) uses a broader
conception of consciousness a unified field theory that would include the whole
range of habitus behaviours described above (see figure 1). However, the problem of
consciousness is not central for the present analysis.
12
Thus in the context of cognition, Markman and Gentner (2001) report that, in contrast
to traditional approaches that focus on abstract logical reasoning, a number of current
approaches in psychology posit domain-specific [in our terms: habitus-specific]
cognition.
13
May 1 demonstrations in (West) Berlin, for example, have developed their own
particular habitus since their beginning in the early 1980s in which violence has become
an expected part of the event (cf. Rucht 2003).
14
Voluntary: entering and exiting a particular social system; overcoming an addiction.
Involuntary: Belonging to a system subject to radical change.
15
For a useful analyis of the relationship between sociological theory and nationalism
studies, see Spillman and Faeges 2004.
16
For a critical assessment of these positions from a viewpoint similar to the one
presented here, see Billig (1995), esp. ch. 6-7. A different view examining the
36

relationship between Foucault and Bauman, on the one hand, and Elias, on the other, can
be found in Dennis Smith 2001.
17
The EU as the leading case of transnational integration provides an ideal testing ground
for whether and how strong postnational identities can emerge. See e.g. Cederman 2001;
Soysal 2002.
18
I.e. in terms of similar values as measured, for instance, in the cross-national surveys of
Inglehart (e.g. 1997).
19
The best recent treatment of this banal nature of nationalism is probably Billig 1995.
20
Note that the claim here is not that national habitus works everywhere as the only, or
necessarily major, psychosocial foundation of modern order. Such generalizations
would be untenable given the diversity of nation-states.
21
There are other structural features of a state-society, such as internal linguistic or
religious divisions, that do not favour the development of a national habitus, though they
dont necessarily exclude it (cf. Switzerland).
22
For conceptualizations similar at least in part to the one proposed here, however, see
Brubaker et al. 2004; Brubaker 2002; van Dijk 1998.