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Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal

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Habitus and the storied self: Religious faith and practice as a dynamic means of consolidating identities
Peter J. Collins
a a

University of Durham, Department of Anthropology , 43 Old Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HN, UK E-mail: Published online: 30 May 2008.

To cite this article: Peter J. Collins (2002) Habitus and the storied self: Religious faith and practice as a dynamic means of consolidating identities, Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 3:2, 147-161, DOI: 10.1080/01438300208567189 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01438300208567189

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Culture and Religion, Vol.3, No. 2, 2002

i ? Routledge
j i l \ Taylor 6. Francis Croup

Habitus and the Storied Self: religious faith and practice as a dynamic means of consolidating identities
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Peter J. Collins University of Durham, UK

ABSTRACT It is increasingly argued that individuals comprise multiple selves, and from this it follows that they manifest many identities. During my research among British Quakers, I found that there is, furthermore, an implicit tendency to articulate these several selves in order to promote, consciously and/or unconsciously, a measure of coherence, of unity, and of harmony. Newcomers to meeting on Sunday mornings came with identities that they presented either overtly or covertly as disjointed or lacking coherence, because of their experience of other faiths or perhaps because of the absence of 'religion' in their lives. It is possible that their participation in the Quaker meeting provided a means by which their several identities might be brought into consonance. We might say that the storied selves that individuals plotted separately came increasingly under the rubric of a single, overarching narrative, signified for example in the expression 'coming home'. Switching metaphors, the Quaker meeting as habitus provided the several scales from which individuals constructed or improvised their own score. Although I would not claim that this is a neat, linear process open to precise analysis and theoretical closure, it does seem suggestive of a dynamism in identity formation prompted by the re-discovery of religious faith and practice that may be pervasive in late modern societies. KEYWORDS: identity, habitus, narrative, Quakerism, self

Identity and the double life of its negotiation We negotiate our identities as we negotiate a journey: long dreary motorways where the tedium of featureless landscapes makes it hard to stay awake; complex hazards presented not only by the fractured physicality of the route, but also through what we too often interpret as the ineptitude of other travellers; those glimpses of interesting places that evoke other localities, other times, and other people. However, we also experience a negotiation of identity that is co-terminus with social interactionthe sometimes pleasurable, often painful
ISSN 0143-8301 print; 1475-5629 online/02/020147-17 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/0143830022000019980

148 P. J. Collins experience of seeing ourselves as others see us, of adapting to the perceptions of others as we interpret them, and of adopting modes of being that we either grow into or out of as a result of living in the world with others. We do not form our identities, religious or any other, alone. Personal and social identity stand in a figure/ground relation. In any case, it would seem that identity is an extraordinarily chimerical concept that all too easily stymies even the most sophisticated essentialist definition and evades the most elaborate of taxonomies (Michael 1996:7). This is no less true of religious identity, which is what primarily concerns me in the present paper. Thus, having focused elsewhere on the ways in which individual participants construct and reconstruct Quaker faith and practice (Collins 1996a, 1996b), my current interest is in the ways in which Quakerism (as habitus) partially constructs and reconstructs participants. I hasten to add that this does not mean a denial of the importance, of the necessity, of individual agency foregrounded in those earlier papers, but rather signals a change in analytical perspective. Furthermore, while this is not an essay on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, it does represent a small part of a continuing struggle to understand his ideas. I therefore begin with a few comments on what is probably Bourdieu's most crucial conceptthe habitusbefore going on to suggest some amendments to it. Finally, I will review some ethnographic observations made in Dibdenshaw Quaker meeting (a pseudonym), in which I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the early 1990s, in the light of these remarks before offering some tentative conclusions. Practice and the habitus The Quaker meeting is a weekly, and therefore regular and relatively fixed, social event framed within an overtly religious context. If, for these reasons alone, we accept that the Quaker Meeting is ritual, then there are a plethora of theories we may draw on in order to understand it better. My own fieldwork led me to understand the Quaker meeting as something that, most obviously, is done. It may be no coincidence that in recent years there has been a tendency to characterise ritual as practice, and it is within this tradition that the present paper is located (Ortner 1984:144-60). However, rather than draw primarily on the work of those, like Bell (1992), who focus specifically on ritual, I am inclined towards a theoretical framework that has a rather broader ambit. While Bourdieu does broach the subject of 'ritual' in a number of texts (see particularly Bourdieu 1977), his 'analytical toolkit' comprising 'practice', 'habitus', 'field', and 'symbolic capital' suggests useful ways in which ritual practice relates, theoretically and empirically, to practice more generally. The habitus, perhaps the most important and flexible analytical device developed by Bourdieu, is defined by him as 'a system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations and actions' (1977:82-3). Critically, the habitus is not only durable, but embodied (cf. Asad 1997; Johnson 1987; Mellor & Shilling 1997:19-21; Nettleton and Watson 1998). It is also a central

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idea in the present paper and one that I believe, despite its flaws, remains 'good for thinking'. Drawing on a variety of sources (Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Mauss and others), Bourdieu has striven throughout his work to obviate a number of dualitiesobjectivism/subjectivism, individual/society, structure/agency, mind/ bodywhich many believe have long stymied theoretical developments in the social sciences. Possibly the most significant outcome of his efforts is the habitus, an ambiguous but nonetheless useful device for interrogating the nature of social and personal identity. As in all of Bourdieu's work, a great strength of the habitus is the way in which it embraces epistemological and methodological issues relating, in particular, to the way in which groups reproduce themselves. The way an individual or group engages in practical action is primarily the outcome of history (Bourdieu 1977:82). What we do, and the way we do it, is either caught or taught within a social, class-based context that reproduces itself over generations. We can 'improvise' but only within certain limits. I accept Bourdieu's view of concepts as 'open and provisional', and intend to apply it to 'habitus' (Bourdieu 1990:40-1). It is this very openness of concepts, as used by Bourdieu, that provokes his readers to excavate and adapt them for their own purposes. Csordas (1988, 1994), Asad (1983, 1988, 1997, 2000), Bell (1992), Bynum (1991, 1995), Mellor and Shilling (1994, 1997), and others have in recent years drawn attention to the centrality of the body in religious faith and practice. The habitus is, briefly, a set of embodied dispositionsa propensity to do things in certain ways in particular contexts (or fields). During our interactions with others we copy, especially as children and neophytes, the bodily hexis of others (Bourdieu 1977:87-9). In time, we do what we are expected to do, we learn what to read and how to read it, what to say and how to say it, how and where to move. We may make mistakes or miscues, and at those times we may be corrected by others who have a firmer grasp of 'the rules of the game'. In investigating a faith community, the habitus, unlike most other perspectives, ensures that we take seriously the embodied nature of faith and practice as well as its physical and social environment. The habitus has, however, been heavily criticised for its implicit determinism (Jenkins 1992). While it is to Bourdieu's great credit that he has helped shift our focus from rules to strategies (1977:3-9, 58-71, 1990:59-75, 1998: 131; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:42-3), his notion of strategy still leaves individuals rather too constrained, lacking in agency, a little bloodless. My own position is that we can (and should) properly allow for human agency within the habitus over and above the possibility of 'strategising' that Bourdieu suggests takes place within severe structural constraints. In trying to overcome the subjectivist/objectivist dichotomy, Bourdieu tends simply to gloss over the former. However, I suggest that an overly deterministic habitus is not beyond repair. Bourdieu is right to argue that we do come to manifest certain dispositions that facilitate acts which are below the level of consciousnessbut that is not to say that conscious and even rational decision-making is forever denied us. It is safer to adopt an ontological and epistemological pragmatism in considering

150 P. J. Collins these matters and I would prefer not to think in terms of 'either/or', but of 'and/both'. In a rather obscure passage, Bourdieu allows for this possibility in his essay 'A Reply to Some Objections': not only can the habitus be practically transformed (always within definite boundaries) by the effect of a social trajectory leading to conditions of living different from initial ones, it can also be controlled through awakening of consciousness and socioanalysis. (1990:116) Downloaded by [Universidad Nacional Colombia] at 19:56 02 November 2013 There are two points to make here. Admittedly, every group has many ways of shoring up and marking its boundariesan important component in the establishment of social identity that simultaneously flags one's claims to belonging (Cohen 1985; Stromberg 1986). However, it is also possible that anyone may have their consciousness awakened, through their expertise in socio-analysis which may mean no more than engaging in a reflexive dialogue on one's own position in relation to the group, or more generally to the field. And if Giddens (1984, 1991) is to be believed, such a level of reflexivity is hardly uncommon in individuals living in contemporary society Quaker habitus The Quaker habitus manifests itself in the formal and institutionalised manner of worshipping and conducting business, but also in the interests of Friends ('Friend' is a synonym for Quaker), in canonic texts and in the environment of the meeting house. Furthermore, the Quaker habitus is intimately connected to a series of other more fundamental habituses. The Society of Friends has always consisted predominantly of people who are white, liberal and of 'the middling sort', and this remains the case in the twenty-first century. The interests of Friends (as Friends) cluster around a set of co-ordinated discourses known as 'testimonies': against war, social injustice, gambling, outward ritual in worship, and so forth. The testimonies are further re-presented, and are concretised in the environment of the meeting house both in what is presentin the architecture, books, posters, pamphlets, printsand also in what is absentarchitectural embellishments, the usual stock of Christian icons (crucifixes, saints, symbolic animals) and ritual accoutrements such as altar, font, the means of making music (Collins 1996b). As Bell correctly points out, ritual involves 'the interaction of the body within a symbolically constituted spatial and temporal environment' (1992:93). In Quaker worship, the testimony to plainness is self-evident. British Quakers generally meet for worship on Sunday morning, typically for an hour between 11 a.m. and 12 noon. In Dibdenshaw, worshippers arrive perhaps thirty minutes before this time and are met by a Friend delegated to greet those arriving at the door. People stand around and talk before meeting, about friends and family, the events of the week, Quaker committee meetings, and so on. They look at the various posters and notices pinned on the noticeboards, and pick up and read some of the numerous pamphlets and leaflets displayed on tables around the place. Just before the appointed hour these knots of individuals are ushered towards the meeting room, where they take their seats. The chairs are arranged

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in a circle, around a table. On the table are arranged a few texts (probably copies of The Bible and Quaker Faith and Practice, a collection of Quaker writings) and a vase of fresh flowers. For the next hour the congregation or meeting remains still and silent, except for the odd rustle of clothing, whispering of children and spoken ministry. When moved to do so a participant stands and speaks, they may reflect on a recent experience, often relating it to a religious text. During a typical meeting for worship, between two and six individuals stand and speak, each contribution lasting a minute or soalthough occasionally considerably longer. After an hour, two Friends (generally elders or overseers) shake hands, and everybody else does likewise before the clerk stands to read whatever notices there may be. Everyone is encouraged to stay for a cup of tea (Collins 1996a, 1996b). Quaker worship is generally characterised, by Friends and others, as simple. Newcomers regularly say that it is the absence of ritual at meeting that prompts them to attend. It is hard to deny that Quaker liturgy, in which hierarchy is formally erased, is particularly spare, and this is doubly true in relation to the way church business is conducted wherein decisions are reached by something like consensus (a term I use here for the sake of brevity). Although there is more to the Quaker meeting than worship on Sunday morning, this is the habitus into which participants first enterand which enters participants, as far as these dispositions become embodied. It is extraordinary how quickly newcomers to meeting assimilate the proper way to arrive and conduct themselves before worship commences. They also learn the 'posture of worship' and not only the posture, but the subtle and not so subtle prescriptions and proscriptions that partially constitute the event; these are 'dispositions acquired through experience' (Bourdieu 1990:9). Movement of any kind is kept to a minimum, and what movement there is should be carried out quietly and without disturbing others. There is a self-consciousness about those who, perhaps suffering a cold, cough, sneeze or blow their nose. Although we cannot be certain that meaning (in meeting) is shared and communicated as belief, we can plausibly suggest that meaning is communicated through practice. While participants might not believe the same thing, they clearly do the same thing (Dandelion 1996). Actions may not speak louder than words, but they have, at least, an equal symbolic valency. However, it is worth reminding ourselves that symbols are necessarily polyvalent: when we seem to be doing the same thing we may not be doing the same thing. Witness the multiple interpretations of what meeting for worship means for participants evident in conversations between Quakers, in letters to The Friend (the Quaker weekly), and in meeting (Dandelion 1996:315-23). During fieldwork, I heard participants in meeting talk about praying, contemplating, snoozing, drifting, thinking, listening, composing poems and shopping lists, and so forth. Examples taken from a pamphlet consisting of reflections of Newcastle Quakers indicate that these friends are engaged in equally diverse pursuits (Newcastle Preparative Meeting 1998). Meaning consists not only of practice, but of reflexive engagement with practice. However, Quaker worship consists of participants appearing to do the same thingthere is extraordinary uniformity of practice.

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152 P. J. Collins Bourdieu (1977) argues, not unlike cognitive dissonance theorists, that when we assimilate a habitus we are able to take a lot for granted in certain circumstances, and are thus save ourselves both cognitive effort and social disruption. There is, following (even during) assimilation, a measure of security: we come to expect interaction to achieve a kind of harmony, or unity; we hope for a flawless performance. However, the habitus can never be completely or perfectly assimilated, wholly equivalent to one's self. Aspects of the habitus are open to reflection and interrogation: they are considered and discussed, joked about and debated. They can hardly be said to consist of the unintentional and to reside wholly in the unconscious, as Bourdieu seems to suggest (1977:78-87, 1990:90). While we may not be perfectly and constantly aware of all those dispositions that comprise the habitus, we are at least sometimes aware of some of them. At root, Bourdieu has difficulty in knowing how to theorise subjectivity (Jenkins 1992:97; see also Robbins 1991:132-50). After all, there is a strong case for arguing that our reality, or realities, are constituted dialogically, largely in conversation with others. To be awake is to converse, and we talk worlds into being (Harre 1983; Shorter 1993b). And it is in talk that narrative is most obviously present (Maclntyre 1990:205-25). Although Bourdieu is right to reveal a largely preconceptual, largely embodied dialogue that is all too easily ignoredthe embodied gives simultaneously onto the dialogic, the narrativised and the agential. Merely to present oneself at meeting is to initiate dialogue. As Gina said, 'I came to meeting because I wanted to make a statement', adding somewhat cryptically 'probably to myself. Adepts anticipate the newcomer's shared account of their discovery of Quakerism and are rarely disappointed. Subsequently, these narrative accounts are inevitably exchanged and, during such dialogues, selves are constructed and reconstructed (Collins 1996a). Identity, narrative and the self My understanding of identity is based primarily, although not entirely, on a social constructionist understanding of the self. From this point of view, the self is not fixed and static, pre-ordained or pre-determined, but fluid and changing and emergent in social interaction (Berger & Luckmann 1967; Mead 1967; Blumer 1969; Gergen 1991; Shotter 1993a, 1993b). Our identity is apt to metamorphose in relation to social context, and Bourdieu is right to emphasise the extent to which this is a skilldepending on the level of development of our 'feel for the game' (1990:59-75). Selves, in late modern society, are multiple (or fractured) largely because the fields of our experience are increasingly multiple and separate. This idea has been so well aired by sociologists that it is common currency now. However, I prefer Marilyn Strathern's (1991) notion of partial connectedness. One way to get at these several selves is through the narratives that we create together and through which the various fields or worlds that we inhabit may be, more or less, conjoined. Narratives are pre-eminently communal products (Gergen & Gergen 1984:174). Furthermore, our selves become inextricably linked with those of others. Jerome Bruner quotes Roy Schafer.

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Habitus and the Storied Self 153 We are forever telling stories about ourselves. In telling these self-stories to others we may, for most purposes, be said to be performing straightforward narrative actions. In saying that we also tell them to ourselves, however: we are enclosing one story within another. This is the story that there is a self to tell something to, a someone else serving as audience who is oneself or one's self. When the stories we tell others about ourselves concern these other selves of ours, when we say for example, 'I am not master of myself we are again enclosing one story within another. On this view the self is a telling. From time to time and from person to person this telling varies in the degree to which it is unified, stable, and acceptable to informed observers as reliable and valid. (Schafer, quoted in Bruner 1990:112-3) Schafer draws our attention to the degree to which individuals are reflexive, and this, I believe, helps to plug a hole in Bourdieu's habitus. The dispositions that comprise the habitus can be understood as elements of a narrativeor a series of narratives. Dispositions are central to the dramas of the self and we may be more or less conscious of them. Certainly, we can bring them into consciousness with the result that they provide cause and effect, explanation and understanding, form and content to the stories that constitute our lives. Many, in a wide range of disciplines, have argued cogently that narrative representation is a means of making sense of the world. Schafer's point is important but limited (because couched in terms of the therapeutic) in ways I prefer to avoid. It is the process of validation in the context of the 'distributed self, in particular, that interests me most. One's identity is the work of multitudes. As Gergen, Bruner, Shotter and others argue, the selffrom this point of viewis not a simple, unitary thing, but rather a dynamic, perpetually changing and profoundly mutable store of interactions and relationships. But those others with whom we interact are capable of more than simply validating our stories, they also stabilise them by recourse, for example, to moral and spiritual discourses, and unify them by contextualising them within a broader tradition. These are, I believe, aspects of interaction that take place in social contexts other than the therapeutic, and that I have observed and experienced in the Quaker meeting.

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The practice of meeting Having briefly considered the concept of habitus and the way in which it may relate to the storied self, let us move from the more abstract to the more concrete: to Dibdenshaw Quaker meeting. I discovered that participants became involved in the local meeting for many different reasons, each manifesting a unique play of narratives, which were at first presented as frayed or disconnected and that, I am arguing, are braided together as their particular, although shared, experience of meeting developed. I can cite just a few examples of what I am describing and, because of the usual constraints, it is difficult not to present individuals as caricaturesthey

154 P. J. Collins are, of course, infinitely more complex than their portrayal in a paragraph or two can suggest. Joy came to meeting after spending many years supporting the Peace Pledge Union (PPU). She was already a vegetarian, and had been reading about Buddhism and had attended some Buddhist meetings in another town self-narratives, or 'appreciations' as Bourdieu might call them, readily shared with others in meeting and re-cast in relation to Quaker texts and experience. After about one year of attending meeting for worship and other local events, including a peace vigil organised by the Meeting, she asked whether she could leave a tray of white poppies in the foyer during Remembrance Sunday. The meeting agreed. During the following months, Joy pinned up various posters relating to peace issues, and the meeting began subscribing to the PPU newsletter. Members were happy to support Joy's interest or concern in so far as it keyed into a pivotal Quaker testimonythe peace testimony. Joy became a regular attender, contributing financially to the monthly good cause and attending study group meetings on Quaker faith and practice. She began reading Quaker literature and considered applying for membership. Joy told me that she found meeting a 'supportive environment'. She knew something about the Quaker peace testimony before becoming a participant in meeting but explained that, as time went by, she was coming increasingly to appreciate the long tradition that this position represented. In conversation, she made it clear on a number of occasions that she did not consider herself a Christian, but was reassured by various other participants at Dibdenshaw that this need not prevent her from participating in meeting nor from applying for membership to the Society of Friends. What was stressed on these occasions was that she behaved 'like a Quaker', that her actions indicated that she belonged. Her actions, as a pacifist in particular, at one time couched in other terms could now be re-framed and re-presented as a Quaker narrative. Dan had been in membership for more than 30 years when we first met. He had been a minister in another denomination, which he felt was insufficiently active in presenting a pacifist world-view. Over the years he had come to play an increasingly active part in the Society of Friends, becoming a member of several local and national committees. There was rarely a gathering of Dibdenshaw Friends that Dan did not attend: peace vigils, bring-and-buy sales, discussion groups, and so forth. He became well known and respected for his spoken ministry, often focusing on matters of social inequality, and for his knowledge of the bible and matters theological. He often drew, during his spoken ministry, on Quaker Faith and Practice, the quasi-canonic codification of Quakerism. One might argue that familiarity with this text facilitates a thickening of the habitus, or one's 'feel for the game'on the one hand widening one's range of strategies, and on the other more clearly defining the bounds of what is acceptable or right. During one conversation, Dan described his self as a bowl of sugar lumps, over which a liquid was being poured. Quakerism, then, had been seeping into these separate parts of his self for 30 years, colouring each anew. I heard a number of local Quakers refer to Dan as a 'weighty' Friend; that is, as one whose life epitomised (embodied?) Quaker faith and practice.

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The narratives of those new to Quakerism often involved an account of their less than happy experiences of being brought up in another religious tradition. Mike, for example, was 'a refugee from the Catholic Church'. He had been brought up in a Catholic home and educated in a Catholic school. He remembers both as severe and unforgiving, describing his school as 'repressive' and 'obsessed with sin'. He had rarely attended mass since becoming an adult, having been baffled by it as a child, and had 'pretty much turned [his] back on religion', although he remained, he believed, a religious person. After reading a pamphlet on Quakerism in the local library, Mike turned up at meeting and 'found it a breath of fresh air'. During the months that followed he said how 'liberating' it was to be free of all the 'stuffy ritual'. He had enjoyed sitting quietly in church and now here he could do so with other people 'of like mind'. Mike explained how Quakerism was helping him 'clear out the closet'; that is, make sense of his lifehere is a claim to an explicit re-writing of one's personal identity then. Interestingly, whereas Dan often attempted in his spoken ministry and in his conversation to emphasise the similarities between other faiths, including catholisism, and Quakerism, Mike sought to distance himself from his earlier involvement in Catholicism and defined his perception of Quakerism in opposition to his earlier experience of organised religion. At times, Mike seemed to suggest that he did not perceive Quakerism as religion at allsome other participants at least might well have felt comfortable with this understanding. Finally, Gina was a staunch member of the Labour party and dedicated volunteer at a safe house for battered women. Her perception of herself, and others' perceptions of her were as an 'activist', as someone who 'got involved'. One Friend described her with reference to early (seventeenth-century) Friends who were energetic in their vocal and physical attacks upon Church and State, and who suffered appallingly as a consequence. She regularly brought items for consideration to preparative Meetings (i.e. the monthly business meeting). She and Dan often participated in events outside meeting that they related to the 'social testimony'a fairly diffuse mode of witness centring approximately on the demand for equality of opportunity. Gina, quoting canonic texts, spoke often about 'letting our lives speak'. This is a central tenet of Quaker ideology. For instance, Harvey Gillman in his introductory booklet A Light that is Shining writes, 'You will not find the convictions of Quakers in this country set out in any creed. From the early days they have stressed that their faith is something they live rather than put into particular words' (1988:7). In this case, then, a narrative that had previously been presented in primarily party political (and other) terms was becoming a Quaker narrative. At the same time, the meeting as a corporate body became involved in concerns that Gina brought to it. To put it crudely, she helped form the habitus that was, to some extent, forming her. These four briefly reported examples can only suggest the extraordinary range of stories that participants exchange within the context of meeting. What is noticeable, however, despite the necessary brevity of presentation, is the way in which each self is becoming or has become framed to a significant extent by

156 P. J. Collins an understanding of 'Quakerism'. The dynamic of meeting consists primarily of this narrative fountain. Friends and attenders (participants who have not become members of the Society of Friends) are enthusiastic story tellers, not only before, during (in spoken ministry), and after worship, but also during various get-togethers of a less formal kind, including study evenings, shared lunches, peace vigils, weekends away, committee meetings, and visits to one anothers' homes. When Friends meet they tell each other stories that draw on resources that constitute the Quaker habitus. As Dandelion (1996) has argued, while Quaker belief is non-credal, Quakers behave as if practice is. Not only in relation to liturgical practice, although we can argue that this symbolises, metonymically, for Quakers, the precedence of practice over belief more generally. And it is certainly the case that canonic texts emphasise practice, for instance through the presentation of exemplary action on the part of Quakers past (the majority, including testimonies to the recently deceased) and present (far less common, although including the many written accounts of Quaker action in various publications, and orally in Meetings of one kind and another). The point to note is the relative ease with which narratives of the 'socially concerned' can be made to mesh with the narratives of practice presented within canonic and local Quakerism. The two together combine in complex ways to form the Quaker habitus. Joy, Mike, Dan, and Gina each joined the Quaker community for diffuse reasons, often after a period 'searching' or 'seeking', as Quaker parlance has it. During the 2 years of my research, Dan and the newcomers or enquirers, Joy, Mike and Gina, attended meeting for worship regularly and involved themselves in a variety of other activitiessocial, administrative, educative, and so onbased in and around the meeting house. They also occupy a space with which they interact. Joy displays white poppies and a series of posters that relate directly to the peace testimony, for example. It is through the accumulation (perhaps over centuries) of such accretions that the space of the meeting house becomes symbolically laden as Quaker space, forming a densely meaningful environment in which the Quaker habitus develops. What each of these four individuals have in common is the way in which the habitus of Quakerism served to link or re-define disparate aspects of their lives: their leisure time, their sense of the religious, their work, their relationships with friends and relatives, their politics, the way they shopped, and so on and so forth. These fields, if indeed they are increasingly separated and detached in modern society, came to be linked by these individuals through their engagement with the Quaker habitus. Their several personal narratives (which together, I have argued elsewhere, constitute one's self) were braided together through their involvement in meeting. It is true to say that their experiences and interests (those that already existed and those that developed during their involvement in Dibdenshaw Meeting) reflect, to some extent, a social class (and Bourdieu suggests that the habitus is always class based)the middle class who are found, typically, in the caring professions (doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, probation officers), and who formed a disproportionate part of this particular Quaker meeting. On the

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other hand, this 'class' is not perfectly homogeneous, and members certainly vary in their religiosity. All the same, virtually all the participants at Dibdenshaw had been involved at some point in their lives with other religious groups, as well as with other organisations among whom they hoped to 'find meaning'. And meaning is multiplied, among participants in meeting, in the notion of 'coming home': a popular expression made more popular by the broadcaster Gerald Priestland, who adopted it as the title of a pamphlet describing his discovery of Quakerism (Priestland 1983). Participants talked as if they were always predisposed to Quaker faith and practice but had been waylaid, as it were, by circumstances of birth, upbringing, education, and so onas if they were predisposed to a particular although unbeatable habitus. These had proved to be obstacles in the way of 'coming home'. Joy once remarked, through her tears, that she had found her 'true self in the Quaker meeting and it was certainly the case that she had found a group that accepted her pacifist ideas and ideals (along with self-narratives) with complete equanimity, and who provided an opportunity for her both to air these ideas and to frame them (make them meaningful) within a wider tradition. Gina used the 'coming home' metaphor regularly, comparing the Quaker meeting with the familiarity of home. Within one year, meeting, like home, was an axis around which the world (her world) turned. The search for habitus and the search for home would appear to amount to the same thing here. The affective and emotional component of this process are absent in Bourdieuimagining habitus as home is a further act of repair. Location seems not to be important for Bourdieu, whereas for these incipient Quakers it was crucial. For them, habitus was not only inside their heads, but it was situated in time and space, and they experienced diverse emotions in its discovery. There is a certain autobiographical and existential resonance here as I recall myself using this expression 'coming home' in conversation following my first Quaker meeting, which I attended in the south of England in 1986. My wife and 1 had recently returned from Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) projects. Spoken ministry at this meeting included one relatively lengthy contribution on Ghana, the country in which my wife had been working as a teacher trainer for 2 years. This provoked in each of us a tremendous frisson, which we talked about at length during the months that followed. We chatted, after meeting, to other participants trading stories about our (and their) experiences in Africa, and were put in touch with the local 'returned volunteers' group. On the one hand, my VSO narrative was woven into this Quaker meeting during subsequent years in various ways. On the other, I reinterpreted my experiences as a volunteer as I came to assimilate the Quaker habitus. It would be an exaggeration to say that two hitherto completely disparate selves became conjoined as some seamless whole. However, the one did serve increasingly to explain my involvement in and to define my commitment to the other, and this came about through my participation in Quakerism. I no longer mentioned the 'desire to travel' or 'boredom and the need get away from a job that no longer interested me', but presented other reasons, relating to sharing world resources, the importance of altruism, and so forth. Even lately, I caught myself summing up my reasons for

158 P. J. Collins volunteering by quoting an expression, 'Live adventurously!', quoting directly from Quaker Faith and Practice. This re-telling of one narrative through another, this re-negotiation of identity, is not determined by the habitus acting to constrain our choices. It is, rather, a creative and imaginative endeavour, sometimes mundane but occasionally fraught with emotion. This is not to say that constraint is wholly absent, but rather to play up the means by which habitus enables, in this case, the construction of identity. Downloaded by [Universidad Nacional Colombia] at 19:56 02 November 2013 Conclusions In the present paper, I have used two concepts in the hope that the synergy created by their juxtaposition might increase their interpretive power. The habitus consists of a set of dispositions that is both caught and taught through interaction with others and is a useful analytical tool, not least because it takes seriously the embodied character of human experience and action. Narrative suggests that individuals bring their own, ultimately unique, autobiographical understandings to bear on any and every social situation. Narrative brings to the concept of habitus a more plausible account of human agency. Habitus offers a more convincing account of cultural practice if it is understood as formed byas well as formingindividuals in interaction. It could be true, of course, that the Quaker meeting as a site in which narratives of self are made to resonate, might have been constructed as such in the minds of the new participants, rather than found there, ready made. A more plausible interpretation is that the process is dialectical or at least mutually causative. In any case, this constructive process is dynamic and ongoinga means of making connections. My argument is that coming to meeting, assimilating the Quaker habitus, lends these participants' selves a certain connectedness, which appears to harmonise the disparate fields between which they move. At the same time, potential contradictions and dissonances are elided. For instance, the secular pursuit of peace (through the PPU) is reconstituted as a Quaker concern, understandable in spiritual terms; an individual's existing and vaguely self-serving reasons for doing VSO are similarly re-presented as a coherent manifestation of a social testimony, plainly legitimised in various canonic texts. Such dissonances might occur not only within the individual self, but also between participants at meeting. The talk of participants, particularly new participants, suggests that involvement in the Quaker meeting may exert a unifying influence, a narrative with which to tie together other narratives. Even when Friends patently disagreed on apparently major points of belief, others would dissipate tension by pointing out the traditional importance within (a creedless) Quakerism of the individual's point of view. There are at least three obvious questions to ask at this point. First, does the habitus take on a particular hue within the field of religion? In conducting my fieldwork among Quakers, I found that Bourdieu's delineation of the habitus left too little room for human agency and the stories that individuals tell. However, I am not convinced that this particular religious field is so peculiar that it

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precipitates a unique form of habitus. Rather, I strongly suspect, along with Jerome Bruner and others, that narrative is central to all human interaction indeed, I see my own work as a contribution to that analytical perspective. I am led to this conclusion through observing Friends participate in other, nonQuaker, fields: choral unions, gardening clubs, at work. There is no apparent hiatus as they move between fields. I would argue that this is the case because narrative and habitus always go hand in hand. Second, is it not passe merely to echo the participant's view that religious faith and practice comes to 'make life meaningful', through unifying the separate selves of participants? Maybe, but there is scope, I think, for research into how religion impacts on self and identity in this way. And it is relevant here to recall William I. Thomas and Dorothy Thomas' dictum that 'If men (sic) define situations as real they are real in their consequences' (1928:572). Third, to what extent is the argument I have presented relevant in the case of other faith communities? While I am confident that my findings can be generalised to shed light on British Quakerism as such (consisting of around 17,000 members distributed across approximately 500 meetings), I am rather more cautious about making claims beyond this constituency. Perhaps the Quaker 'field' is unusual in the extent to which it resembles Turner's 'communitas' (Turner 1969:94-113; Collins 1998). The Society of Friends, as we have seen, is a socially homogeneous organisation with little or no ranking. There is no paid clergy, indeed there is no clergy, but rather a 'priesthood of all believers'. All of life is taken as sacred and there is an emphasis on silence during worship/ritual. However, if we also take into account the eschewal of creeds, it is possible that many aspects of New Age religiosity have somewhat similar configurations and might provide useful comparative material (Heelas 1996; Sutcliffe & Bowman 2000). In British society, it is evident that individuals are able to choose between religion and no religion, and when they choose religion they can go on to choose between this religion and that religion. Quakerism seems to suit, perfectly, the reflexive individuality of late modernity, as Giddens defines it (1991:10-34). Given the Society of Friends' apparent 'fit' with at least this facet of late modernity, it might seem odd that its numbers have continued to decline in recent years. Although I cannot discuss this apparent paradox in depth here, suffice it to say that the secularising trend in Western societies (Martin 1969; Wilson 1976, 1985; Bruce 1992, 1996; Brown 2000) and the rejection of institutional Christianity (Davie 1994) must outweigh the apparent consonance between Quaker faith and practice and the ambient world view. We are, in any case, dealing here with points along a spectrum rather than absolute dichotomies. As always, further generalisation awaits comparative research, but we should recall and take to heart Strathern's (1991:53) warning when she says that 'comparability is not intrinsic to anything'! Notes
An earlier version of this paper was read at the British Sociological Association

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160 P. J. Collins
(Religion Study Group) Meeting held at the University of Durham in April 1999. I would like to thank participants for their helpful comments. Further thanks to the editor and an anonymous reader for their sensible advice.

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Notes on Author
Peter J. Collins received his Ph.D. in social anthropology from Manchester University in 1994. He has published a number of articles on various aspects of Quakerism. His research interests currently centre on religion, ritual and symbolism, and stress. Address: Peter J. Collins, University of Durham, Department of Anthropology, 43 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, UK. Email: p.j.collins@durham.ac.uk