Examine Bourdieus key concepts in

understanding Kabyle society. How do they bring

out the significance of individual endeavour and
collective life in agricultural settings?

Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a theory of practice situates itself in

opposition to contemporary accounts of society and culture. When
Pierre Bourdieu wrote Outline of a Theory of Practice, structuralism
and structural Marxism were the dominant modes of approach.
Bourdieu wrote Outline of a Theory of Practice to offer an alternative
to the accounts of human action provided by structuralism and by
abstract sociological theory. Bourdieu basically uses fieldwork in
Kabyle (northern Algeria) to argue that cultural structures are
absorbed into the unconscious structures of our minds, creating a
predetermined framework known as Habitus, within which
individuals work.
Pierre Bourdieu develops a theory of practice which is
simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social
science and a general account of how human action should be
understood. Human action is practical in at least two senses of the
term. First, action is composed of and conducted through practices;
and, second, action is never abstract, it is always oriented to some
actual outcome or goal.
It is frequent and even conventional in a great deal of social
philosophy, anthropology, and sociology to argue that social action
is orderly insofar as it is governed by socially shared rules. From this
perspective, in any given situation individuals know how to act
because they apprehend the situation and recognize the rule, or
rules, that direct action in that situation. Bourdieu rejects this
perspective as too simple. According to him, rules could not possibly
determine social action because those rules and the situations in
which they apply (or do not apply) always require active
interpretation. Far from having their actions determined by rules,
practical actors engage in what Bourdieu describes as the art of
necessary improvisation. Thus, Bourdieu contends, norms and rules
should be understood as providing interpretive resources for
strategic action.

This internalisation of objective possibility as subjective expectation

was theorised by Bourdieu in the concept of habitus, the form by
which this relationship was mediated. Habitus is, according to
Bourdieu, the means by which the 'social game' is inscribed in
biological individuals. As the possibilities and constraints of social
action are incorporated by individuals, their 'feel for the game'
becomes a kind of second nature. 'Habitus' thus refers to the way in
which an individual's instinctive sense of what might be achieved is
structured into a pattern of behaviour. In Bourdieu's own words, 'an
acquired system of generative schemes objectively adjusted to the
particular conditions in which it is constituted'. The modes of
behaviour, or dispositions, produced by the habitus, are passed on
through the generations, inculcated from an early age and socially
reinforced through education and culture. Individuals need not be
conscious of how their actions are organizednor need they be
wholly aware of how their actions are strategically organizedin
order to advance their own interests as individuals and as members
of a class. Therefore, the habitus contributes to the production, and
reproduction, of the existing social order invisibly, without
individuals conscious awareness; even though the habitus exists
only through those individuals own actions.
According to Bourdieu the idea of a point of view on practice is
possible only if one stands back so as to observe. That is, to have
a point of view on practiceto be an observer of practiceis to
detach oneself from practice itself. Some theories of practice fail to
recognize that the objects of knowledge are socially constructed;
these theories slip into a form of positivist materialism, in which
individuals capacities as sense-making agents are ignored.
Alternatively, other theories of practice fail to recognize that insofar
as the objects of knowledge are socially constructed, they are
constructed in and through practical activity; in this case, the
objective character of social structures is ignored, and these
theories become a sort of idealist intellectualism.
Bourdieus critique that theories of practice that attempt to portray
practice in systematic terms can never wholly account for actual
instances of practice. The ideal version of the Kabyle calendar that
an anthropologist might construct is not, and cannot be, the same
as the calendar as it is experienced and used by the Kabyle
themselves.

The calendar plays an important role in Kabylian society, and it is

heavily codified and made explicit as a system of rules to govern
social life -- when to plant, when to hold religious festivities and so
on. There are some variants among the members of society over
matters such as when the year starts, and when exactly different
periods start and finish, and this has puzzled anthropologists
interested in getting the 'true' picture. Some start their year with
autumn (lakhrif), for some the season starts around 1sept and for
some first day of ploughing is the beginning of the year.
The tillage period begins with the first day of ploughing when an Ox
is sacrificed and its meat is shared among the community. For some
people winters begin on 15 nov while for some it begins with 1
December. The heart of winter is called lyali the nights, "a period of
forty days, which is further divided into two equal parts Black and
White. Confusion regarding the beginning of winter shows that
opposition between winter and autumn are not strongly marked.
Once the autumn is over, the peasants keep themselves busy in
repairing tools; basically its a period free from rigorous activity
which is contrasted to slack period of the dry season which includes
intense activity.
First day of January is known as ennayer which is marked by set of
renewal rites and taboos. Lyali ends in January and it is celebrated
through ritual manners. The farmer goes out into the fields and sets
up oleander branches, which have the power to drive away maras.
This is a long transitional period or time of waiting, its a passage
from winter to spring. It includes a patchwork of moments which are
ill defined, almost all malign, and variously named. Term
thimgharine, is used for this transition phase and it is also used for
old women. Once spring arrives cattles are brought to the field and
its a time for celebrations. Women abandon the taboos of the
ploughing period and dye their hands with henna and make brooms.
Days grow longer, there is not much work to be done and all waits
for the end of the period.
With Natah transitional period comes to an end. It is a season of
blossoming of crops, season of celebration as opposed to husum.
April is a downward slope and a trouble free period. Work of all sorts
starts up again in the fields, where the critical period of growth is
over, the men can start the hoeing, inaugurated by the abduction of

Mata or bride of field. During the period of nisan whose beneficent

rain, bringing fertility and prosperity to every living thing, is invoked
with all sorts of rites, the sheep are shorn and the new lambs are
branded. From the period known as izegzawen the green days
comes to an end. The last traces of greenery fade from the
landscape and cereals begin to turn yellow. The crucial tasks of wet
season, tillage and sowing are banned from the period known as the
yellow days, only concern is to protect the ripening crops from
predators.
Bourdieu relates this agrarian cycle with other process and develop
a series of homologies. The act of ploughing can be seen as an act
of destroying. From the gender role man is supposed to be destroyer
and who carries out violence. Act of harvesting is also seen as men
oriented. On the other side women are accorded by gender to
liminality dictated by rhythms of nature. Women are seen as liminal
or profane because of her association with labour, menstruation.
They are always seen as passive receiver and play role of nurturer.
But without the support of women, men are not capable of doing
work and in the cycle agriculture brings them to partnership with
men.
The idea of partnership between men and women can be seen in
agrarian cycle, seed is seen as semen which is placed into the soil
which is imagery of an act of penetration between men and women.
Earth is symbolised as women womb or the receiver which are roles
accorded to women. The nascent shoot or an emerging child both
show that nurturing is required to develop or for growth and it is
again done by women. In this way whole act of making the crops
fertile is an imagery of reproduction and sexuality. Thus agrarian
cycle also becomes a reproductive and sexual cycle.
Such homologies between the cycle of seasons, the scheduling of
labour as differentiated by gender, and other symbolic universes,
would certainly be emphasized by any structurally oriented analyst.
Bourdieu, however, is concerned to highlight the partial nature of
the integration of such domains as these homologies are mobilized
to deal with particular situations, whether the situation involves the
appropriate time to transact marriage, weave cloth or cook spicy
food. Although loosely interconnected, these schemes depend on
emphasizing certain oppositions to generate practices or symbols

that cannot be produced directly from the oppositions that are

foregrounded by other schemes. Because no more than one
particular sector of the system of partially autonomous schemes is
mobilized at any one time, the products that result from applying
these schemes are only partially congruent and roughly equivalent
for anyone with "practical mastery" of the system.
Kabyle calendar is seen as prototype of doxa, where the world of
tradition maps directly onto the natural world, so that it can be
taken for granted. This enables reproduction of that social world,
without disputes. There is no place for opinion, the doxa is
unanimous. The doxa can weaken and undergo practical questioning
as a result of contact with other cultures or via various political and
economic crises 'correlative with class division'. Self-evidence is
destroyed, and the social world ceases to be a natural phenomenon.
However, the crisis may not lead to schism. In particular, dominant
groups may impose orthodoxy, a weaker version of doxa, because it
has to be consciously managed, and it implies alternatives,
heterodoxy. An important activity here is to try and preserve a
'universe of that which is taken for granted, but again this can be
maintained only by censorship and exclusion.

Bibliography
Bourdieu, Pierre 1977 outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge,
University of Cambridge press
http://www.arasite.org/bdieuprc.htm