Historicising Power Relations and Habitus Formation. Part I

While power has remained a consistent theme in historical sociology, the centrality or otherwise of habitus, or its various adjacent concepts such as self and subjectivity, has waxed and waned. But the varieties and forms of power, and also the distribution of power, have changed over the course of history, and indeed relatedly the forms and formation of habitus have also changed. In this session we explore the connections over time between power relations and habitus formation, with a view to examining varieties of both in different time periods, states, nations, and other forms of social organisation and groups. While the concept of habitus was popularised by Bourdieu, it has a long history in sociological use. The session aims to expand the understandings of habitus, moving beyond singular versus multiple, or closed versus open, towards greater nuance and contingency in terms of changing power relationships in organisations at various levels of social integration and complexity.