04 August 1994 | Bourdieu & Habitus
#memoriesfromdiaries 💛
This post is a sequel to our last past post on the Aristotelian concept of habituation!
In the previous post, we had a glimpse into the concept of habituation with reference to the Aristotelian philosophical framework, where he prioritises habituation over virtues.
Today we shall look at the pedagogical turn to habituation, with reference to my past diary entry of 27 years ago!
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| 04 August 1994 - my personal diary entry |
Some of the habituated actions that I’ve jotted down here above - like running, or walking or gymming, or having coffee, or taking bath, or studying, or cleaning cubicles, or having food, or sleeping etc - have played a great role in shaping my behaviour and value formation over the years!
Bourdieu calls it habitus!
If to Foucault, power is ‘ubiquitous’, to Bourdieu - Pierre Bourdieu, power is something that’s culturally and symbolically created by means of ‘habitus!’
By ‘habitus’ then, Bourdieu refers to the socialised norms or tendencies that guide one’s behaviour and thinking processes!
This post would focus on how effective pedagogic practice through mindful mediations and sustained interventions, could lead to satisfactory learner outcomes.
In this regard, I would like to draw particular attention to a 1924 essay titled, “Techniques of the Body” by Marcel Mauss!
This essay is a pioneering text in many ways.
To Mauss, all our habituated, everyday activities such as walking, running, reading, swimming, sitting, standing, eating, resting etc are not mere ‘techniques’ that we are naturally endowed with, but ‘skills’ that we have culturally acquired through sustained, regular and regulated reinforcements.
In other words, the techniques of the body are in fact constructed through our daily routines (cultural practices).
Hence, ‘techniques’ here might connote to mean, ‘cultivated ways of performing an action’, like, having our hands in a particular position while eating, while reading, while running, etc.
Mauss makes mention of his own personal experience during World War I, where they had to change a whopping 8000 spades in the trenches because English troops were unable to make use of the French spades.
Well, and that’s because the French had learnt a different way of digging trenches compared to the English, and hence, learning to use a totally different type of spade could only be effected by slow and sustained interventions!
We are formed and transformed to a great extent by these cultivated techniques says Mauss.
To Mauss then, the Method is of utmost importance!
To put it in another way,
As eminent critic Scupin Richard rightly points out,
If for Marshall McLuhan the Medium is the Message, to Mauss then, the Method becomes the Medium!
For example, making a child to sit at a desk in itself requires immense training!
Well, it’s not that easy to make a child sit at a desk in front of a text book for – say – even a 15 minute duration of time, ain’t it?
There are lots of distractions at stake for the pavapetta child!
But once the child is conveniently trained, over a period of time, in the habit of sitting at a study desk, the child knows that she has to be prepared and all geared up for some good reading or writing! That’s hence she eagerly looks forward to the activity, thus mentally preparing herself for it!
And gradually, over a period of time, even as the child masters the art of sitting at a desk and does some good reading or writing, she may conveniently forget the crucial fact on how she was rather ‘trained’ or ‘habituated’ into this action through sustained interventions over a period of time!
The same with any ‘habituated’ actions – like sneezing into a handkerchief, or saying prayers before meals!
Therefore, each of the scholarly impulses or habituated actions that a child performs, are not necessarily ‘natural’ impulses, but ‘cultural’ processes into which the child is getting conditioned!
Although to Foucault, this may seem like ‘disciplinary power’, yet, there’s something highly redemptive about this power of habituation as well!
If we can read a newspaper or a book first thing in the morning every day of our lives, let’s thank our teachers (whom we might have conveniently forgotten) and our parents (who must have reinforced in us through sustained, mindful interventions) such beautiful habituated actions that have brightened up our sweet lives for the better each passing day!
Again, if we sneeze into a handkerchief today, let’s thank our respected teacher and our beloved parents, who have been instrumental in imparting such habituated actions in us over a period of time!
If we can sit at our desks for hours with a book in one hand and a cup of coffee in another, again, let’s thank our mentors who have helped shape such habit formations in us!
Habituation hence happens in a child because of the teachers and the parents creating a beautiful habitus for learning for their kids!
So if you think you’re a born genius, stop thinking on that crap - rightaway at that - and start thanking God, and your teachers and your parents who have helped you in your habit formation by creating an awesome habitus for learning for you, thus making you what you are today!
This makes us draw some amazing inferences!
Well, yes!
Habituation, or habit-formation happens by the creation of -
the habitus for learning!
As simple as that!
To be continued…
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