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p.10 If I mentioned the hours I passed... trying to resolve these contradictions instead of noting them immediately and seeing in them the effect of the limits inherent in practical logic, which is only ever coherent roughly, up to a point [JLJ - Bourdieu tells us of his difficulties trying to construct accurate diagrams of the practical logic of his observed social system, suggesting that perhaps his observations hold true for all similar practical efforts - such attempts might only be roughly coherent, up to a point]
p.11 It also took me a long time to understand that the logic of practice can only be grasped through constructs which destroy it as such, so long as one fails to consider the nature, or rather the effects, of instruments of objectification such as genealogies, diagrams, synoptic tables, maps, etc.
p.11 the diagram and all the oppositions, equivalences and analogies that it displays at a glance are only valid so long as they are taken for what they are, logical models giving an account of the observed facts in the most coherent and most economical way; and that they become false and dangerous as soon as they are treated as the real principles of practices, which amounts to simultaneously overestimating the logic of practices and losing sight of what constitutes their real principle.
p.14 Real mastery of this logic is only possible for someone who is completely mastered by it, who possesses it, but so much so that he is totally possessed by it, in other words depossessed. And this is because there can only be practical learning of the schemes of perception, appreciation and action which are the precondition of all 'sensible' thought and practice, and which, being continually reinforced by actions and discourses produced according to the same schemes, are excluded from the universe of objects of thought.
p.42 Jean-Paul Sartre... makes each action a kind of antecedent-less confrontation between the subject and the world.
p.53 The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them.
p.54 The habitus... ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception, thought and action, tend to guarantee the 'correctness' of practices and their constancy over time, more reliably than all formal rules and explicit norms. This system of dispositions... is the principle of the continuity and regularity which objectivism sees in social practices without being able to account for it; and also of the regulated transformations that cannot be explained
p.55-56 In short, being the product of a particular class of objective regularities, the habitus tends to generate all the 'reasonable', 'common-sense', behaviours... which are possible within the limits of these regularities, and which are likely to be positively sanctioned because they are objectively adjusted to the logic characteristic of a particular field, whose objective future they anticipate.
p.56-57 The habitus... is the active presence of the whole past of which it is the product. As such, it is what gives practices their relative autonomy with respect to external determinations of the immediate present. This autonomy is that of the past, enacted and acting, which, functioning as accumulated capital, produces history on the basis of history... The habitus is a spontaneity without consciousness or will... This logic is seen in paradigmatic form in the dialectic of expressive dispositions and instituted means of expression... which is observed in the intentionless invention of regulated improvisation... being produced by a modus operandi which is not consciously mastered
p.59 Sociology treats as identical all biological individuals who, being the products of the same objective conditions, have the same habitus.
p.61 Through the systematic 'choices' it makes... the habitus tends to protect itself from crises and critical challenges by providing itself with a milieu [JLJ - the physical or social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops] to which it is as pre-adapted as possible, that is, a relatively constant universe of situations tending to reinforce its dispositions by offering the market most favourable to its products.
p.61 Even when they look like the realization of explicit ends, the strategies produced by the habitus and enabling agents to cope with unforeseen and constantly changing situations are only apparently determined by the future. If they seem to be oriented by anticipation of their own consequences, thereby encouraging the finalist illusion, this is because, always tending to reproduce the objective structures that produced them, they are determined by the past conditions of production of their principle of production, that is, by the already realized outcome of identical or interchangeable past practices, which coincides with their own outcome only to the extent that the structures within which they function are identical to or homologous with the objective structures of which they are the product.
p.62 The habitus contains the solution to the paradoxes of objective meaning without subjective intention. It is the source of these strings of 'moves' which are objectively organized as strategies without being the product of a genuine strategic intention [JLJ - see Robert Chia, Strategy Without Design]
p.62 If each stage in the sequence of ordered and oriented actions that constitute objective strategies can appear to be determined by anticipation of the future, and in particular, of its own consequences (which is what justifies the use of the concept of strategy), it is because the practices that are generated by the habitus and are governed by the past conditions of production of their generative principle are adapted in advance to the objective conditions whenever the conditions in which the habitus functions have remained identical, or similar, to the conditions in which it was constituted. Perfectly and immediately successful adjustment to the objective conditions provides the most complete illusion ... of self-regulating mechanism.
p.64 The habitus is... a matrix generating responses adapted in advance to all objective conditions identical to or homologous with the (past) conditions of its production; it adjusts itself to a probable future which it anticipates and helps to bring about because it reads it directly in the present of the presumed world, the only one it can ever know.
p.66 Practical sense... orients 'choices' which... are... charged with a kind of retrospective finality. A particularly clear example of practical sense as a proleptic [JLJ - anticipating] adjustment to the demands of a field is what is called, in the language of sport, a 'feel for the game'. This phrase... gives a fairly accurate idea of the almost miraculous encounter between the habitus and a field... which makes possible the near-perfect anticipation of the future inscribed in all the concrete configurations on the pitch or board.
p.67 In a game, the field... is clearly seen for what it is, an arbitrary social construct, an artefact whose arbitrariness and artificiality are underlined by everything that defines its autonomy - explicit and specific rules, strictly delimited and extra-ordinary time and space.
p.68 Doxa is the relationship of immediate adherence that is established in practice between a habitus and the field to which it is attuned
p.69 It is because agents never know completely what they are doing that what they do has more sense than they know.
p.81 One thus only has to go back to one's own games, one's own playing of the social game, to realize that the sense of the game is at once the realization of the theory of the game and its negation qua theory.
p.81 Practice unfolds in time... because it is entirely immersed in the current of time, practice is inseparable from temporality, not only because it is played out in time, but also because it plays strategically with time and especially with tempo.
p.81 Science has a time which is not that of practice. For the analyst, time disappears: not only because... arriving after the battle, the analyst cannot have any uncertainty as to what can happen, but also because he has the time to totalize, that is, to overcome the effects of time... A player who is involved and caught up in the game adjusts not to what he sees but to what he fore-sees, sees in advance in the directly perceived present
p.82 one has no chance of giving a scientific account of practice... unless one is aware of the effects that scientific practice produces by mere totalization. One only has to think of the synoptic diagram, which owes its scientific efficacy precisely to the synchronizing effect it produces (after much labour and time) by giving an instantaneous view of facts which only exist in succession and so bringing to light relationships... that would otherwise go unnoticed. As is seen in the case of ritual practices, the cumulation and juxtaposition of relations of opposition and equivalence which are not and cannot be mastered by any one informant... is what provides the analyst with the privilege of totalization, that is, the capacity to possess and put forward the synoptic view of the totality and the unity of the relationships that is the precondition of any decoding.
p.83 In the diagram of the calendar, the complete series of the temporal oppositions which are deployed successively by different agents in different situations, and which can never be practically mobilized together because the necessities of practice never require such a synoptic apprehension but rather discourage it through their urgent demands, are juxtaposed in the simultaneity of a single space.
p.86 Practice has a logic which is not that of the logician. This has to be acknowledged in order to avoid asking of it more logic than it can give, thereby condemning oneself either to wring incoherences out of it or to thrust a forced coherence upon it... This practical logic... is able to organize all thoughts, perceptions and actions by means of a few generative principles, which are closely interrelated and constitute a practically integrated whole... In other words, symbolic systems owe their practical coherence... to the fact that they are the product of practices that can fulfill their practical functions only in so far as they implement, in the practical state, principles that are not only coherent... but also practical... because they obey a 'poor' and economical logic.
p.87 The universes of meaning corresponding to different universes of practice are both self-enclosed - the therefore protected against logical control through systematization - and objectively adjusted to all the others in so far as they are loosely systematic products of a system of practically integrated generative principles that function in the most diverse fields of practice.
p.89-90 By inducing an identity of reaction in a diversity of situations... the practical schemes can produce the equivalent of an act of generalization that cannot be accounted for without recourse to concepts... Practical sense 'selects' certain objects or actions, and consequently certain of their aspects, in relation to 'the manner in hand', an implicit and practical principle of pertinence; and, by fixing on those with which there is something to be done or those that determine what is to be done in the given situation... it distinguishes properties that are pertinent from those that are not.
p.90 scientific construction cannot grasp the principles of practical logic without forcibly changing their nature.
p.90-91 An agent who possesses a practical mastery... is no better placed to perceive what really governs his practice and to bring it to the order of discourse, than the observer, who has the advantage over him of being able to see the action from outside, as an object... And there is every reason to think that as soon as he reflects on his practice, adopting a quasi-theoretical posture, the agent loses any chance of expressing the truth of his practice, and especially the truth of the practical relation to the practice. Academic interrogation inclines him to take up a point of view on his own practice that is no longer that of action... Simply because he is questioned, and questions himself, about the reasons and the raison d'etre of his practice, he cannot communicate the essential point, which is that the very nature of practice is that it excludes this question.
p.91 In contrast to logic... practice excludes all formal concerns. Reflexive attention to action itself... has nothing in common with the aim of explaining how the result has been achieved, still less of seeking to understand (for understanding's sake) the logic of practice, which flouts logical logic. Scientific analysis thus encounters and has to surmount a practical antimony... when it seeks to understand... the logic of practice which understands only in order to act.
p.92 Caught up in 'the matter at hand', totally present in the present and in the practical functions that it finds there in the form of objective potentialities, practice excludes attention to itself... It is unaware of the principles that govern it and the possibilities they contain; it can only discover them by enacting them, unfolding them in time.
p.92 This logic which, like all practical logics, can only be grasped in action... sets the analyst a difficult problem, which can only be solved by recourse to a theory of theoretical logic and practical logic.
p.92-93 Probably the only way to give an account of the practical coherence of practices and works is to construct generative models which reproduce in their own terms the logic from which that coherence is generated; and to devise diagrams which, through their synoptic power of synchronization and totalization, quietly and directly manifest the objective systematicity of practice and which, when they make adequate use of the properties of space (up/down, right/left), may even have the merit of speaking directly to the body schema
p.94 one has to move from... objects or actions to the principle of their production... it means reconstructing the socially constituted system of inseparably cognitive and evaluative structures that organizes perception of the world and action in the world in accordance with the objective structures of a given state of the social world. [JLJ - perception and action depend on the state we are in, perhaps on what is the most critical sustainability need at the moment - a patient's broken arm deserves our attention, unless the patient is not breathing, in which case it is momentarily ignored.]
p.94 If ritual practices and representations are practically coherent, this is because they arise from the combinatorial functioning of a small number of generative schemes that are linked by relations of practical substitutability... This systematicity remains loose and approximate because the schemes can receive the quasi-universal application they are given only in so far as they function in the practical state... outside the control of logic, and in relation to practical purposes which require of them and give them a necessity which is not that of logic.
p.95 magical or religious actions... being entirely dominated by the concern to ensure the success of production and reproduction, in a word, survival, they are oriented towards the most dramatically practical, vital and urgent ends... Their extraordinary ambiguity stems from the fact that... they apply a practical logic, produced without any conscious intention by a structured, structuring body and language which function as automatic generators of symbolic acts.
p.96 Rites [JLJ - perhaps we stretch to include, from page 94-95, ritual practices] take place because, and only because, they find their raison d'etre [JLJ - reason for being] in the conditions of existence and the dispositions of agents who cannot afford the luxury of logical speculation, mystical effusions or metaphysical Angst.
p.97 The Kabyle peasant does not react to 'objective conditions' but to these conditions as apprehended through the socially constituted schemes that organize his perception. To understand ritual practice... means more than simply reconstituting its internal logic. It also means restoring its practical necessity by relating it to the real conditions of its genesis, that is, the conditions in which both the functions it fulfils and the means it uses to achieve them are defined.
p.98 Levi-Strauss holds that science must break with native experience and the native theory of that experience and postulate that 'the primary, fundamental phenomenon is exchange itself, which gets split up into discrete operations in social life' (Levi-Strauss 1987: 47)
[JLJ - perhaps life itself critically hinges on an ability to produce something socially of value, and to barter for things needed from that store of produced goods. Exchange, and perception of (including creating) value for trading, would then become critical survival skills, and perhaps need to become automated, much as one pulls a hand away in reflex from a hot stove. In a social game, we exchange squares, cards, positions of opportunity, fields of influence, tokens, pieces, and the like, aiming as a goal to give our opponent nothing good on his play, and to make the most of our position in the face of uncertainty, by exploring the opportunities for each side, probing for weakness, patching weakness of our own, and looking for opportunities to coerce. The 'game' is to make something out of a position, designed by your opponent, to give you no clear opportunity]
p.99 The simple possibility that things might be otherwise than as laid down by the 'mechanical laws' of the 'cycle of reciprocity' is sufficient to change the whole experience of practice and, by the same token, its logic... The uncertainty which has an objective basis in the probabilistic logic of social laws is sufficient to modify not only the experience of practice, but practice itself
p.102 learned ignorance (docta ignorantia), that is, a mode of practical knowledge that does not contain knowledge of its own principles.
p.104 Everything combines to show that correct use of the model... requires one... to develop the theory of the logic of practice as practical participation in a game... To be persuaded of the need to use this theory of practice... one has to return to the canonical example of gift exchange
p.106 Everything takes place as if the agent's strategies, and especially those that play on the tempo of action, or, in interaction, with the interval between actions, were organized with a view to disguising from themselves and from others the truth of their practice, which the anthropologist brutally reveals simply by substituting the interchangeable moments of a reversible sequence for practices performed in time and in their own time.
p.118 Symbolic capital... is perhaps the only possible form of accumulation when economic capital is not recognized.
p.128 The harder it is to exercise direct domination... the more likely it is that gentle, disguised forms of domination will be seen as the only possible way of exercising domination and exploitation.
p.130 But the particularly important role played by the habitus and its strategies in setting up and perpetuating durable relations of domination is once again an effect of the structure of the field... strategies oriented towards the accumulation of symbolic capital, which are found in all social formations, are here the most rational ones, since they are the most effective strategies within the constraints of this universe.
p.130 'In Hobbes' view', writes Durkheim (1960: 136), 'the social order is generated by an act of will and sustained by an act of will that must be constantly renewed.'
p.133 symbolic violence is the gentle, disguised form which violence takes when overt violence is impossible.
p.141 Each state of the social world is thus no more than a temporary equilibrium, a moment in the dynamics through which the adjustment between distributions and incorporated or institutionalized classifications is constantly broken and restored. The struggle which is the very principle of the distributions is inexorably a struggle to appropriate rare goods and a struggle to impose the legitimate way of perceiving the power relations manifested by the distributions, a representative of which, through its own efficacy, can help to perpetuate or subvert these power relations.
p.145 the more the conditions of production of dispositions resemble the conditions in which they function to produce ordinary practices, the more socially successful, and therefore unconscious, these practices will be. The objective adjustment between dispositions and structures ensures a conformity to objective demands and urgencies which has nothing to do with rules and conscious compliance with rules, and gives an appearance of finality which in no way implies conscious positioning of the ends objectively obtained.
p.295 There are acts that a habitus will never produce if it does not encounter a situation in which it can actualize its potentialities. [JLJ - for example, we may never castle our king, if our opponent never manages to develop his pieces and remotely threaten the monarch]
p.315 Boys' games are competitive and modelled on combat, girls' games are a 'make-believe' imitation of their adult tasks
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