In my last post I discussed my thoughts on social space and made a comparison with high school. I had originally wanted to talk about three concepts from Pierre Bourdieu in my last blog but ended up rambling too much about high school and social space. So, in this blog I would like to continue where I left off which is with that picture I posted at the end of my last blog as a teaser.
To explain this photo I will first review the concept of habitus that I’m matching it to. In society there are social structures that influence an individuals actions, but sometimes an individuals actions can influence the social structures. Individuals have a slight amount of freewill in their actions which allows for variations. In order to make any kind of decision we need knowledge of past experiences and individual judgment based on the context of the situation, that is what habitus is. Habitus is the link between our position in social space and our actions based on our position and the context of the situation.
So now that I gave a brief summery of what habitus is I can draw the connections between it and my picture. When thinking about habitus I wanted to break down the concept into the simplest ideas possible. First I figured that habitus is partially comprised of your past experiences, so its not only what you know or what you have learned, but it is what you have to work with. You can’t place judgment on anything you know nothing about, you need some kind of experience to access. This is what got me thinking of the tool box. A tool box is a collection of tools that you know from past experience that are available at you disposal.
Habitus is not only your past experiences at your disposal but also your judgment. With a tool box you have the ability to combine your past experiences with your judgment of the situation and take appropriate actions. Different tools do different things and some may be better then others depending on the situation but in the end it is left up to your judgment. There may be multiple routes that end up at the same solution. Or, you can choose a different out come for the situation and do whatever you see fit. This is why the tool box represents habitus. It is a compilation of past experiences and your personal judgment based on the situation in order to take appropriate actions.
Now then, after talking about habitus I want to lead this blog into the next concept by Pierre Bourdieu. When explaining habitus I mentioned that there are social structures that influence an individuals actions, but that the individuals actions also influence the social structure. Well this is an example of a false dichotomy. A dichotomy is something with two opposed groups. Bourdieu believes that we shouldn’t only look at both opposing groups to a dichotomy but also see how much they work together, which makes them false dichotomies. Thinking about this concept I could have come up with plenty of ideas to relate this to but this one in particular stood out to me.
So what I got here is a picture of a weight and a video game console. Both of these represent activities done by players at commonly misrecognized opposite ends of social space. The video game console would be associated with someone who is not physically active. The weight being associated with someone who is the exact opposite as a physically active individual. Normally what would be assumed is that one who plays a lot of video games uses their free time for that, which involves sitting around for long periods of time, eating unhealthy, and enforcing lazy habits. The individual that uses the weight would want to eat healthier, be active, and enforce active habits. But Im going to argue that this is a false dichotomy, or a misrecognition. I’m not only arguing this stand point from an observationally perspective but a personal perspective. I believe that I actually would be a good example for this false dichotomy.
I have always been into video games, comics, and anything else that would be associated with a geeky lifestyle but at the same time Im also very enthusiastic about combat sports and exercising. I actually cosplayed at comic con this year as one of my favorite anime characters, and was confident in myself because I wasn’t your average overweight anime fan boy who never leaves his house. Actually there were a lot of people there at comic con who were in great shape and cosplaying like their favorite characters. Its kind of like these characters that you become so attached to help to motivate you to become more like them. After all super heros are suppose to be role models. So when someone would think that video games and comic would lead to a lazy, unhealthy lifestyle, it could in fact help motivate an individual to be more active. This is why I choose this picture to be an example for a false dichotomy.
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