Habitus

I've just started reading Hillier, J and Rooksby, E (eds) Habitus: A Sense of Place. Bourdieu's idea of "habitus" has always been problematic for me. I've seen it in various texts, not well explained, and I've tended to consign him to a small but distinguished pile of French social scientists who I have to refer to but can't understand. I think a lot of other people are like that too because I see it referred to in ways that don't make a great deal of sense. I started reading this book because I'm doing a fair bit of work on space and place at the moment and it looked interesting.

And it makes sense. I can see what it's about now and I can also see that it will be a very useful concept for both lines of research that I'm following up at the moment.

I have to say however that my first thought on realising this was a mild expletive. That's another whole swathe of books I'm going to have to read and get familiar with. Ho hum.