Habitus and Cognitive Praxis among Environmentalists

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Habitus and Cognitive Praxis among
Environmentalists

• Randolph Haluza-DeLay
• Paper Two of dissertation Developing a
  Compassionate Sense of Place
• July, 2006

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Purpose

• Research/theory fit for everyday, lived,
  environmentally-sensitive practice.
• Sociological theory that can help produce
• ecologically sound modus vivendi/ sens
  pratique/logic of practice.
• Precursor, an ecological habitus.

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Concepts

• People do not think their lives, they live
  them.
• The FIELD
• ? ? The Logic(s) of
• PRACTICE
• HABITUS

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Concepts

• The theory of action logic of practice that
  I propose (with the notion of habitus) amounts to
  saying that most human actions have as a basis
  something quite different from intention, that
  is, acquired dispositions which make it so that
  an action can and should be interpreted as
  oriented toward one objective or another without
  anyone being able to claim that that objective
  was a conscious design
• (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 97-98)

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Concepts

• HABITUS
• a structure of embodied dispositions
• habitus generates practices and beliefs as it
  forms representations of the world, and way-to-be
  in the world
• The expression of the habitus is a feel for the
  game of acting in a particular social context.

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Concepts

• LOGIC OF PRACTICE
• NOT a thought out logic
• Makes sense (in its context)
• Sens pratique
• Routinized action (behaviour)

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Concepts

• LOGIC OF PRACTICE
• Habitus are generative principles of distinct
  and distinctive practices.... but habitus are
  also classificatory schemes.... They make
  distinctions between what is good and what is
  bad, between what is right and what is wrong...
  and so forth.
• (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 8).
• An envtally sensitive habitus can generate
  practices effective in a particular place,
  distinguishing between what is envtally
  sustainable or right.

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Concepts

• A way of living, rather than logically derived
  rules.
• The habitus is creative, a basis for generalized
  practice but not deterministic - since each
  circumstance will have enough variation to
  require some adjustment in actual action.
• How would an ecological habitus lead to
  environmental sustainability?

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Concepts

• The FIELD
• ? ? The Logic(s) of
• PRACTICE
• HABITUS

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WHY?

• EE research - knowledge and behaviour not well
  linked. (e.g., Kollmus Agyeman, 2002).
• Cognition only small part.
• Ironically
• There are several factors that influence our
  decisions towards proenvironmental behaviour that
  we have not elaborated on.... We have not
  discussed the influence of habits.
• If we want to establish a new behaviour, we have
  to practice it. We might be perfectly willing to
  change our behaviour but still not do so, because
  we do not persist enough in practicing the new
  behaviour until it has become a habit (p. 246).

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Methods

• Analytic Ethnography
• Assumption the social scene is not sufficient of
  itself What goes on is at least partly
  structured by extra-local relations of ruling.
• Neglect of sustained theorizing across cases.
• Theory-driven, NOT grounded Theory
• Theory Discovery (substantive, middle-range)
• Theory Extension (into new arenas)
• Theory Refinement (correct/ improve the theory)

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Specific Methods

• Site - Thunder Bay
• The North, far removed from the South.
• Specific issues
• Structure of local environmentalism
• There for 3 ½ yrs.
• Deliberate fieldwork from May -November of my
  last year.
• Culminated in formal interviews with 24
  environmentally active people.
• Researcher
• other ethnographic studies.
• Insider role - known to many
• Had done an important study of Race Relations.

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Findings Environmental Habitus

• Many ways of being an environmentalist
• Network analyses
• Characteristics of the Habitus across differences
• trying to live environmentally
• awareness of contradiction
• engaged in self-disposing
• reflexive
• Habitus needs a PLACE to act in
• Place is practical, performative.

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Discussion1

• Reflexivity leads to re-examination of
  cognitive praxis (Eyerman Jamison, 1991).
• There is a feel for how to live well
  (environmentally), but it has a highly cognitive
  element because of the experience of being
  marginal to the normal logic of the place
  which is less ecologically oriented.
• As Meisenhelder says habitus is naturalized (p.
  166), but the environmental habitus cannot be,
  because it is NOT natural to the field of an
  unecologial society.

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Discussion (diagram)

• Ecological habitus.?
• Social Field.?
• The relation between reflexivity, habitus, and
  cognitive praxis.
• This structure also unites indl identity with
  movement identity.

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Discussion2

• Place is important as location of Practice.
• The goal of environmentalism is to create an
  effective environmental logic of practice.
• Effective is effective on the ground, in
  practice, in afield or place.
• As the Field, it acts upon the habitus to shape
  acceptable socio-ecological practices.
• (Places are very complex sites of continual
  reconfiguration of position, meaning and
  contestation/representation.
• Thus, Place will be contested, as actors weight
  different values/meanings/practices/positions.
• Part of this contestation will be
  caring/justice/respect)

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CONCLUSIONS

• Habitus is pre-logical
• Alternative/marginal habitus has to have a
  thought-through (reflexive) aspect.
• Lifestyles in Context
• ENGOs as Communities of Practice
• Social theory to be RELATIONAL.