“Investigating the Web in the educational field: operationalising the power of habitus.” – Abstract for “The Art of Application: Bourdieu, Habitus and Social Research” ( June 2015, Palgrave)

Given it informs practice from within (Wacquant, 2006), operationalising and documenting habitus is exceptionally challenging: how do we capture an agent’s “infinite capacity for generating products; thoughts, perceptions, expressions and actions” (Bourdieu, 1992, p53)?  My research, however, attempts to do exactly this.

Existing research of young people online leaves its reader with the impression that young people, especially youth from low socio-economic backgrounds, are, at best, only digitally semi-literate and they believe and reproduce misinformation on the Web. This research relies on essentialist and individualistic accounts of how young people interact with Web. Operationalising habitus; sensitising Web usage to its wider contexts, can help redress the balance.

To this end, I investigated a predominately white working class, mixed gender group of sixth form college students from a town on England’s south coast who are studying vocational subjects and, at a top private school in London, I studied a group of multi-ethnic young men most of whom have secured places at Oxford or Cambridge University. I combined all methods at my disposal to at least get a multi-layered impression of habitus in action; then more specifically in relation to information on the Web. This included familiar qualitative methods: audio and video recorded interviews with the students individually and in groups. To differentiate my research however, I gave the students at each site research exercises to do on the Web while I recorded what happened simultaneously on and offline. The offline group interactions were recorded by camera while the online interactions were recorded with a proxy server. This means I set-up a computer to record, for analysis, every click and text entry every student made over the course of each session.

The power to generate habitus, however, or at least its traces and symptoms, lies in the topics I asked the students at both sites to research and discuss at each stage of the study. They debated, for instance: the validity of the scientific consensus on climate change; whether governments ever systematically lie to its citizens; who is to blame for the financial crisis; whether we live in a fair society; and whether immigrants make a net contribution to our culture. I then cross-referenced the data from these discussions; the speech patterns, body language and intra-group interactions, with all biographical data about the students I could assemble.

The results suggest habitus, particularly in relation to the Web, can be gendered and classed; common behaviours, sentiments, norms and dispositions emerged from each site. In harmony with Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of field, the data also suggests an agent’s habitus is a unique response to the various classes of conditions he or she has experienced.  Perhaps, however, the most interesting finding, that is primed for theoretical analysis, is the students I encountered challenged many conventional interpretations of habitus in that reflexive, critical thinking arrived from unexpected quarters. The effective operationalisation of habitus can therefore help validate its analytical potential.

Here’s tbe link to the book.