Given it informs practice from within (Wacquant, 2006), operationalising and documenting habitus is exceptionally challenging: how do we capture an agent\u2019s \u201cinfinite capacity for generating products; thoughts, perceptions, expressions and actions\u201d (Bourdieu, 1992, p53)?\u00a0 My research, however, attempts to do exactly this.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s conceptualisation of field, the data also suggests an agent\u2019s habitus is a unique response to the various classes of conditions he or she has experienced.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n