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Hybridity, belonging, and mobilities: the intercontinental peripatetics of a transnational community
Author(s) -
Walker Iain
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
population, space and place
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.398
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1544-8452
pISSN - 1544-8444
DOI - 10.1002/psp.609
Subject(s) - habitus , mobilities , doxa , sociology , constitution , hybridity , gender studies , epistemology , social science , cultural capital , anthropology , political science , law , philosophy
Historical movements through the western Indian Ocean and beyond have led to the constitution of groups of spatially mobile individuals who claim belonging in a number of places on their itineraries. This paper looks at the movements of some of these people and suggests how their cultural and social strategies allow them to belong in these different places. However, their social points of reference (anchored in what Bourdieu calls doxa ) and the dispositions that they carry with them (habitus) are often at variance with those of the groups with whom they interact. I suggest that the concept of partial belonging is useful in understanding these people and that this concept may be developed through rethinking habitus and may equally be extended to other, less mobile social groups. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.