The politics of habitus as a sociologically founded utopia

The politics of habitus is usually associated with Bourdieu’s “sociologically political” studies, mainly developed in the 1970s as a framework through which this French sociologist analyzed political opinions of French citizens, by underlining social conditions that generate certain political dispositions, and consequently attitudes towards politics, political preferences, and political practices. These studies made us aware that political action should be mindful not only of institutions, but of dispositions as well. This paper aims to portray ifferent aspects of the politics of habitus, by linking it to research which originally generated the concept, but also by tracing its further development exemplified by some of the following oncepts: the necessity of niversalizing economic and social conditions of the access to the niversal, the idea about the sociologically founded utopia, the demand for the establishment of a “real state” – all to be found in later Bourdieu’s work. This paper analyzes politics of habitus from the social emancipatory perspective and raises questions about the role science can and should have in realising such a project. First part of the paper examines Bourdieu’s class analysis and its potentials in providing realistic knowledge about the social world, and the second part explores concrete steps that politics based on such knowledge could take