Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/923652

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Title
Reflexivity: freedom or habit of gender?
Author/Creator
Adkins, Lisa
Institution
The Unviersity of Newcastle. Faculty of Education & Arts, School of Humanities and Social Science
Description
The increasing significance of Bourdieu’s social theory in the social sciences and humanities has been noted by a number of writers. In this chapter I am concerned to map this influence in recent accounts of gender in late modern societies. More specifically, I aim to map this influence on a specific thesis which is common (either implicitly or explicitly) to a number of contemporary feminist analyses of gender transformations. This thesis draws on Bourdieu’s arguments about social transformation and especially his arguments regarding the constitution of a critical reflexive stance towards formerly normalized – or at least, taken-for-granted – social conditions. More particularly, this thesis draws on the Bourdieusian argument that such reflexivity is constituted in circumstances where there is lack of ‘fit’ between the habitus (the feel for the game) and field (the game itself), that is, when synchronicity between subjective and objective structures is broken. More particularly still, this thesis involves the argument that in late modernity there is a lack of fit between habitus and field in certain public spheres of action via an increasing transposition or movement of the feminine habitus from private to public spheres. For those deploying this thesis two further stages of argument usually flow from this proposition. The first is that this transposition constitutes a heightened critical awareness vis-à-vis gender and the second is that this transposition is linked to specific forms of gender detraditionalization. In short, this thesis concerns a three-fold argument in regard to gender which links feminization, critical reflexivity and detraditionalization.
Relation
Feminism After Bourdieu p. 191-210
Relation
Sociological Review Monographs
Relation
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/more_reviews.asp?ref=9781405123952&site=1
Date
2004
Publisher
Blackwell Publishing
Keyword(s)
reflexivity;  feminism;  gender studies;  Pierre Bourdieu
Resource Type
book chapter
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/923652
Identifier
ISBN:9781405123952
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"Reflexivity: freedom or habit of gender?"
 
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