i

fal

The a =

‘Plur |
Actor |
pdr Lahire |
THE PLU R A L A CTO R
 To my son Nathan
I slept constantly during these two days of the journey to Sicily* where
I had not returned since the death of my mother. Someone seemed to
have called me. I did not properly understand who* but I was happy to
leave my house in Rome.
As soon as I entered the house* I felt that I was not alone. Something
was going on in the shadows* in the corners of the rooms; shadows that
looked at me so insistently that in the end* naturally* I turned round:
‘But of course* Mama* it’s you who called me.1
‘It is me* Luigi.1
‘And that5s your music. I recognize it. I remember when you sung it
to us.1
‘I called you to tell you everything that I wasn’t able to explain to
you* because you were so far away* before I leave this life.1
“ ‘ Be strong” * that’s what you want to say today* Mama.1
‘You’re laughing at me .. . Don’t cry* Luigi.1
‘I’m crying because you can’t think of me any more. When you were
sitting there* in that corner* I often said to myself: “If she is thinking of
me so far away* it means that I’m alive for her.” That was my support
in life* my comfort. Now that you’re dead and don’t think of me any
more* I am no longer alive for you. I never shall be again.’
‘I get tired quickly* my son* trying to follow all your talk. All this has
become too hard for me. And yet I feel that I can still tell you something:
learn to see things with the eyes of those who don’t see any more* and
although you’ll feel pain* no doubt* this pain will make those things
more sacred and beautiful for you. Perhaps it’s only to tell you this that
I’ve made you come here to me.’
‘I know now what your eyes are looking at* Mama. The sail of that
fishing-boat* isn’t it? You told us a hundred times about that famous
journey* and a hundred times I wanted to write about it.’
(extract from Kaos, a film by Paolo and Vittorio Taviana*
after A Year's News by Luigi Pirandello)
 THE PLURAL ACTOR

BERNARD LAHIRE

Translated by David Fernbach

polity
First published in French as L’bomme pluriel © Armand Colin, 2001

This English edition © Polity Press, 2011

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 CONTENTS

Preface to the English edition viii

Acknowledgements xx

Prologue 1

Act I Outline of a Theory of the Plural Actor

Scene 1 The Plural Actor 11

On Singleness 11
The single self: a commonplace illusion, but socially well
founded 15
The socio-historical conditions of singleness and plurality 18
The plurality of social contexts and repertoires of habits 26
The Proustian model of the plural actor 32
Splitting of the self and mental conflict: crossings of social space 36

Scene 2 The Wellsprings of Action 42

Presence of the past, present of action 42
The many occasions for maladjustment and crisis 45
The plurality of the actor and the openings of the present 47
Conditional dispositions 50
The negative power of the context: inhibition and latency 56
'Code switching* and 'code mixing* within the same context 60
Actors uncertainly swinging 62

Scene 3 Analogy and Transfer 66

Practical analogy and the triggers of action and memory 66
Involuntary action and memory 69
v
 C O N T EN T S

The role of habits 72

From analytic transfer to the interview relationship 74
A relative transferability 77
From general to partial schemes 82
From generalized transfer to limited and conditional transfer 86

Scene 4 Literary Experience: Reading, Daydreams and

Parapraxes 89

Act II Reflexivities and Logics of Action

Scene 1 School, Action and Language 101

The scholastic break with practical sense 101
Saussure, or the pure theory of scholastic practices on language 108
The social conditions of departure from practical sense 110

Scene 2 The Everyday Practices of Writing in Action 115

Embodied memory, objectified memory 117
Everyday breaks with practical sense 120
'Doing it like that’ 123
Memory for the unusual 124
The longer term and preparing the future 126
Managing complex practices 128
The official, the formal and tense situations 129
The presence of the absent 132
Temporary disturbances of practical sense 134
The use of plans: lists of all kinds 136
The relative pertinence of practical sense 139

Scene 3 The Plural Logics of Action 143

The ambiguity of a singular practice 143
The sporting model of practical sense and its limitations 147
Intentional ity and the levels of context 154
Plurality of times and logics of action 156

Act III Forms of Embodiment

Scene 1 The Place of Language 163

The world of silence 163
The punctuation of action and its theorization 169
Language and the forms of social life 172
The mysterious inside 173

vi
 C O N T EN T S

Scene 2 What Exactly is Embodied? 175

Processes of embodiment-internalization 175
The polymorphic embodiment of written culture in the world
of the family 183
Negative identifications and the force of implicit injunctions 189

Act IV Workshops and Oebates

Scene 1 Psychological Sociology 195

An exit from sociology? 197
The objectivity of the 'subjective’ 201
The singular folds of the social 203
Multi-determinism and the sense of freedom 206
New methodological requirements 207

Scene 2 Pertinent Fields 211

On excessive generalization 211
The varying scale of context in the social sciences 213
Experimental variation and loss of illusions 214
The historicizing of universal theories and fields of pertinence 217

Notes 223
References 253
Index 264

v ii
 PREFACE

When 1 came to write this preface to the translation of a book pub­

lished more than ten years ago, 1 still remembered very clearly how
it had originally been conceived as a theoretical parenthesis and
clarification in the wake of several years of empirical research. This
research focused variously on social inequalities in relation to the
written culture of the school, popular practices of writing (modes
of appropriation of texts, and domestic and occupational practices
of writing), cases of unlikely educational success in a working-class
milieu, intergenerational cultural transmission, and students’ rela­
tionship to study, knowledge and culture as a function of the type of
higher education pursued. But this parenthesis, with the objective of
settling a certain number of theoretical questions that forced them­
selves on me in the course of these successive projects, turned out
to be a springboard that rapidly led well beyond what 1 had initially
imagined.
In this book 1 take issue with a series of sociological currents
and authors (including myself), but chiefly with major theoretical
questions or problems either formulated or reformulated by Pierre
Bourdieu. When 1 began to write it, Bourdieu was an author both
much acclaimed by the scholarly community and particularly mis­
treated by it at the scientific level. It seemed to me, however, that the
shabby way in which his work was treated arose as much from servile
disciples who were happy (and unfortunately are still happy) to apply
untiringly a model whose universal pertinence was beyond doubt in
their eyes, as from opponents or even enemies who were in too great
a hurry to cast him into outer darkness or relegate him to the past of
a so-called classical sociology.
In order to keep scientific thinking alive, it is necessary regularly
v iii
 PREFA CE

to accept submitting to discussion, rather than enclosing oneself in

the endless repetition of pre-established concepts and arguments.
The question here, which had already been raised before Bourdieu’s
death, is that of the mode of appropriation of the legacy that he left
us. There are two main ways of taking up this legacy. The first con­
sists, at best, of applying his theories indefinitely to new terrains and,
at worst, of resting content with using his vocabulary and grammar,
giving (oneself) the impression of thinking when all that has been done
is to set in motion the machine for producing texts ‘in the Bourdieu
style’. A number of sociological works then resembled a kind of invol­
untary pastiche, and still do today. The second way of taking up the
legacy presupposes making the effort, and taking the intellectual risk,
of continuing to imagine and create beyond what Bourdieu himself
thought and formulated, rediscovering in this way the attitude that
he was himself able to adopt when he invented, either with or against
other authors, a new way of doing sociology and conceiving the social
world. It is an attribute of any major body of work that it gives rise
to this kind of opposition between repetition/commemoration and
reinvention, between veneration and creative criticism. And those
researchers most faithful to Pierre Bourdieu’s work are not, in my
mind, where people are generally in the habit of seeing them.
What I discuss here first and foremost is the theory of habitus, and
in the most detailed manner possible (certain very precise concep­
tual points), mobilizing for this purpose results of empirical work
that make it possible to qualify or challenge certain formulations or
propositions.1 The theory of habitus is a theory of socialization (and
of its products as crystallized in the form of an embodied ‘system of
dispositions’), a theory of action (the question of the relative weight
attributed to the embodied past and to the present of a context of
action, or the question of the transferability of schemas or disposi­
tions that constitute the habitus) and a theory of practice (emphasiz­
ing the non-reflexive or pre-reflexive character of actors envisaged as
individuals caught up in the urgency of practice, who are most com­
monly adjusted to the situations that they are led to live). This whole
series of points is the object of discussion and clarification here, and,
in a certain number of cases, of questioning.
On reflexivity, for example, it clearly appears that, in his opposi­
tion to intentionalist theories of action (strategic analyses, theories
of rational action, philosophies of action in terms of projects, etc.),
Bourdieu neglected all those everyday situations in which actors are
led to adopt an external point of view on their practices, to plan
some of their activities, to elaborate projects and even to ‘calculate’
IX
 PR E FA C E

certain decisions. Taking seriously the sporting metaphors that he

used, following Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to speak of the sense of a
game (the positioning of a football player, the feints of a boxer, the
practical anticipation of a tennis player, etc.), we may think of all the
situations of training, outside the actual time of performance, when
the coach comments on gestures or actions, either directly or subse­
quently (thanks to video recording), in order to bring to awareness a
certain number of mistakes or imperfections to be corrected. Social
actors are not constantly comparable with sports players caught up in
the urgency of the match and improvising on the field as a function of
their embodied dispositions. They also go over what they have done
and imagine, project or plan what they are going to do. They make
use, as the case may be, of writing, reading, discussion with others, or
the objectification of their actions that video resources make possible.
Moreover, the adjustment of 'embodied structures’ to 'objective
structures’ that is presupposed and very widely used to support the
idea of a pre-reflexive actor (in the sense that the actor lives in the
self-evidence of things to do and not do) does not long resist analysis
of the multiple and diversified realities of maladjustment and crisis
(minor or major) that put in question the 'ontological complicity*
between the embodied (dispositions) and the objectified (situations,
the institution, the field, etc.). 'Out of place’ and 'maladjusted*
individuals are more numerous than the theory of habitus assumes:
migration, social and occupational mobility, the many situations in
which individuals are transplanted in one way or another (hospital,
boarding school, prison, concentration camp, etc.), cultural shocks -
whether of civilizations, as in the case of great colonial enterprises,
or internal to a given society, for example when compulsory educa­
tion leads children to be faced with forms of cultural apprenticeship,
knowledge and social relations that are quite foreign to their original
milieu - are all occasions where a lack of fit forces actors to modify or
radically change their habits.
But it is on the question of dispositions and the weight that is
attributed to them in relation to that of the context of action, their
strength or durability, their transferability and their homogeneity,
that the problems raised by the theory of habitus are concentrated.
If we wanted to caricature the two major pitfalls that any researcher
should seek to avoid on the question of the theory of action and the
actor, we could say that there are on the one hand models that ascribe
a crushing weight to the actor’s past, and more particularly to the very
earliest experiences lived in the course of infancy (most often assumed
to be homogeneous), and on the other hand models that describe and
 PREFA CE

analyse moments of an action or an interaction, or a given state of a

system of action, without ever concerning themselves with this past.
In the first case, it is only past experiences that are reconstructed
in order to understand present actions, which are seen in some sense
as no more than successive actualizations of an active past. In the
second, actors are constrained exclusively by the logic of the present
situation (context of interaction, system of action, organization,
market or field).2 In the first type of model of action, study of the
singular characteristics of the different contexts of action is neglected,
and in the second there is an elision, whether deliberate or not, of
everything in the present action that depends on the embodied past
of the actors (dispositions, mental and behavioural inclinations or
habits).3
The scientific programme I offer in The Plural Actor is that of a
sociology that is indissociably both dispositional and contextual. It
consists in taking into account the embodied past, the earlier socializ­
ing experience of the actors studied (experiences that are crystallized
in the form of more or less strong and constant dispositions - dispo­
sitions to believe, feel, think and act in a certain fashion), while not
neglecting or cancelling the role of the present (the different present
contexts of action). The issue here is to make evident the weight of
embodied social dispositions while not claiming that we are at every
moment - or engaged at every moment, in every one of our acts - in
a kind of synthesis of everything that we have previously experienced,
and that each new context (whether in the field of practices or the
context of interaction) is simply a terrain of expression or actualiza­
tion of this embodied past that can be synthesized in the form of a
matrix or formula.
I still believe today that it is quite illusory to think that the sociolo­
gist can be in a position to reconstruct a synthesis of this kind (a uni­
fying principle or generating formula of all our practices, as Bourdieu
again put it) that can account for either the practices of groups or
those of singular individuals. Behaviours and practices can only be
understood as the intersection of embodied dispositions - which we
can never assume in advance to be firm, lasting, transferable, homo­
geneous and mutually coherent - and contextual constraints that do
not so much solicit this or that part of a legacy of dispositions, more
or less so as the case may be, as rather and more globally a system of
dispositions. Habitus, as it is defined by Pierre Bourdieu, definitively
appears as a particular case of the possible. It corresponds to a type
of individual inheritance of very coherent dispositions. An inheritance
of this kind can only arise in extremely homogeneous conditions of
xi
 PREFA CE

primary and secondary socialization. But the socio-historical condi­

tions for this are only rather rarely met with in highly differentiated
societies.4 The title of this book, The Plural Actor, should not lead to
confusion: 1 would never maintain - and have never said - that the
individual actor is necessarily and universally plural. The right ques­
tion to raise here is: What are the social and historical conditions of
production of an individual actor who is dispositionally plural?5
It is because the dispositions that make up each individual legacy
of dispositions are not necessarily coherent or homogeneous among
themselves, moreover, that each new situation experienced by the
actor plays an important role as a filter, selector or trigger and is the
occasion for an application or suspension, a flourishing or an inhibi­
tion, of this or that par t of the embodied dispositions. Rather than an
actor applying invariably and across every context the same system
of dispositions (or habitus), what we more commonly see is a more
complex mechanism of suspension/application or inhibition/activa-
tion of dispositions: a mechanism that evidently presupposes that
each singular individual can be the bearer of a plurality of disposi­
tions and straddle a plurality of social contexts. What determines the
activation of a particular disposition (or series of dispositions) in this
context is then the product of the interaction between the internal
and the external balance of forces: the balance of forces between dis­
positions that are more or less firmly established in the course of past
socialization (internal) and that between the elements of the context
(objective characteristics of the situation, which can be associated
with different individuals) that weigh more or less heavily on the
actor (external).
The Plural Actor was thus an opportunity for me to emphasize
the lack of sociological work studying the same individuals across a
plurality of stages, the haste of researchers to deduce, on the basis of
analyses of particular practices (family, educational, occupational,
cultural, political, etc.), general dispositions, attitudes or relation-
ships to the world assumed to be transferable from one context to
another (domain or sub-domain of practices, type of interaction, etc.)
and the need for new methodological requirements in order to grasp
the social variation of individual behaviour according to the context
of action. The research that I subsequently sought to conduct thus
substituted for 'empirical laziness* and the 'demon of abusive gener­
alization", which 1 pinpointed here, a high degree of empirical experi­
ence and a concern for the contextualization and the comparison of
behaviours.
1 began to speak of a 'psychological sociology*,6 then of sociology

x ii
 P R E FA C E

on the individual scale’,7 in order to denote the kind of work that

it is indispensable to conduct if the aim is to make the fisocial in the
embodied state’, or the 'individualized social’, something more than
a mere rhetorical evocation, designed simply as a reminder that the
social exists as much within actors as outside them. An individual
- a constructed object rather than a complex empirical reality that
is unattainable as such - can be defined as a social reality character­
ized by a possible8 dispositional complexity, a complexity that is
manifested or observed only in the diversity of domains of practice
or stages of action within which the practices of this individual
are inscribed. The possibility of such a sociology on the individual
scale thus begins when one has available, for the same individual, at
least two behaviours to compare in different contexts. In a techni­
cal vocabulary, but one that has the advantage of precision, we can
say that, after being interested in variations in behaviour between
societies or epochs, then, in intergroup or interclass variations within
a society, sociology is now in a position to constitute as sociologi-
cal object the inter-individual variations of behaviour (asking, for
example, how children belonging to the same family can have sig­
nificantly different educational and professional destinies) and, better
still, intra-individual variations in behaviour.9
The idea of grasping certain individual complexities (i.e. the fact
that an individual is the bearer of heterogeneous dispositions, and not
completely 'the same’ in different contexts of social life) has nothing
in common with the illusory search for the complex totality of a
singular person. But the researcher is not obliged, under the pretext
that it is impossible to understand exhaustively what is most singular
about each individual, to opt conversely for a caricature of individual
styles, profiles or habitus. The legitimate reduction of the complexity
of individual dispositional legacies that certain scholarly work effects
by privileging intergroup comparison (including when this exempli­
fies groups by resorting to the study of individual cases reduced to
ideal-type figures) should not prevent the researcher from working on
this complexity.
This is without even taking into account, or assessing the con­
sequences of, the fact that sociology has become steadily more
interested both in socialized individuals as such (in case studies or
work that presents, among other types of 'data’, individual portraits,
methodologically supported by life story or in-depth interview) and
in groups, categories, structures, institutions or situations (whatever
their scope and type). By speaking indifferently of the 'habitus’ of
groups or classes along with the 'habitus’ of singular individuals

x iii
 PREFA CE

(Martin Heidegger or Gustave Flaubert), Bourdieu did not take into

account that the change of scale in observation and analysis10 modi­
fies the degree of precision of the conceptual tool that he used. The
somewhat caricaturized ('ideal-typical’) illustration of 'class habitus’
(a notion that, moreover, loses its specificity and turns out to be very
close to the more everyday one of 'culture’) is comprehensible and sci­
entifically legitimate. But when you want to understand how embod­
ied dispositions actually operate, the way in which they are formed,
the way in which they are transferred or not, are actualized, sus­
pended or transformed as a function of the specific context of action,
you come across a series of limits and problems that necessarily lead
to reformulating the initial definitions.
The metaphor of 'the social in a folded or unfolded state’, which
I have used frequently on previous occasions, can prove useful in
this argument. When sociologists study Protestantism, for example,
describing its pertinent properties or features or analysing the opera­
tion of its institutions and attitude, its ethos or the values attaching
to it, they speak of a phenomenon that, despite being quite tightly
defined historically and geographically, involves thousands or even
millions of individuals in history, whether ordinary Protestant
ascetics or famous theologians, all committed to a greater or lesser
extent, and more or less strongly defined by their denominational
membership. The result is that to speak of 'Protestantism’ means
making a tremendous abstraction in relation to these thousands or
millions of ways of living Protestanism (and making it live). The
necessarily ideal-typical description of Protestant culture is a dis-
individualized, de-singularized, de-particularized description, but
one that is inevitably based on the traces of multiple activities and
actions, representations that are individual, particular, singular.
And the same argument can be made in relation to the educational
system, the state, an economic mode of production, etc. - in other
words, all those macro-social objects to which the social sciences
have accustomed us, implying a multitude of individual actors and
yet not capable of being summed up in any individual action or
life. By way of historical, statistical or ethnographic reconstruction,
anthropologists, historians and sociologists thus regularly carry out
abstract totalizations that transcend each individual case and cannot
be enclosed in any particular case.
Statistical procedures that produce equivalence for the needs of
coding, such as the typifying operations of a more qualitative soci­
ology, dis-individualize social facts and deliver an unfolded version
of the social (one that conflates individual singularities). The classic

x iv
 PR E FA C E

procedure gives access to this or that social fact by de-singularizing

it - i.e. detaching it from singular individuals and disembarrassing
it of aspects that are then viewed as secondary. As a result the indi­
vidual appears far too concrete and complex to be capable of study.
Sociologists have been right historically to campaign in favour of
this abstraction, a necessary one in order to grasp certain social and
historical regularities and invariances. And yet, if we accept that the
social world does not present itself externally to individuals, or live
internally within them, in an unfolded and abstract fashion, that
rather it exists in a folded or creased state - i.e. in the form of nuanced
and concrete combinations of contextual and dispositional properties
- we can then try, in apprehending social facts, to take account of this
situation as far as is possible.
Each individual is in some form the ‘depository* of dispositions to
think, fee) and act that are the product of his or her multiple social­
izing experiences, more or less lasting and intense, in various col­
lectives (from the smallest to the largest). In this folded version of
reality that 1 am seeking to develop, individuals are not reducible to
their Protestantism, their class membership, their level of culture or
their gender. They are defined by the entire series of their experiences,
past and present. Whether synthesized or struggling within them, in
combination or contradiction, whether harmoniously articulated,
coexisting more or less peacefully or confronting one another, there
are elements and dimensions of their culture (in the broad sense of
the term) that are generally studied separately by researchers in the
social sciences. If an individual has attended school, sociologists or
historians of education will speak of the educational practices he or
she has experienced, the skills that teachers have attempted to incul­
cate in them, the methods applied to this end, etc. With a Protestant,
researchers will doubtless analyse the Protestant ethic as it was in
this time and milieu; with an artisan, sociologists, ethnologists and
historians of labour will also establish much in the way of knowledge
of the moral and professional world, the values and modes of life of
artisanal existence, and so on. But the social world is made up in such
a way that it does not follow these scientific and institutional dissec­
tions: it is in fact the same individual who is at the same time a man,
educated, artisan, Protestant, etc After the social has been unfolded,
it may sometimes be useful to refold it again. This folded version of
the social world cannot be substituted for the unfolded one, but it
should eventually make it possible to render this more complex.
The dispositional and contextualist programme of a sociology on
the individual scale, such as the present book seeks to sketch out, has
xv
 P R E FA C E

given rise to misunderstandings that it may be useful to note and try

to dispel, by way of concluding this preface.
First of all, in the logic of academic classifications, my procedure
has often been situated on the side of 'qualitative* and 'micro-socio­
logical* approaches, even ranked among studies of 'atypical cases*. I
can understand such a reading, bound up with the recognition that
my work on cases of unlikely educational success gained, based as this
was on the very thorough examination of a limited series of family
configurations.11 The same feeling may have been subsequently rein­
forced by the experimental work I conducted on eight socially dif­
ferentiated individuals on six occasions and, at length, on some very
different themes - school, family, work, friends, leisure and cultural
activities, sport, food, health, dress - in order to straddle domains of
activity and dimensions of existence that were sufficiently diverse,
with the object of entering into intra-individual variations in detail
and questioning some apparently self-evident assertions concerning
mechanisms of transferability of dispositions.12
This initial research enabled me to develop a project of wider
scale13 on intra-individual variations in cultural practices and prefer­
ences. But analysis of individual cultural profiles shows that these
variations arise from the differentiated structuration of our societies.
In fact, the series of intra-individual variations in the cultural behav­
iour studied can be ascribed to heterogeneous and sometimes contra­
dictory socializing influences: the effect of a trajectory of upward or
downward social or occupational mobility, the effect of a diversified
network of cultural relations, the effect of a relative heterogamy in
cultural terms, the effect of the internalization of educational prefer­
ences that vary from those of the milieu of origin, the effect of com­
bined constraints experienced by young people in the school situation
(between peer group, school and family), the effect of contradictory
socializing influences on the part of competing cultural influences
(family, school, television, press, etc.), the effect of heterogeneous
cultural influences even within the family of origin, etc. Contrary to
what one might have initially believed - like the nineteenth-century
psychologists before the premises of differential psychology initiated
by Francis Galton - intra- and inter-individual variations in phenom­
ena are not 'error* or 'noise* that the sociologist should systematically
eliminate with a view to establishing general laws or general social
facts (transcendent in relation to individuals). They are, rather, bound
up with the macro-social structures of the societies within which
individuals develop.
The same programme of studying intra-individual variations and

xvi
 P R E FA C E

multiple socializations has also allowed me - by combining quantita­

tive data and individual portraits - to comprehend better the situation
of writers living in a market regime, often grasped exclusively in their
literary milieu, whereas, as distinct from manual workers, doctors,
researchers or employers, who spend their whole working time in a
single professional universe and draw the essential part of the income
from this work, the great majority of them are not reducible to their
membership of the literary world and so live a situation of double
life: compelled to combine literary activity and a ‘second trade’, and
alternating constantly between writing time and the time of extra-
literary remunerative activity* This kind of ‘double life’ situation,
pluri-secular and structural, has consequences for the rhythm and
nature of literary creation*14
We can thus see from these two examples how directing atten­
tion to the individual level of the social and to the question of intra­
individual variation in practices does not enclose the researcher in a
clinical study or the qualitative sociology of individual singularities,
but makes it possible to raise afresh the classic questions of sociology*
A further misunderstanding, partly bound up with the first one, is
far more problematic in so far as it has a political resonance* Certain
authors have ranked me with people who believe that social classes
no longer exist, who are no longer interested in them, or who, by their
choice of analysis, make all kinds of macro-social objects disappear
(institutions or milieus as well as groups or classes)* Yet one need only
see the importance of social classes in my successive works, including
the case studies that always situate the individual studied in social
space, to refute this kind of classification. Study of the social in the
folded state would make no sense if it could not base itself on study
of the social in the unfolded state* Leaving macroscopic analysis of
the gaps between social groups and classes to direct one’s interest to
intra-individual variations in socially situated individuals does not
mean questioning the existence of these gaps* No one would criticize
a researcher who studies molecules, microbes or atoms of denying the
existence of planets. Yet this is the kind of commentary that can be
read or heard in sociology* The objects of sociology are so hot politi­
cally that, when they start to work on questions of inter-individual
or intra-individual variations, researchers can be suspected of dis­
seminating the objects of their research and having a kind of implicit
‘political agenda’*15
More surprising still is the way in which The Plural Actor and
the studies that were particular realizations of its programme have
been ascribed to a ‘less deterministic’ view of an actor supposedly
XVII
 PR E FA C E

more free and conscious. What I emphasize is, on the contrary, the
fact that actors are multi-socialized and multi-determined^ and that
it is for this very reason that they are not in a position to 'feel* or
have a practical intuition of the weight of these determinisms. When
the actors are plural and the forces at work on them differ accord­
ing to the context in which they find themselves, they can only have
the sense of a freedom of behaviour. It could be said that we are too
multi-socialized and multi-determined to be able to be readily aware
of our determinisms. If people insist on calling the product of this
multi-determinism a 'sense of freedom*, what is wrong with that? But
this feeling has nothing in common with the sovereign and conscious
freedom that certain philosophies of action present to us.
We can basically see that the misunderstandings in the reception of
this book around the questions micro/macro, qualitative/quantitative,
individuals/social classes and determinism/freedom are all more or
less directly bound up with a questioning or disquiet as to the reasons
that impel sociologists to study the social on the individual scale. By
choosing this kind of perspective for the knowledge of reality, are
they not in the process of espousing the movement of individualiza­
tion that is under way in our social formations, of actively supporting
individualist ideologies, even neo-liberal ones?
Outside the specific dynamic of the sociological field, what makes
this kind of sociology, this kind of interest, run clearly in the direc­
tion of an advance in the scientific autonomy of the discipline16 is
that it responds, in my view, to the historical necessity of conceiving
the social in a strongly individualizing society. At a time when the
individual tends to be ever more commonly conceived or dreamed of
as an isolated, autonomous, responsible being endowed with reason,
opposed to 'society* and defending his or her 'authenticity* or 'singu­
larity* against it,17 sociology has the duty more than ever before of
bringing to light the social fabrication of individuals and proving that
the social is not reducible to the collective or the general, but dwells
in the most singular folds of each individual. It should seek to propose
a vision of man in society that is finer and more scientifically correct
than the caricatures made of it when the individual is represented on
the basis of cases that serve to exemplify or illustrate social groups,
historical eras or institutions.
The social world is within us as much as outside of us. As the
origin of our unhappiness as well as our happiness, individual and
collective, it is differentiated and complexified to the point of produc­
ing the sentiment that the intimate, the singular, the personal, is by
nature distinct from society (as two clearly different objects) and even

x v iii
 PR E FA C E

opposed to it. It is a paradox or ruse of the social world that it has

produced, in a particularly advanced state of differentiation, the very
widespread sensation of a subjective life that is non-social or extra-
social. This individualistic story is accepted on all sides. The individ­
ual, the internal forum or subjectivity as site of our ultimate freedom
is one of our great contemporary myths. People may prefer to share
these myths or to rid themselves of them. It seems to me that aban­
doning any illusion of an undetermined "subjectivity*, "inferiority* or
"singularity*, any illusion of free will or "personal* existence outside
of the social world, in order to show the forces and counter-forces,
both internal (dispositional) and external (contextual), to which we
are continuously subjected from our birth and which make us feel
what we feel, think what we think and do what we do, is a valuable
advance in knowledge.
Lyons, October 2009 - Rio de Janeiro, November 2009

x ix
 ACKNOW LEDGEM ENTS

The help of the Institut Universitaire de France was of prime impor­

tance in allowing me the time and resources needed to develop the
research and reflections on which this book is based.
1 want to thank in particular Aaron Victor Cicourel, professor
at the University of San Diego, and Troy Duster, director of the
Institute for the Study of Social Change and professor of sociology at
the University of Berkeley, for having made possible my productive
stay at Berkeley in February-March 1977. This enabled me to work
actively on preparing and writing this book.
The propositions, arguments and illustrations that you will read
here are to a certain extent the developments of those contained in
my article "Elements pour une theorie des formes socio-historiques
d’acteur et d’action’, published in the Revue europeenne des sci­
ences societies (vol. 34, no. 106,1996). 1 am sincerely grateful to this
journal and its editor, Giovanni Busino, for having enabled me to
publish this crucial step in my work.
Scientific argument is often enriched by the opportunity for verbal
presentation and the spontaneous reactions this arouses - still better,
by informal and impassioned dialogue. 1 would therefore like to
mention all those who gave me such opportunities to speak about
my work, whether still in progress or already complete, and among
them in particular Jean-Claude Passeron, Francois de Singly, Jean-
Michel Chapoulie and Jean-Pierre Briand, Anne-Marie Chartier and
Jean Hebrard, Benoit Falaize, Samuel Joshua, Marie Bonafe, Claire
Meljac, Maria Thereza Fraga Rocco and Beatriz Cardoso.

xx
 PROLOGUE

It is impossible to avail oneself of the scientific spirit if one is not in a

position* at every moment of thinking life* to reconstruct the whole of
one’s knowledge.
(Gaston Bachelard* The Formation o f the Scientific Mind)

The development of the theory of kinetic energy owed more to Leibniz’s

desire to prevail over Descartes than to the Cartesians’ respectful fidel­
ity to their master’s physics; and the acerbic footnotes of Granet and
Maspero were more significant for Sinology than the panegyrics of their
respective endorsers.
(Jean-Claude Passeron* Le Raisonnement socioiogique)

Against all appearance, this is not strictly speaking a theoretical

text. Or, rather, it is not going to champion a finished point of view,
anticipating the results of empirical research - which is what is
usually understood by theory. It will instead propose a framework of
reflection, draw new lines of research, and try never to universalize
the scientific findings on which it is based, whether they are narrow
or wide. In a particular sense of the term, therefore, it is not theoreti­
cal; it neither can be nor wants to be, and even defends the idea that
any interpretative framework must be modified as a function of the
objects studied.
A theory (a conceptual system, a paradigm, an interpretative or
explanatory model), in fact, very often presents itself as a somewhat
mysterious and original vision of the social world. The more original,
strange and one-sided it is, the harder it is to grasp its foundations and
the greater the seductive power or fascination it exercises. A theory is
then an approach that claims to cover the totality of the social world
and deal with any problem by drawing on the same resources, an

1
 PRO LO G U E

approach that ignores its own origins and denies its own limits. In
this perspective a theory is always total, never partial. At least this
is the way in which 'grand theories’ like to see themselves. One can
succumb to the charms of unconsciousness and mystery. Or one may
prefer lucidity, clarity and scientific pragmatism.
Rational actor theories {or rational choice theories), theories of
habitus, of the actor-as-strategist, of the actor in interaction, theories
of experience and lived worlds, etc., objectively conflict with one
another today, without any real clash or confrontation, in a scientific
space where the crossing of arguments and the results of comparative
empirical research might permit certain advances. And one could say
about sociology the same as Jean-Pierre Cometti has of philosophy:
The paradox is that philosophy has become one of those fields of
intellectual activity in which discussion tends to become nonexistent,
advantageously replaced as it is by diligent commentaries inspired by
the pre-existing convictions around which insular consensuses are
formed’ (Cometti, 1996, p. 21).
It is customary for theories of action and the actor to come into
conflict around a series of interpretative tensions: between theories
that privilege the actor’s singleness and homogeneity (his or her iden­
tity, his or her relationship to the world, his or her 'self’, his or her
system of dispositions . . .) and those that describe for us an endless
fragmentation of 'selves’, roles, experiences, etc.; a tension, again,
between theories that place the determining weight on the actor’s past
and those that virtually ignore this; and, finally, a tension between
theories of conscious action, of the actor as strategist, rational calcu­
lator, vector of intentionalities or voluntary decisions (theories that
sometimes believe they can deduce from these calculating, conscious,
rational capacities a fundamental freedom on the actor’s part) and
theories of unconscious, subconscious or non-conscious action that
present actions as pre-reflexive adjustments to practical situations.
Throughout the present work I shall use the word 'actor*, though
this is not particularly current in French sociology given its implicit
link with ideas of 'freedom’ and 'rationality’ that certain theories of
action end up imposing, but it has the advantage of going together
with the term 'action’. In current theories of the social, the vocabulary
ranges through the terms actor, agent, subject, individual, member,
author, social being, person, personality, etc. Territorial markers that
trigger conditioned theoretical reflexes, the words used to denote
'people in the forms of social life’, thus generally serve also as clas-
sificatory signals. By using them, their authors themselves choose to
{let themselves) be classified, to rehearse their clan identity, to denote

2
 PRO LO GUE

both the camp they belong to and their potential enemies, enclosing
themselves in advance, before having even asserted any proposition at
all on the social world, in the confined social spaces of schools, cur­
rents or theoretical traditions. Sticking to the word 'actor* does not
mean form e adopting a theatrical metaphor (actor, stage, role, cues,
backstage, scenario, script. . .), or proposing an umpteenth version of
the theory of the free (because!) rational actor, or romantic theories
of 'man as actor of his destiny*, but rather making use of a relatively
coherent network of terms: 'actor*, 'action*, 'act*, 'activity*, 'activate*,
'reactivate*, and so on. But how are we to avoid the automatic asso­
ciations of ideas attaching to the word 'actor*, except by explicitly
asking the reader to read this term here without its customary adver­
sarial connotations (e.g. anti-agent), which we in no way intend to
reactivate?
Any theoretical reflection is necessarily developed in a critical rela­
tionship to others; that is commonplace enough. And yet 'dispute*
is stigmatized in an academic world that more often generates a
facade of consensus along with assassination behind the scenes, the
hyper-euphemizing of public judgements and the extreme violence of
'strokes* or 'private* assertions, rather than an interest in or passion
for reasoned discussion and the frank criticism of theses (rather than
of the individuals that support them, which is not at all the same).
Criticism is respectable and should be rehabilitated.
In the present work, I shall not discuss with the same intensity and
systematicness the whole series of theories of action that exist in the
field of the social sciences, even if they are all present in my arguments
to one degree or another. I thus claim a freedom of choice in my dia­
logues. My own sociological procedure has been inspired principally
by the theory of practice and habitus developed by Pierre Bourdieu.
A dialogue with this theory, from my point of view, does not mean
discussing just one theory among others. Contrary to what a certain
form of interpretative democracy might suggest, not everything is
equivalent in the world of interpretation of the social sciences (Lahire,
1996b). I see Bourdieu as proposing one of the most stimulating and
complex theoretical orientations in the social sciences - one of those
that most successfully integrates theoretical and methodological sub­
tleties (succeeding in particular in making productive use of a number
of philosophical problems) into the great current of critical soci­
ologies (critiques of the forms of exercise of power, of inegalitarian
structures and of relationships of domination). In France, Bourdieu*s
sociology is either hated (even ignored) or worshipped. If we overlook
the former totally negative attitude, we may note that adoration is not
3
 PRO LO GU E

appropriate to scientific life. It is sometimes even necessary to impose

a certain social (relational) distance, to dare to raise certain ques­
tions, to authorize oneself to contradict, refute, complete or inflect
the thought of an author. The present work thus invites the reader to
think both with and against Bourdieu, most often in fact differently
from him. Since we are invited, as Foucault said of the thought of
Nietzsche, not to fear 'to use it, to deform it, to make it groan and
protest* (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. xiv), we shall not fear to
exercise a critical activity. The only thing that really matters, in the
end, is the result of the discussion.
If, moreover, we really want to take into account the fact that the
author of this book is himself split and divided, that the criticisms he
addresses to other authors are largely addressed to himself, and that
through these criticisms he is seeking to convince himself as much as
his readers; if, therefore, we really accept that this text is as much an
internal dialogue between different 'parts’ of the author as a dialogue
between him and the authors cited, then perhaps he will more readily be
granted the right to criticize.1 More generally, one can argue and criti­
cize better after internalizing the reasoning deployed by others, in its
full complexity and without caricature. The systematic internalization
of the most varied scientific 'points of view’ on the social world is the
best means towards developing one’s own 'point of view’ in due course.
The outline of a theory of the plural actor, and the reflections
proposed here on the different forms of reflexivity in action, on the
plurality of logics of action, on the forms of embodiment of the social
and the place of language in the study of action and of the processes
of internalization, have been developed in a constant concern not to
have only one type of action in mind and theorize this by an excessive
generalization, but, on the contrary, systematically to vary possible
cases, sometimes even up to borderline cases that are almost absurd
(reasoning ad absurdum being a good way of grasping the logic of
normal cases that generally escapes attention), by basing myself on
varied empirical research, both my own and that of many other
scholars in the social sciences. This attention to the diversity of reality
makes it possible, on the one hand, to avoid unconsciously theorizing
- i.e. unduly generalizing - a particular case of the real, as is done by
the majority of theories mentioned and, on the other hand, to divine
behind each of these theories the relatively limited examples, cases or
series of cases that these unknowingly describe or dissect. For a large
proportion of these, their conceptual tensions reproduce and fix in
the theoretical order real social differences: between types of action,
dimensions of action or types of actors.

4
 PRO LO GU E

The sum of these developments leads on to the programme of a

psychological sociology, which offers conditions for the sociological
study of the most singular folds of the social. ‘All sociology is psychol­
ogy, but a psychology sui g e n e r is as Durkheim maintained. In fact,
sociological theories of action, or at least the more complex of these,
have long since integrated models of cognitive, mental and bodily
functioning drawn from the psychological sciences (from experimen­
tal psychology through to psychoanalysis) without, however having
ever really controlled such borrowings, and especially without having
subjected them to the test of empirical investigation in so far as this
was not at the centre of the models of sociological explanation. If, as
a consequence, I mention various psychological works throughout
the present book (cognitive psychology, cultural psychology, psy­
choanalysis, etc.), this is not in order to import fraudulently illicit
(conceptual) products, but rather to put in question again what was
silently borrowed from these fields of research several decades ago,
especially from the studies of Piaget. The point is to open a number of
little boxes that were sealed in the 1970s and have not been opened
since.
It seems as if a part of sociology has been living with psychological
findings that are partly outdated today, and partly subject to doubt
today (how could it be otherwise?), as if these were embedded in its
theories of action and cognition. It is necessary therefore to return to
all the evidence that was left unquestioned, but was in fact no more
than summaries of scientific findings drawn from a section of the
psychological works of a particular era: notions of schemes, of their
transferability or transposability, of analogical transfer, of general
and systematic application of schemes, etc.
It is also surprising that, while philosophical debates around
explanation in terms of disposition are still lively, particularly in the
English-speaking countries, there is such a watertight barrier between
the worlds of philosophy and sociology that these debates are pre­
vented from having any effect in clarifying sociological practice. It is
not that sociologists need philosophers to dictate their theories, but
rather that philosophy - or at least a proportion of philosophical
reflections - can sometimes contribute usefully to illuminating the
concepts used by sociologists in their inquiries into the social world.
There is such a fear in France of the idea that sociology might fall
back into social philosophy (something that is clearly undesirable)
that a large number of sociologists live with a permanent theoretical
bad conscience. Any conceptual discussion is suspected of ‘intel-
lectualism*, ‘useless verbiage* or ‘bad philosophy*. Of course, the

5
 PRO LO GU E

same sociologists who make such an outcry about theoreticism (the

supreme academic insult in certain clans of the sociological tribe)
have no compunction about theorizing themselves; as we all know,
it is always someone else’s theory that is hollow and mere words . . .
A suspicion of uselessness, of luxurious waste of time, marked by
an absence of concrete investigation or troublesome work ‘in the
field’, weighs on those who reflect on their discipline, their knowledge
and their methods. Some people disqualify in advance any theoretical,
methodological or epistemological reflection as being futile, sterile,
pretentious or verbose. It is of course always those with a very par­
ticular interest in maintaining the scientific order as it stands, with a
theory, methodology and epistemology that is taken for granted and
‘goes without saying’, who have no interest in seeing the rise of new
arguments (which are bound to be pretentious, ill-minded or stupid),
especially when these open up conceptual boxes that were thought
to have been sealed for ever. Such disqualification, however, is that
much more difficult, or at least forced to reveal its motivation, when
those undertaking this reflection have not abandoned the path of
investigation, and are all the more happy to return to it once their
collective reflections have improved the quality of their empirical
work and broadened their sociological imagination as applied to the
construction of objects of study. Theoretical, methodological and
epistemological reflection, when it is a lesson drawn from research
work and an invitation to return anew to the task, is in no way an
unavoidable and rather terroristic preliminary to investigation that
might even prevent such investigation for fear of making a mistake.
It is, rather, its systematic disqualification that is a disguised form of
intellectual terrorism.
In order to elaborate the outlines of a theory of the plural actor, 1
have found support in sociology, anthropology, historiography, phi­
losophy and psychology (drawing particularly on the work of North
American scholars), as well as in the critical reflections of Marcel
Proust in Against Sainte-Beuve and in the de facto sociological analy­
ses that his fictional writing often displays. Even before Durkheim,
1 can claim the French sociological heritage of Maurice Halbwachs,
whose analyses of memory are sensitive to the multiple belonging
of individual actors, their successive or simultaneous socializations
in different groups, and the plurality of ‘points of view’ that they
can mobilize. The references or supports that 1 draw on are thus not
homogeneous, or even inscribed in a single field of knowledge, and
yet 1 fully inscribe my own approach in the space of sociological
knowledge. There will be no trace of interdisciplinarity or pluridisci-

6
 PRO LO GU E

plinarity in these apparent mixtures, which are always placed at the

service of the coherent construction of sociological reflection.
Even so, it might be thought odd that the contents page of a work
purporting to speak of 'action* should include reflections on literary
experiment (and daydreams), on educational practices and the every­
day practices of writing, or again developments around the processes
of embodiment. My wager is that reading the book as a whole will
remove the initial disquiet or surprise and lead the reader to conclude
that these diverse elements - apparently 'off the subject* - will finally
prove useful and even necessary in order to elaborate my theory of the
plural actor and the plurality of logics of action.
But the reader may legitimately wonder about the usefulness of a
sociological theory of action and the actor outside the scientific realm.
In point of fact, 1 see the various descriptions and analyses of action
as always having socio-political correlates, implicitly if not explicitly.
According to whether the wellsprings of action are understood in
this fashion or that, the ways of transforming the existing order of
things or of maintaining it intact, modifying or preserving behaviour
patterns, may be very different. Theories of action are therefore, at
bottom, always political theories: by answering the question 'What is
acting?’, they prepare the ground for reforms in ways of acting. If we
are in a position to grasp the processes that lead actors in a society
to act as they do, it then becomes possible to act on their actions and
change them.2 This is a fascinating perspective, but also a dangerous
one (the least democratic uses of sociological knowledge being always
possible), yet one that deserves to be opened up, if only to provide
the means for counteracting the effects of all tecbne of manipulation
(political, cultural, symbolic, educational), indissociable as they are
from contemporary modes of the exercise of power. To touch on the
programmes or matrices of socialization of actors is, as the author of
th eNicomachean Ethics already put it, leading them to act differently,
in a way that one can hope will be more virtuous and democratic:
By doing the things that we do in the presence of danger, and by being
habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly.
The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become
temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by
behaving in one way or another in the appropriate circumstances. Thus,
in one word, states of character arise out of activities. This is why the
activities we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of
character correspond to the differences between these. (Aristotle, 1998,
p. 29)

7
 Act I
Outline of a Theory of the Plural Actor

It follows that a theory of action should not be so abstract or specula­

tive as to distance us from understanding the concreteness of ‘real life’
and of ‘life in general’. Reading some theories of action, it is easy to get
lost in their abstractions and their densecommentaries directed towards
points made by other theorists; so that after reading these writings it
takes a leap of imagination to become immersed again in events, hap­
penings, understandings, and the problems, passions and struggles of
actual people, and their institutions and other collectivities.
(Anselm L. Strauss, Continual Permutations o f Action)
 Scene 1

THE PLURAL ACTOR

Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so

perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light;
for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems
impossible that they have come from the same shop.
(Montaigne* The Complete Essays, ‘Of the inconsistency
of our actions’)

On Singleness
Like the terrestrial globe, the ensemble made up of various theories
of the actor has two great poles: that of the singleness of the actor
and that of an internal fragmentation. On the one side, the quest is
for their vision of the world, their relationship to the world or The
generating formula of their practices*; on the other, the multiplicity of
embodied knowledge and skills, of lived experience, is accepted, like­
wise of "egos* or "roles* that are internalized by the actor (repertoire
of roles, stock of knowledge, reserve of available knowledge, etc.). In
both cases, however, the choice of singleness or fragmentation is made
a prion; it constitutes an undiscussed postulate and in some cases is
based more on ethical assumptions than on empirical observations.
The chief interest of the first position was well expressed by Pierre
Bourdieu, when he explained that The virtue, at once heuristic and
explanatory* of his theory of habitus Ts never seen better than in
the case of practices that are often studied separately* (Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 1992, p. 131).1 But this leads at the same time to insisting,
too exclusively no doubt, on the "systematic* and "unifying* aspect of
habitus:
11
 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF THE PLU R A L A C TO R

Taste* the propensity and capacity to appropriate (materially or sym­

bolically) a given class of classified* classifying objects or practices* is
the generative formula of life-style, a unitary set of distinctive prefer­
ences which express the same expressive intention in the specific logic
of each of the symbolic sub-spaces* furniture* clothing* language or
body hexis. Each dimension of life-style ‘symbolizes with’ the others*
in Leibniz’s phrase* and symbolizes them. An old cabinetmaker’s world
view* the way he manages his budget* his time or his body* his use of
language and choice of clothing are fully present in his ethic of scrupu­
lous* impeccable craftsmanship and in the aesthetic of work for work’s
sake which leads him to measure the beauty of his products by the care
and patience that have gone into them. (Bourdieu* 1984* pp. 173-4)

This kind of example, which sometimes condenses or combines

the set of properties that are statistically most attached to a social
group, is useful for illustrating macro-sociological models. However,
it may become a deceptive caricature once it does not just have this
illustrative status, but is taken as a particular case of the real. For the
social reality embodied in each singular actor is already less smooth
and less simple than this. Besides, if the results of large-scale investi­
gations indicate those properties, attitudes, practices, opinions, etc.,
that are most common to one or other social group of category, they
do not say that each individual composing the group or category, or
even the majority of them, combine all or even the majority of these
properties.
If we expected the opposite (as many trainee sociologists do, and
many professional sociologists as well), then an encounter with the
subjects of investigation (i.e. individuals in their irreducible singular­
ity) would be quite disturbing. How many students in the social sci­
ences complain at not having selected in their studied population "real
workers’, 'real managers’ or 'real craftsmen’, believing the problem to
be methodological, whereas the actual mistake is one of the concep­
tion of the social world. What should be done about actors who do
not combine the totality of properties that characterize the group as
a whole? Unskilled workers who read more than is expected of them,
and who upset the envisaged social problematic of class tastes and
distastes? Those who, in some respects, in some areas, seem very close
to salaried employees or intermediate professions?
It is not a matter of questioning the existence of actors correspond­
ing to the model of the craftsman Bourdieu cites (and whom the
sociologist may well encounter in his research), but one of stressing
the fact that not all actors are cast in the same mould. Bourdieu’s
example mobilizes a phenomenological scheme that is presented

12
 T H E PLU RA L A C T O R

in Husserl’s philosophy - i.e. the idea of the fundamental unity of

subjectivity: 'Who would want to separate knowing subjectivity
from affective subjectivity, from the subjectivity that aspires, desires,
wants and acts, from the subjectivity that in some sense evaluates and
works towards a goal? Subjectivity cannot be decomposed . . . into
separate elements to be juxtaposed like parts external to one another
in the same subjectivity’ (Husserl, 1990, pp. 66-7), The philosophi­
cal inheritance, which does not pose any problem in itself, requires
all the same to be validated empirically rather than considered per­
tinent a prion. What proves that subjectivity does not function by
simply piling up or storing knowledge and experience rather than by
synthesis and unification? If the postulate (which should rather be a
hypothesis) of coherence and homogeneity of the different types of
embodied experience (in the form of schemes) is undoubtedly more
intellectually appealing than that of dispersal, separation or general­
ized fragmentation (we must ask what are the social foundations of
the exercise of such a seductive power), elements of confirmation still
need to be found in empirical work. As we shall see, however, experi­
mental psychology,2 as well a part of contemporary cultural psychol­
ogy, does indeed produce tangible scientific results that seriously put
in question the premises of singleness. In the face of such research
findings, the hypothesis becomes more embarrassing than anything
else, no matter how seductive it may be.
In relation to theories of 'cognitive style’ (Berry, 1976; Witkin,
1967), for example, based on the idea that the same cognitive style
underlies cognitive conduct on the most varied subjects, psychologists
have shown through empirical studies stylistic incoherences between
one field (e.g. perception) and another (e.g. social interaction), as
well as incoherences in terms of style of response to different tasks
that supposedly belong to the same cognitive field (e.g. recognition of
forms) (Cole, 1996, p. 94).
But the same kind of challenge can be heard as well in both anthro­
pology and history. Several anthropologists start from the principle
that the society, community, tribe, etc., that they study are necessarily
homogeneous ensembles in which each situation is homologous to all
others. This supposed homology of situations (domains of practices)
makes it possible to believe that one can reconstruct, in the study of
a single situation, a reduced mode) or a metaphor of the society as a
whole (e.g., for Clifford Geertz, cock-fighting in Bali or the puppet
theatre as metaphor or metonym of Balinese society). At bottom,
however, is there not the same interpretative scheme in the theory
of habitus, mutatis mutandis, if not at the level of the whole society,
13
 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y O F T H E PLU RA L AC TO R

then at least at that of a ‘life style* attached to a ‘class of conditions

of existence*? Each dimension of this life style ‘symbolizes with* the
others and ‘symbolizes* them, just as each field of practice in a society
is in a metaphorical relationship with all others. What may appear
terribly homogenizing in one case (society) seems unchallenged in the
other (habitus, life style).
In the same way, in history, the critique of the notion o f ‘mentality*
by Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd again attacks the unitary and homogeniz­
ing conceptions that often go together with it. It is difficult in fact to
validate historically the idea of the existence of a ‘single mentality* in
a group or in an individual, whatever the social activity under con­
sideration:
One point at which the talk of mentalities does not j ust fail to provide
an accurate description, but positively misleads, relates to the diver­
sities that exist between inter-personal exchanges of different types
within the same culture at the same period . . . Those who partici­
pated in the political assemblies and law-courts, and who attended the
debates of the sophists, did not, we may be sure, always behave in that
marked adversarial fashion: they did not always bring to bear the keen
critical acumen in the evaluation of evidence and arguments that they
often did in those contexts. If rationality in the sense of a demand for
an account to be given - logon didonai - was often the watchword
of the new-style enquiries, as of much political debate, that certainly
did not mean an end to irrationality, and the very same groups who
deployed the watchword were capable of ignoring it or of suspending
the criteria it implied, and not just in politics but in science as well.
(Lloyd, 1990, p. 142)
Lloyd also stresses the fact that the same populations that appropri­
ated certain aspects of rational thought could perfectly well con­
tinue to adhere - in practice - to magical and religious beliefs. One
part of themselves could engage in rational thinking while another
part remained in the frameworks of magical thinking, since ‘these
“thoughts* are tied to “socially circumscribed” social contexts* (ibid.,
p. 143). Rather than evoking general mentalities, Lloyd cautiously
prefers to appeal to the historical analysis of social contexts in which
these ‘mentalities* are enunciated, manifested and deployed (the ‘cir­
cumstances of their formulation*, the ‘types of social interaction*,
etc.).3 The theses of singleness and homogeneity (of both culture and
actor) are thus by no means self-evident.

14
 TH E PLU RA L A C T O R

The single self: a commonplace illusion, but socially well

founded
A proper name is something extremely important in a novel* a capital
thing. You can no more change the name of a character than his skin. It
is like trying to whiten a black man.
(Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance* to Louis Bonenfant)

At the opposite pole to the thesis of singleness, Erving Goffman -

among others - set out to criticize unitary conceptions of the actor,
which, according to him, in a certain sense echoed the everyday con­
ceptions of the self:
We come to expect that all his acts will exhibit the same style* be
stamped in a unique way. If every strip of activity is enmeshed and
anchored in its environing world so that it necessarily bears the marks
of what produced it* then surely it is reasonable to say that each utter­
ance or physical doing that the individual contributes to a current situ­
ation will be rooted in his biographical* personal identity. Behind the
current role* the person himself will peek out. Indeed* this is a common
way of framing our perception of another. So three cheers for the self.
Now let us try to reduce the clatter. (Goffman* 1974* pp. 293-4).

Seeking ‘the* generating formula of an actor’s practices, reconsti­

tuting ‘the* style (‘cognitive’ or ‘of life’) that persists and is expressed
in the most varied fields of activity - isn’t this sharing the common­
place illusion of singleness and invariability? We well know how
‘lunatics’, ‘weathercocks’, ‘opportunists’ or ‘chameleons’,4 those who
change their opinion and their behaviour depending on their inter­
locutor or the situation, are not well thought of: at the opposite pole
are those whose behaviour is ‘frank’ and who proudly display their
pride at not being moved (‘influenced’) by the most varied situations
they encounter. Everything happens as if there were a specific sym­
bolic and moral profit (as the very terms of inconstancy, versatility
and unfaithfulness to oneself suggest) in believing oneself ‘identical’
or ‘faithful’ to oneself at every time and place, whatever the events
experienced or tests undergone (‘I’ve not changed’; ‘I’m always the
same’.)5 How many hagiographies of artists or intellectuals stress, as
one of their most positive features, the fact that the individual in ques­
tion basically had just one single idea or line of thought, which they
developed throughout their career (the novelist who always writes the
same book, the painter who always paints the same canvas . . .)? By
recalling that ‘commonplace experience of life as a unity and a total­
ity’ is a social (and literary) construction, Bourdieu seeks none the
15
 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y O F TH E PLU RA L A C T O R

less to escape the idea of a self reduced to "the rhapsody of individual

sensations’, by appeal to habitus as an "active principle, irreducible to
passive perceptions, the unification of practices and representations’
(1986a, p. 70). The concept of habitus (sociology) thus comes to the
rescue of a socially well-founded illusion (common sense), without
conceding anything to empiricism.6
Goffman, therefore, vigorously challenges these commonplace
myths of an invariable personal identity:

What they discover from their gleanings will apparently point to what
this fellow is like beyond the current situation. But every situation he is
in will provide his others with such an image. That is what situations
can do for us. That is a reason why we find them (as we find novels)
engrossing. But that is no reason to think that all these gleanings about
himself that an individual makes available, all those pointings from his
current situation to the way he is in his other occasions, have anything
very much in common. (Goffman, 1974, p. 299)

This, however, does not prevent us from immediately perceiving the

opposite risk of falling into a kind of radical empiricism that would
not grasp anything more than a dusty haze of identities, roles, behav­
iours, actions and reactions with no kind of connection among them.7
However, this scientific illusion (which sociologists have to take
into account in their interpretation of the social world, but which they
should not stumble over) does not lack a social foundation. There are
many permanent institutions, just as there are several more ephem­
eral occasions, that celebrate the unity of the self - to start with, the
"proper name’ that consecrates the whole singularity of the "person’.
These personal and emotional coordinates with which their bearers
identify themselves symbolically (as opposed to the more precise and
singular numerical identifications that are less conducive to the pro­
jection of identity: social security number, credit card number, gas
customer number . . .), or into which they project themselves - and
which immediately seem to evoke the totality of a person in the eyes
of those who know them - are astonishing unificatory abstractions in
relation to the diversity of social reality. Child, adolescent or adult,
father, lover, football player, stamp collector, political comrade or
factory worker, the same biological body is denoted by the same
name and surname.8 Quite naturally, the abstraction ends up taking
bodily form, supported by the evidence of the body’s biological unity.
Socially, however, the same body passes through different states and
is the irrevocable bearer of heterogeneous and even contradictory
schemes of action or habits.

16
 TH E PLU R A L A C T O R

The realism of the name is constantly reinforced by administrative

demands (public or private), which are so many injunctions to exhibit
one's identity and recall its singularity, as well as by the various iden­
tity papers (identity card, passport, residence permit, driving licence,
social security card, blood-group card) that often refer to nothing
other than themselves (e.g. on the identity card: name, surname,
height, particular features), as well as certain spatio-temporal and
national coordinates (e.g. date and place of birth, nationality, home
address).9 It is also the name that provides the basis of the stylized
manuscript representation (one therefore indissociable from the sin­
gular person and his body) constituted by the signature, a singular
mark par excellence. Name and surname, signature, these semanti­
cally weak signs claim to enclose us fully, and are summary but pow­
erful unifiers or our personal identity.
Actors are also given other occasions and other means for reducing
the diversity of individual practices and events to the unity of a coher­
ent and unified self, at least in some of their dimensions (educational,
professional, familial, sexual . . .). One can think of the curriculum
vitae (accompanying the rationalization and technicization of entry
into the labour market) as a technique of presentation of self, or of
the various 'narratives of self’ produced in the confidences made to
those near and dear (friends or members of the same family), or, more
rarely, to persons unknown (life stories solicited by social-science
researchers or 'heard* by psychologists, psychoanalysts, specialists
in social work, etc.), which give actors the possibility of elaborating
partial syntheses, putting order and coherence where this did not
necessarily exist.10 And, finally, there are the more official kinds such
as funeral orations, obituaries, panegyrics, official biographies, etc.,
which provide models of a totalizing and unificatory presentation. In
all cases, we can say that the work needed to maintain the illusion is
that much more laborious for actors who are precociously and last­
ingly enrolled in social groups and worlds that are multiple, heteroge­
neous and contradictory.
If the first tradition lays too great a weight on unity and singleness,
the second grants too much importance to fragmentation. We finally
have to reject both, the unificatory 'formula', 'system' or 'principle',
on the one hand, and the generalized fragmentation or dispersed frac­
tioning, on the other. From this point of view, Pierre Naville showed
a very fine sense more than fifty years ago in describing the multiplic­
ity of our systems of embodied habits, bound up with different fields
of existence and social worlds that we traverse:

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 O U T L IN E O F A T H E O R Y OF TH E P L U R A L AC TO R

You will find in this particular individual more or less coordinated

systems of habits, and above all the professional ones that are the basis
of social existence. But you will also find all kinds of other behaviours:
conjugal, parental, religious, political, in relation to food, play, etc. In
sum, the personality is the sum of activities revealed by direct observa­
tion of behaviour during a period long enough to provide certain data;
in other words, it is simply the end product of our systems of habits.
(1942, pp. 220-1)

The particular pertinence of Naville’s formulation will become clear

through later discussions. For the moment, let us simply emphasize
the articulation that this quotation maintains between systems of
habits and fields of practices. What we can criticize the two theoreti­
cal tendencies cited above for is not their theorizing in one particular
way or another, but rather their theorizing in a general and universal
fashion, as if actors at all times and in all places had to correspond to
the model of the actor that they have constructed. But the question
of the singleness or plurality of the actor is as much a historical (or
empirical) question as a theoretical one. The question must therefore
be asked in the following terms: what are the socio-historical condi­
tions that make possible a plural actor or an actor characterized by a
profound singleness?

The socio-historical conditions of singleness and plurality

These supple variations and contradiction that are seen in us . ..
(Montaigne, The Complete Essays)
I well believe, Gentlemen, that the age of a civilization must be meas­
ured by the number of contradictions it accumulates, by the number of
incompatible customs and beliefs that jostle and temper one another: by
the plurality of the philosophies and aesthetics that coexist and cohabit
in the same head.
(Paul Valery, Variety)
One thing is clear: for us to be dealing with an actor who displays a
homogeneous and coherent system of dispositions or schemes, quite
specific social conditions are required, ones that are not always met
with, and indeed are met with only exceptionally. £mile Durkheim,
who used the notion of habitus in the sense of a very coherent and
lasting relation to the world, evoked this concept in connection with
two particular historical situations: "traditional societies’ and "the
boarding-school regime’. In the first case, Durkheim wrote: "The

18
 TH E PLU RA L A C T O R

lesser development of individuality, the smaller scale of the group,

and the homogeneity of external circumstances all contribute to
reducing the differences and variations to a minimum. The group
regularly produces an intellectual and moral uniformity of which we
find only rare examples in the more advanced societies. Everything is
common to everyone* (Durkheim, 1976, p. 5). And it is certainly no
accident that Pierre Bourdieu gave the notion of habitus new currency
precisely so as to grasp adequately the functioning of a traditional
and weakly differentiated society - i.e. the Kabyl. Given the great
homogeneity, great coherence and great stability of the material and
cultural conditions of existence, and the principles of socialization
that followed from these, the actors fashioned by such societies are
endowed with a stock of embodied schemes of action that are particu­
larly homogeneous and coherent.
In the second case, Durkheim used the term "habitus* in connection
with Christian education as a milieu that totally envelops the child
with a unique and constant influence. Habitus, for Durkheim, cor­
responds perfectly to the boarding-school situation, where the child
is cloistered for board and lodging as well as lessons; this is a truly
total institution in Goffman’s (1961) sense. As a small-scale model of
the undifferentiated community, however, the total institution owes
its originality and exceptionality to the fact that it lives embedded in
a society that is highly differentiated. Like traditional societies,11 it is
characterized by a restricted number of actors in all domains of exist­
ence, domains which are otherwise experienced more commonly in
different places and with different actors (in our work, play, family,
sporting, religious activities, etc., we are customarily led to frequent
actors and sites that are more or less institutionally differentiated).
On the other hand, the total institution has to struggle against pos­
sible contact between its actors and the outside world (with its exog­
enous values), and in any case it includes two major categories of
actor: those who organize the institution and those who undergo its
programme of socialization. The total institution is thus a world that
presents itself as "total* and unique within the context of a differenti­
ated society.
And it is this institution that constitutes "the natural means of real­
izing in an integrated way the Christian idea of education’ (Durkheim,
1977, p. 119):
To be able to act thus powerfully on the deepest recesses of the soul
it is patently essential that the different influences to which the child
is subjected are not dispersed in different directions but are, rather,

19
 O U T L IN E O F A TH EO R Y OF THE PLU R A L A C T O R

vigorously concentrated towards one and the same goaL This can be
achieved only by making children live in one and the same moral envi­
ronment, which is constantly present to them, which enshrouds them
completely, and from whose influence they are unable, as it were, to
escape. (Ibid., p. 29)
Education is then 'organized*, Durkheim goes on to say, 'in such
a way as to be able to produce the profound and lasting effect
demanded from it* (ibid., pp. 30-1). It follows that individuals can
have general and coherent dispositions that are transferable from one
sphere of activity or one practice to another if - and only if - their
social experiences have always been governed by the same principles.
Far from this being regularly the case, it may well be a historical
exception.12
Erwin Panovsky also indicates very clearly, in his celebrated Gothic
Architecture and Scholasticism, what an 'exception* is the historical
context he is studying, one that makes it possible to explain the deep
homology of structure between Gothic art and scholastic philosophy
on the basis of the scheme of 'mental habit* or 'habit-forming force*.
Panovsky*s remark deserves to be taken seriously, instead of consider­
ing this admission of the exceptionality of the period and geographi­
cal zone studied as simply a rhetorical effect that the author produces
with the aim of attracting the reader to his object of research. In
order for this 'habit-forming force* to be observable, socio-historical
conditions must be right for it, as Panovsky tells us by insisting on
the particular homogeneity of the historical conditions in which the
architects of the time lived - a homogeneity that was the result of an
educational monopoly: 'Often it is difficult or impossible to single
out one habit-forming force from many others and to imagine the
channels of transmission. However the period from about 1130-40
to about 1270 and the “ 100-mile zone around Paris” constitute an
exception. In this tight little sphere Scholasticism possessed what
amounted to a monopoly in education* (1957, pp. 21-2).
Pierre Bourdieu wrote a postface to the book, and was broadly
inspired by Panovsky*s implicit sociology in developing and reinforc­
ing his theory of habitus. But he did not stress in his commentary the
exceptionality of the context studied here. Taking this into account
would no doubt have forced him to relativize the singleness, durabil­
ity and transposability of the constitutive schemes or dispositions of
habitus.
Paradoxically, however, the same author’s first works, on Algeria
in the 1960s, were what led him towards the construction of a theory
of the actor and of action that was more sensitive to the plurality of

20
 TH E P L U R A L A CTO R

schemes of embodied experience and habit-forming forces.13 In Le

Deracinement, in fact, Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Say ad ana­
lysed the situation of ‘doubling, which generally offered the colonized
a solution through which he escaped the contradictions of a double
existence* (Bourdieu and Sayad, 1964, p. 69). They wavered, moreo­
ver, according to phases of this work, and in a particularly interesting
fashion, between this mode) of ‘doubling* (mental and social), which
assumes that the actors of the social world apply different and often
contradictory manners of speaking and acting within different social
worlds (the family on the one hand, the colonial world on the other),
and that of ‘cultural lingua franca*, which rather implies a mixture
and confusion of genres and registers and, in the end, a contradiction
at the very heart of each practice.14
The counter-model of these cases of forced doubling or cultural
pidgin compelled by the colonial situation is of course that of the
traditional cultural universe, supposedly homogeneous and coherent:
‘What actually is the mya, an almost untranslatable notion, if not a
certain way of being and acting, a permanent, general and transpos-
able disposition towards the world and other people?’ (Bourdieu and
Sayad, 1964, p. 88). ‘Because his being is above all a certain manner
of being, a habitus, a permanent and general disposition towards the
world and others, the peasant can remain a peasant even when there
is no longer the possibility of behaving as a peasant’ (ibid., p. 102). It
is thus the model of traditional Algerian peasant society, one with a
weak division of labour, on which the theory of habitus is ultimately
built, by this token carrying the cases of doubling or cultural pidgin
on the back of exceptional and somewhat monstrous historical situ­
ations. The paradox lies in the fact of having at the end of the day
retained the model of habitus adapted to an approach to weakly dif­
ferentiated societies (pre-industrial, pre-capitalist) in order to study
societies that are highly differentiated, and which by definition neces­
sarily produce actors that are more differentiated both between one
another and internally.
And yet there are such great differences between demographically
weak traditional societies, on the one hand, in which people have
strong personal knowledge of one another and each can exert a
control over others, where the division of labour and differentiation
of social functions and spheres of activity are little advanced (impossi­
ble, in fact, to distinguish here specific spheres of activity - economic,
political, legal, religious, moral, scientific, philosophical, etc., that are
clearly separated from one another), where the stability and durabil­
ity of conditions to which actors are subject throughout their lives is

21
 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF THE P L U R A L AC TO R

maxima), where there are thus hardly any different, competing, con­
tradictory models of socialization, and, on the other hand, contem­
porary societies, which are incomparably larger both spatially and
demographically, with a strong differentiation of spheres of activity,
institutions, cultural products and models of socialization, and with
less stability in the conditions of socialization. Between the family,
school, peer groups, various cultural institutions, the media, etc., that
they are often led to frequent, the children of our social formations
are increasingly confronted with heterogeneous and competing situa­
tions, which are sometimes indeed in contradiction with one another
in terms of the principles of socialization that they develop.
I have noted above the difficulties that are encountered today by
those total institutions that dream of a homogeneous world and a
homogeneous socialization, in a social formation that is deeply dif­
ferentiated and with heterogeneous principles of socialization. But
there is another kind of social world, i.e. the world of work, especially
when this involves a profession endowed with an esprit de corps,
which - within very specific social and mental limits, since actors are
never reducible to their existence at work - reproduces, even within
differentiated societies, conditions of socialization that are relatively
coherent and homogeneous. It is to Maurice Halbwachs that we owe
the most penetrating sociological analyses of these corporate profes­
sional worlds. First of all, 'each individual who enters a profession
must, when he learns to apply certain practical rules, open himself
to this sensibility that may be called the corporate spirit, and which
resembles the collective memory of the professional group.* This
esprit de corps is explained by the long past of the function, by the fact
that "the people who exercise it are in frequent contact . . ., that they
accomplish the same operations or in any case are engaged in opera­
tions of the same nature . . . [and] have the perennial feeling that their
activities are combined with a view to a common undertaking*; but
also because 'their function can be distinguished from other functions
of the social body*; that it 'is important for them, and in the interest of
their own profession, to emphasize these differences and make them
clearly visible* (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 139). And Halbwachs grasps
right away the fragility of such an enterprise in a differentiated society
in which the 'spirit* of these 'professional bodies* can potentially be
challenged by competing and heteronomous logics, all the more so in
that the members of these groups do not belong exclusively to them,
and that even in the context of their professional activity they live in
permanent contact with outsiders who do not share the same values.
The members of such a body are thus obliged to create institutional

22
 T H E PLURAL A C T O R

separations if they do not wish to be penetrated by exogenous logics.

Extended contact with these other logics takes place in the context of
regulated and institutionalized exchanges that place the outsiders on
the terrain of the professionals, and not in the context of encounters
between equals, a course of interactions in which all points of view
are valid. For example, a judge has to listen to external logics in the
context of his own logic, rather than entering into a dialogue with this
external logic:
Given this situation, we may ask whether prolonged and often renewed
contact with people dominated by other thoughts and feelings that
differ from their own may not lead to the weakening and decline of the
professional spirit among the people assigned to a function. In order
to resist people who will most of the time oppose them in the name of
collective beliefs and traditions, functionaries must rely on beliefs and
traditions peculiar to their group. In other words, the judiciary, for
example, is obliged to erect all sorts of barriers between its members
and those of the other groups to whom they render justice, so as to resist
external influences and the passions and prejudices of the plaintiffs.
This is why their costume, the place they occupy in the court of justice,
and all the apparatus of the tribunals indicate visually the distance that
separates the group of judges from all others. It is also why communica­
tion between judges and plaintiffs does not take place in the form of a
conversation - as it does in other groups - but through interrogations
or in writing, following certain forms, or through the mediation of
notaries and lawyers. (Halbwachs, 1992, p. 140)

There exist, in the same way, family worlds that are non-contradic­
tory, made up of adults who are highly coherent among themselves,
in which different principles of socialization do not interfere with
one another, and that exercise their socializing effects on children
in a regular, systematic and lasting fashion. But these family worlds,
which objectively tend once again towards the model of the total
institution, encounter almost the same social difficulties in persisting.
We can observe in research, for example, higher or less high levels
of educational energy and coherence in terms of practices of reading
and writing, stronger or less strong densities and coherences in edu­
cational work (Lahire, 1995d). There can be various encouragements
to reading and writing: precocious initiation to reading and writing
(sometimes with the purchase of reading methods), printed matter
mobilized with the aim of extending family discussions, educational
themes or cultural visits, subscription to various children's magazines
that creates such a need in the child early on (certain parents describe
waiting for such magazines at the end of the month as an exhilarating

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 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF T H E PLU RA L AC TO R

moment), books or magazines that are given for various important

dates in the child’s life (loss of a tooth, birthday, name day, good
results, Christmas, etc.), visiting a public library to accustom the child
to the place and world of printed culture, precocious formation of the
child’s own book collection, reading stories in the evening or at differ­
ent times of day, frequent resort to the dictionary, gradual inculcation
into exchanges of letters (from signature to the complete writing of
letters or postcards), proposals to make drafts in order to check or
have checked possible mistakes, gifts of address and phone-number
books or diaries that call for reading, invitations to read short texts,
to keep a notebook during the holidays, to write short words or take
phone messages, etc.
According to the intensity and regularity of these encouragements,
children are subject to matrices of socialization into writing that are
more or less implacable. Certain parents are unflinching in their daily
struggle for the acculturation of their children; others admit their
abandonment of certain solicitations or vigilance (requests to write
texts, taking them to the library, questions about certain difficult
words or about reading, etc.), or they describe less tight networks of
encouragement; still others are not in favourable conditions or lack
the skills needed to encourage their children in any other way than
disciplinary.
The educational investment in bourgeois milieus seems sometimes
close to the academic and cultural overinvestment of intermediary
milieus, even if the educational work carried out may be denied (the
aspects of play or the shared emotion of time spent together are then
emphasized). All the same, the educative work objectively realized
shows very well that the 'inheritance of cultural capital’ never takes
place 'naturally’, even in those families that are best endowed. It is
striking to note the degree to which the 'transmission’ of this capital
requires constant and interminable daily work, sometimes painful
for the children and parents alike.15 For example, a child (eight years
old, both parents doctors) 'groans’ when his mother asks him to go
and consult the dictionary, and she tells us that, even if he doesn’t
manage this very well, 'that is how you learn’. She does not hesitate
to speak herself of the daily 'struggle’ over homework repeated over
the weekend, which cannot always be experienced as a childish joy.
We could just as well mention the encouragement to writing letters
or the demand to read when children, boys in particular, prefer for
example to play football. One may even ask whether the dilettante
attitude that is sometimes described in the sociology of education or
culture is not an optical illusion, in which the sociologists share the

24
 T H E PLU R A L A C TO R

illusion that the actors want to give, but also and above all that they
give themselves. In fact, one need only objectify - in other words,
describe with precision and systematically certain everyday situations
- for the hidden educative work to become apparent, and even the
subterranean educative discipline that is equally necessary to have
children who are highly successful at school and have the taste for
reading and writing.16
The strongest educative densities and coherences, which assume
a constant presence and are most often realized when mothers have
‘chosen* not to work in order to devote themselves entirely to their
children's education, then lead to a kind of very tight control over the
implicit and/or explicit programme of socialization (e.g. in respect to
the inculcation of tastes and of reading and writing skills: keeping
the child away from the television and video player or very strict
control of programmes that are watched, restriction of children's
propensity to read only comics, control of the choice of books read by
the children - with respect to style as well as content - etc.). Despite
this tight regulation of the family experience of socialization, which
demands a real fighting spirit in daily life, the children experience
social situations outside the family that make the task of these adults
particularly difficult.
We could pose the theoretical and historical problem of the social
foundations of singleness (or of homogeneity) by borrowing the
insightful words of Roger Benoliel and Roger Establet: ‘The produc­
tion of homogeneous habitus in all spheres of life is a schoolteacher's
dream. The cultural transfers that are intended or desired come up
against many forms of resistance: social interests mobilized in oppos­
ing directions, indifferent audience, rebellious cultural material,
competing sources of legitimacy. On the one hand the intentions of
educational convicts, on the other social life in the open air' (1991, p.
29). And it is certainly not the state that is in a position, as is some­
times said in an abstract and superficial way,17 to compensate for
the multiplicity and heterogeneity of social worlds (and of social and
socializing experiences) by a work of homogenization of the ensemble
of national habitus.
The coherence of the habits or schemes of action (sensory-motor
schemes, schemes of perception, appreciation, evaluation, etc.) that
the actor has internalized thus depends on the coherence of the prin­
ciples of socialization to which they have been subjected. Once an
actor has been placed, simultaneously or successively, within a plural­
ity of social worlds that are non-homogeneous, and sometimes even
contradictory, or within social worlds that are relatively coherent but

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 O U T L IN E OF A TH EO R Y O F THE P L U R A L A C TO R

present contradictions in certain aspects, we are then dealing with

an actor with a stock of schemes of action or habits that are non-
homogeneous, non-unified, and with practices that are consequently
heterogeneous (and even contradictory), varying according to the
social context in which they are led to develop. 1 could sum up my
thesis here by saying that every (individual) body plunged into a plu­
rality of social worlds is subjected to heterogeneous and sometimes
contradictory principles of socialization that they embody.
Rather than considering the coherence and homogeneity of the
schemes that make up the stock of each individual actor as the typical
situation, that which is most commonly observable in a differenti­
ated society, it thus seems to me preferable to believe it is the most
improbable situation, the most exceptional, and that it is far more
usual to observe individual actors who are less unified and bear habits
(schemes of action) that are heterogeneous and in some cases opposed
and contradictory.

The plurality of social contexts and repertoires of habits

We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that
each bit, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much differ­
ence between us and ourselves as between us and others. Consider it a
great thing to play the part o f one single man . . .
(Montaigne, The Complete Essays)
This heterogeneity of socializing experiences, which so many research­
ers are rediscovering today, was something that Maurice Halbwachs
already placed at the heart of his reflections on memory. In fact,
Halbwachs reminded us that 'each man is immersed successively or
simultaneously in several groups* (1980, p. 78), and that the latter are
themselves neither homogeneous nor immutable (ibid., p. 85).18These
groups that constitute the social contexts of our memory are thus het­
erogeneous, and the individuals that go through them in the course
of the same period of time or of different moments in their lives are
thus the always variegated product of this heterogeneity of points of
view, memories, types of experience: what we lived through with our
parents, at primary and secondary school, with friends or colleagues
from work, with members of the same political, religious or cultural
association, cannot necessarily be cumulated and synthesized in an
easy way . . . Without needing to postulate a logic of absolute discon­
tinuity, by assuming that these contexts are radically different from
one another and that actors jump every moment from one interaction

26
 TH E PLU RA L A C T O R

to another, one situation to another, one social world to another, one

domain of existence to another without any sense of continuity, we
can believe all the same - and establish this empirically - that these
experiences are not all systematically coherent, homogeneous or even
totally compatible, despite our being indeed their bearers. Halbwachs
thus already traced the lineaments of a dynamic vision, sensitive to
the heterogeneity and plurality of experiences.19
To be sure, we know that the moments in the life of a human being
when their different habits - or different repertoires of habits - are
formed are not all equivalent. We can generally separate the period
of 'primary* socialization (essentially in the family) from all those
that follow, and that are called 'secondary* (school, peer group,
work, etc.). If this distinction is important in reminding us that, at the
first moments of socialization, the child embodies, in greatest socio-
affective dependence towards the adults that surround it, ‘the world,
the only existent and only conceivable world, the world tout court*
(Berger and Luckmann, 1979, p. 154), and not a world perceived as
relative and thus specific, it often leads to representing the individual
trajectory as a passage from homogeneity (the family sub-world that
forms the most fundamental mental structures) to heterogeneity (the
multiple sub-worlds frequented by an actor already formed, who is
then not fundamentally changed, or in any case not as profoundly
as in their initial universe of reference). Various empirical facts,
however, speak against this kind of simplistic representation. First of
all, the homogeneity of the family universe is presupposed and never
demonstrated. And yet, whether heterogeneity here is only relative, or
leads to the most exacerbated family contradictions and conflicts (e.g.
the case of family situations that lead to a kind of 'splitting of the self*
in the child), it is always irreducibly present at the heart of the family
configuration, which is never a perfect total institution.
But the primary-secondary succession or 'superposition* is fre­
quently challenged by the very early socializing action (in certain
cases, increasingly precocious) of social worlds or actors outside the
family universe. This includes the experience of a nurse (a few days
or weeks after birth), the creche (just a few months after birth) or the
infant school (from the age of two). It is impossible to act as if the
implicit socialization programmes of these different social actors or
worlds were necessarily and systematically harmonious with that of
the family. How can we not see that the child placed in the creche at
a very early age learns in the first few months of its life that people do
not expect the same things of it, and do not treat it identically, 'here*
and 'there*? Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, describing the case

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 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF TH E PLU RA L A C TO R

of a nurse who came from a very different social world from that of
the child’s parents, even spoke of the possibility of an 'unsuccessful
socialization’, resulting from 'the mediation of acutely discrepant
worlds by significant others during primary socialization’ (1979,
p. 188), Without introducing the (normative) notion of 'failure’, we
have to note that the experience of a plurality of worlds has every
chance of being precocious in our ultra-differentiated societies.
Finally, the secondary socializations, even when carried out in differ­
ent socio-affective conditions, may profoundly put in question and
compete with the family monopoly on the socialization of the child
and the adolescent. The case of individuals 'upwardly declassed’,
which we shall describe further on, is a most flagrant example of this.
We therefore live (relatively)20 simultaneously and successively
in differentiated social contexts. There are on the one hand classic
social institutions (around which sociology has organized some of its
fields of research): the family, the school, the professional world, the
church, the association, the sports club, the worlds of art, politics,
sport, etc. But these different social worlds are not equivalent. For
example, while the family context (in all its observable variations)
remains, in our societies, among the most universally widespread
socializing matrices, the church and the sports club are not just social
worlds frequented only by a section of the actors of a society; they
are places where certain actors exercise their principal social activity
(the priest, the sports coach). In certain social worlds, it is possible to
be a 'consumer’, a spectator or an amateur, whereas others are rather
producers and professionals. But this distinction makes no sense in
the family world or in that of the workplace.
These worlds are sometimes - but not systematically - organized
in the form of fields (of forces and struggles) in the sense that Pierre
Bourdieu gave to this term. The historical process of differentiation of
spheres of activity is not in every case reducible to the appearance of
relatively autonomous 'social fields’ as structured spaces of positions,
with their specific stakes, rules of the game, interests, capitals and
struggles (between the different dominant and dominated agents that
seek to maintain their position, if not to improve it), where what is at
stake is the (unequal) structure of distribution of capitals. The family
universe, for example, does not in the strict sense form a field, any
more than do the sporadic meetings of friends in a bar; the meetings
of lovers or the holiday practices of windsurfing or climbing are not
situations that can be assigned to a particular social field. Contrary
to what the most general formulations may lead one to believe, not
every social interaction or social situation can be classified in this

28
 TH E P L U R A L AC TO R

way. Fields are essentially the domain of 'professional* (and 'public*)

activities, and above all those of 'agents* in struggle within these fields
- i.e. producers (as opposed to consumers, spectators or persons par­
ticipating in the field but not being particularly engaged in struggles
within it: lower administrative staff, service personnel, workers, etc.).
Field of power, political, administrative or journalistic field, field
of publishing, literary and theatrical field, field of the comic book,
of painting, of fashion, philosophical and scientific field, social
science field, university and college field, field of agents of geriatric
management. . . it is notable that certain fields are sub-fields of others
(the sociological field is a sub-field of the social science field, which
is in turn a sub-field of the scientific and/or university field, which is
again a sub-field of the field of cultural production, itself a sub-field
of the field of power, which is itself a section of social space). Besides,
certain fields are scientific constructions of reality which do not totally
coincide with the divisions made to constitute other fields (e.g. the
legal and medical fields each include sections of what otherwise forms
the university field, as well as other extra-university elements). We
can also note that certain practices or objects belong to several fields
at the same time (e.g. a novel belongs to the literary field but also to
that of publishing), and that the same physical person may belong to
several fields at the same time (political and scientific fields, philo­
sophical, literary and theatre fields . . .). But, above all, a large number
of actors are outside any of these fields, drowned in a great 'social
space’ that has as its structuring axis only the volume and structure
of capital possessed (cultural and economic). A good deal of scholarly
energy has gone into explaining the great stages of power, but little
into understanding those who build the sets and move the backdrops,
sweep the floors and corridors, photocopy documents or type letters,
etc., and who sometimes attend shows or consume the products of the
producers (read novels, philosophical essays, works of social science,
comic books, newspapers, etc., go to a theatre or museum, vote and
watch politicians on television, move into retirement homes or move
their parents there, play sport or appear in court, go to church and
send their children to catechism or follow Koranic instruction, view
fashion shows on television or photographs of models in magazines,
etc.); there is little interest, therefore, in understanding life offstage or
outside the field of the producers of the field.
It is quite revealing, given this exclusion of 'time outside the field’
and 'actors outside the field*, that this sociology not only focuses
on the situation of those who are 'born in the field’ or 'born in the
game’ (children of university teachers who follow the same profession

29
 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF T H E P L U R A L A CTO R

themselves . . .), but that it sometimes misleadingly generalizes this

model of the actor: The illusio is a kind of knowledge that is based
on the fact of being born in the game, belonging to it by birth: to say
that 1 know the game in this way means that 1 have it inside my skin,
in my body, that it acts in me without my doing anything; as when
my body responds to a knock without my even having perceived it as
such* (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 44). Or again: 'Why is it important to con­
ceive the field as a site in which one is born and not as an arbitrarily
established game?’ (ibid., p. 49).
The theory of fields resolves a whole series of sociological prob­
lems, but generates its own in so far as (1) it ignores the ceaseless
transitions made by agents belonging to a field between the field in
which they are producers, the fields in which they are mere consumer-
spectators and the many situations that cannot be related to a field,
reducing actors to their being-as-member-of-a-field; (2) it overlooks
the situation of those who are socially defined (and mentally consti­
tuted) outside of any activity in a determinate field (which is still the
case with many housewives without professional or public employ­
ment);21 and (3) it considers what is outside-the-field, 'other rank',
on the basis of standards of measurement that are social standards
for measuring powers (educational qualifications, income level . . .),
defining their 'habitus’ by their dispossession, destitution and situ­
ation as dominated.22 For all these reasons, the theory of fields (it
would be better always to speak of the theory of fields of power) can
certainly not constitute a general and universal theory, but represents
only a regional theory of the social world.23
If habitus in particular, as systems of dispositions, are specific to
fields, one may legitimately wonder what takes shape outside these
fields - cognitively, affectively and culturally. If we aim to grasp the
cognitive and social operations embodied in singular bodies, actors
cannot be reduced to their field habitus, in so far as their social expe­
riences overflow those that they can live within the context of a field
(especially when they are outside these fields!). When we describe, for
example, the literary habitus of a novelist, we can ask to what extent
the latter imports this system of dispositions into a whole series of
social situations (family ones in particular) situated outside the field.
Is the ensemble of this individual’s social behaviours - whatever the
domain of existence under consideration - reducible to the applica­
tion of this system of dispositions? Observation of actual behav­
iour shows that an assumption of this kind is far from being either
self-evident or empirically confirmed.
Taking up our zoom lens or our microscope, we can thus distin­

30
 THE P L U R A L AC TO R

guish, within these institutional and spatial spaces that are separate,
relatively enclosed and apparently homogeneous, major internal dif­
ferences in the types of interaction that take place there, in the social
situations that are lived (a discussion around the coffee machine
between colleagues is not an official meeting, nor is it individual or
collective working-time). For example, far from constituting homoge­
neous realities, working-class family configurations, which 1 studied
in their relationship to the educational world, displayed more than
one case of heterogeneity (Lahire, 1995a). The child may be sur­
rounded by persons that represent very different and even opposing
principles of socialization and types of orientation towards school.
An opposition or contradiction may arise, according to the particu­
lar case, between very strict moral control and indulgence, between
'amusement* and 'educational effort’, between a very great sensitiv­
ity and a lesser sensitivity towards everything to do with the school,
between a taste for reading and an absence of practices and tastes, etc.
Whatever the detail, it is rather rare to find family configurations
that are absolutely homogeneous, either culturally or morally. There
are few cases that make it possible to speak of a coherent family
habitus, producing general dispositions completely oriented in the
same direction. Many children live concretely within a family space
of socialization with variable demands and characteristics, where
examples and counter-examples jostle against one another (an illiter­
ate father and a sister at university, brothers and sisters some of whom
are 'successful’ at school while others have 'failed’, etc.), a family
space in which contradictory principles of socialization intersect. Vis-
a-vis the ensemble of their family members they are often faced with a
wide spectrum of possible positions and possible systems of tastes and
behaviours. And there is all the greater chance of finding contradictory
elements if one examines large families in which several generations of
children live under the same roof or that include, for various reasons,
uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents of the child in question.
Because we do not occupy identical or similar positions in such
social contexts (we can be and have variously been 'son or daughter’,
'school pupil’, 'schoolfriend’, 'father or mother’, 'husband or wife’,
'lover or mistress’, 'colleague at work’, 'goalkeeper*, 'member of
an association’, 'attendant at church’, 'worker’, and so on), we live
experiences that are varied, different and sometimes contradictory. A
plural actor is thus the product of an - often precocious - experience
of socialization in the course of their trajectory, or simultaneously in
the course of the same period of time in a number of social worlds
and occupying different positions.
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 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y O F TH E PLU R A L AC TO R

We can therefore propose the hypothesis of the embodiment by

each actor of a multiplicity of schemes of action (sensory-motor,
perception, language, movement, etc,) and habits (of thinking, lan­
guage, movement. . .), organized around so many repertoires and the
pertinent social contexts that they learn to distinguish - and often to
name - via the ensemble of their previous socialization experiences.
If we take up the metaphor of a ‘stock’,24 we can say that this stock
(like the set of commodities available on a market or in a shop, and a
site for keeping products in preparation) is distinguished from a mere
‘ heap’ or ‘stack’ in that it turns out to be organized in the form of
social repertoires (since there exist grammatical or logical repertoires
that classify elements according to a grammatical or logical principle,
we can use the metaphor of a sociological repertoire) of schemes,
repertoires that are distinct from one another, but interconnected and
certainly containing common elements. The repertoires of schemes
of action (habits) are ensembles of summaries of social experiences,
which have been constructed and embodied in the course of previous
socialization in social contexts that are well defined, and that each
actor gradually acquires more or less completely; there are as many
habits as the sense of (relative) contextual relevance of their applica­
tion. People learn and understand that what is said and done in one
context is not said or done in another. This sense of situations is more
or less ‘correctly’ embodied (depending on the variety of contexts
that the actor encounters in their trajectory, and that earlier or later
sanctions - positive or negative - address to them as indication of
the limits, often vague, not to be crossed). To take the metaphor of a
stock somewhat further, one could say that this is made up of prod­
ucts (schemes of action) that are not all necessary at each moment
and in every context. Deposited (Latin: deponere) in the stock,
they are available to the actor to the extent that they are disposable
(■disponere). The uses of these products (of socialization) are often
deferred, so that they are kept temporarily or permanently in reserve,
waiting for the triggers that will mobilize them. Finally, the transfers
and transpositions (by analogy) of schemes of action rarely extend
across the entirety of social contexts, but are made within the - vague
- limits of each particular context (and therefore of each reservoir).

The Proustian model of the plural actor

In the criticism he made of the ‘Saint-Beuve method’, Marcel Proust
sketched out a theory of the plural actor - implicit and only partial,

32
 T H E PLURAL A C T O R

but highly suggestive - i.e. of actors who show themselves to be plural

and different according to the domains of existence in which they
are led to develop socially. Proust defines the ‘Saint-Beuve method*
by maintaining that this consists in ‘not separating the man from the
work*. Presenting the issue involved in this way, Proust not only turns
his back on a good part of the social and human sciences (the history
and sociology of art in particular), which precisely seek not to sepa­
rate the work from the man, but the criticism that he develops cannot
fail to appear, in the eyes of these very sciences, as a typical case of
artistic idealism and unrealism (the reaction of a man of letters who
does not tolerate the conditions of production of the literary work
being recalled).
Fundamentally, however, this is not what is involved. As against
the manner in which Proust presents it, the method he discusses
assumes that the literary quality of a work can be judged by what
the public (or social) behaviour of its author can reveal (a ‘man of
quality* can only write literature of quality). Arguing against this,
Proust is led to develop the idea of a plurality of ‘selves* operating in
differentiated practices: ‘Such a method fails to recognize what any
more than merely superficial acquaintance with ourselves teaches us:
that a book is the product of a self other than that which we display in
our habits, in company, in our vices* (Proust, 1988, p. 12). The situa­
tion of someone writing a literary text is altogether different from the
situation that brings them into relationship with their friends, their
publisher, their social calls . . ., and, fundamentally, it is not at all the
same person that is acting in these different cases. If Sainte-Beuve is
deeply mistaken, it is because he holds it possible to judge a ‘self* on
the basis of observation of these other ‘selves*:
And not having seen the gulf that separates the writer from the society
man, not having understood that the writer’s self shows itself only in
his books, that he only shows society men (even those society men
that other writers are, when in society, who only become writers again
once on their own) a society man like themselves, he was to launch
that famous method which, according to Taine, Bourget and so many
others, is his claim to fame, and which consists, in order to understand
a poet or writer, in questioning avidly those who knew him, who fre­
quented him, who may be able to tell us how he behaved in the matter
of women, etc., that is, on all those very points where the poet’s true self
is not involved. (Ibid., p. 16)
Proust, of course, placing literary creation as he does above all else,
at the top of the hierarchy of existence, has his own illusion about the
writer*s ‘real self*, to be found in a kind of ‘genuine* dialogue between

33
 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF TH E PLU RA L A C TO R

one self and another (‘the true sound of our heart’)* The ‘self’ that
produces literary works is not any more ‘deep’, ‘authentic’ or ‘true’
than the ‘self’ that acts and interacts outside the hours of writing.
Besides, focused on the difference to be made between ‘literature’
(‘the sphere in which one writes’) and ‘outside-literature’, Proust
develops a particularly strong acuteness for everything in the former
domain but remains blind to the internal differences within ‘outside-
literature’, doubtless conceding this ground to his opponent (Sainte-
Beuve). Instead of speaking of the ‘outward self’ (taken as a solid and
undifferentiated block), he should rather (though this was not his
main concern) distinguish ‘the selves’ that express themselves in the
different domains of extra-literary existence. But once his hierarchi­
cal conception is abandoned, along with the dichotomic tendency
that perceives only the differences between the literary self and the
‘outward self’, Proust’s analysis proves to be a little theoretical gem
for grasping the internal plurality of social actors*
T he self that produces works is obscured by the other self, which
may be very inferior to the outward self of many other men’ (Proust,
1988, p. 13). How then, in these conditions, can one correctly judge
the literary work of Stendhal, Baudelaire or Balzac on the basis of
what is known of them in terms of the relationships that they had
with certain of their contemporaries? As opposed to Sainte-Beuve,
one has to ask what is the specifically literary domain in which the
writer places himself each time he writes:

At no time does Sainte-Beuve seem to have grasped what is peculiar

to inspiration or the activity of writing, and what marks it off totally
from the occupations of other men and the other occupations of the
writer. He drew no dividing line between the occupation of writing, in
which, in solitude and suppressing those words which belong as much
to others as to ourselves, and with which, even when alone, we judge
things without being ourselves, we come face to face once more with
our selves, and seek to hear and to render the true sound of our hearts
- and conversation! (Ibid., pp. 14-15)

The case of Baudelaire, which Proust takes by way of example,

shows a great fineness of analysis in this respect* Baudelaire, Proust
recalls, wrote extremely deferential and ingratiating letters to Saint-
Beuve in the hope of obtaining a good review. Whatever interpreta­
tion one might put on such actions (sincerity or a policy of cynicism),
Proust says that they show the difference between what Baudelaire
wrote and the type of behaviour he could display towards an influen­
tial critic of his day:

34
 THE P L U R A L A C TO R

All this bears out what [ was saying to you, that the man who lives in
the same body with any great genius has little connection with him,
but he it is whom his intimates know, so it is absurd to judge the poet
by the man, as Sainte-Beuve does, or by the hearsay of his friends. As
for the man himself, he is only a man and may be utterly ignorant of
what the poet who dwells in him wants. (Proust, 1988, p. 39)

Proust then develops in a few lines the outline of a theory of the

plural individual, made up of ‘several persons superimposed’:

Like the heaven of Catholic theology, which is made up of several

heavens superimposed, our person, in the appearance given to it by our
body, with its head, which circumscribes our thoughts inside a little
ball, our moral person is made up of several persons superimposed. This
is perhaps even more noticeable with poets, who have an additional
heaven, intermediate between the heaven of their genius and that of
their everyday intelligence, kindness and delicacy, which is their prose.
(1988, p. 40)

And so we are plural, different in the different situations of ordinary

life, foreign to other parts of ourselves when we are engaged in this
or that domain of social existence. Attentive as he is to the differences
within situations of writing, Proust even takes his analytical lens to
distinguish, in the poet, the self-who-writes-in-verse (Musset writing
his Ballade d la lune) from the ‘self-who-writes-in-prose’ (Musset
composing his critical essays or speeches to the Academie). But if
the poet who writes in prose is already very different from what he
is when he writes in verse, a fortiori ‘[n]othing of this remains in the
man, the man of real life, of dinner parties and ambition, yet it is to
him that Sainte-Beuve claims to look for the essence of the other, of
whom he has preserved nothing’ (ibid., p. 40). This theoretical intui­
tion of the plurality of ‘persons’ or ‘selves’ (or of the fractioning of
the personality) - we would say summaries of embodied experiences
- within one and the same biological person often leads Proust the
novelist to distinguish between different facets of a character, describ­
ing ‘the Swann of Buckingham Palace’ or ‘Albertine in waterproofs
on rainy days’ (Nicole, 1981), and to display the errors of judgement
that his different characters commit towards one another (only grasp­
ing what of their personality they display in particular contexts) so as
the better to bring out their relative inward heterogeneity.25

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 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF T H E PLU R A L AC TO R

Splitting of the self and mental conflict crossings of

social space
We see each milieu by the light of the other (or others) as well as its
own and so gain an impression of resisting it. Certainly each of these
influences ought to emerge more sharply from their comparison and
contrast, Instead, the confrontation of these milieus gives us a feeling of
no longer being involved in any of them. What becomes paramount is
the ‘strangeness’ of our situation absorbing individual thought.
{Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory)

[n my case* [ made gestures without any thought to them, and as soon

as I crossed the threshold, once outside [ condemn my own behaviour
but do not know how to conduct myself.
{Annie Ernaux, Les Armoires vides)

The sole exception to the rule that the tradition that generally
preaches the singleness of the actor is ready to accept is that which
can be considered in a sense as arising - to a greater or lesser degree -
from a form of mental pathology or disturbance of identity. Referring
cases of internal plurality to the model of a "divided self’26 and of
"mental conflict*, it seeks assurance in a certain sense by telling (itself)
implicitly that the "normal* (in the sense of the most common), and
thus the "law*, is indeed on the side of singleness.
Freud, in fact, used the term "splitting of the ego* to denote the idea
of the "coexistence at the heart of the ego of two psychical attitudes
towards external reality* that "know absolutely nothing of the other*
(Laplanche and Pontalis, 2006, p. 427).27 The subject thus experi­
ences an internal conflict between two impulses, desires and feelings
towards the situations that they live. This perpetual friction28 is lived
with inescapable suffering, which can even lead in certain cases to the
verge of schizophrenia.
This type of plurality, while quite essential to understand, cannot,
however, be taken as the general model of internal plurality of the
actor. It is a particular case of the model of the plural actor as we
conceive this. The first limitation of the idea of splitting, in fact, is
precisely that the multiple is squeezed into the figure of the double
and binary opposition (duplication of the personality, double bind,
double consciousness, double game . ..). But the plural actor is not
necessary a double agent. He or she has embodied several reper­
toires of schemes of action (habits)29 that do not necessarily produce
(major) suffering, in so far as they can quite well coexist peacefully
when expressed in social contexts that are different and separate from

36
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one another, or lead only to limited and partial conflicts in one or

other particular context or domain of existence (many women, for
example, are caught between the desire or necessity of work outside
the home and the desire or necessity of domestic investment, thus
living in these two spaces different ‘forms of oppression’ (McCall,
1992).
But if there is a doubling, if as a result there is just one single central
conflict, and if this internal mental conflict provokes suffering, it is
because the internal plurality of schemes of action (or habits) has
ended up making the unitary illusion of identity impossible and raised
in the actor a problem of mental coherence.30 Everything happens as
if the multiple repertoires that arrange the stock of embodied schemes
of action were all cut into two parts, making the actualization of con­
tradictory schemes of action possible in any context at any time. The
heterogeneity of the stock of schemes of action embodied by the actor
does not systematically lead to mental divisions and conflicts of iden­
tity of this kind. It is most often compatible with the - well-founded
- illusion of personal coherence and identity with oneself.
In order for an actor no longer to be able to give themselves an
illusion of unity of self, so that the main contradiction appears in the
form of a double identity, ‘an inward conversation between differ-
ent segments of the Self’ (Berger and Luckmann 1979), it is gener­
ally necessary to have had unusual experiences of socialization. In
general, the actor will have undergone, at a very early age, system­
atically contradictory socialization experiences. The situation may
be within a particular world (e.g. a double bind exerted at the heart
of the family, and not necessarily represented by father and mother),
or it may display two major social worlds in contradiction (e.g. the
working-class family and the school, in the case of ‘scholars’ who
become ‘class transfuges').
In the case of those who, according to their situation, are described
as ‘class transfuges\ ‘upwardly declassed’, ‘uprooted’, ‘autodidacts’,
‘scholars’ or ‘the saved’, and who rose from the social conditions of
their origin by the path of education,31 we have a clear opposition
between two major and contradictory matrices of socialization (the
family and the school), with symbolic values that are socially different
in the context of a hierarchical society (prestigious/undervalued; high/
low; dominant/dominated . . .), thus generating a heterogeneity of
habits and embodied schemes of action that are organized in the form
of a splitting of the ego, a central internal conflict that organizes (and
embarrasses) every moment of existence. And yet, even in a case like
this, the internal conflict can be appeased and does not always lead

37
 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF THE P L U R A L AC TO R

to major mental dissociations and more serious mental torments (that

depends on the particular history of each actor). Richard Hoggart
thus describes some people who are 'upwardly declassed* but do not
experience their social trajectory with that much suffering, certain
administrators or high officials, or a certain young man who is able
'to smile at his father with his whole face and to respect his flighty
young sister and his slower brother* (Hoggart, 1998, p. 225).
Pierre Naville, who defined the individual personality as the more
or less coordinated set of systems of habits that we have embodied
within different social groups and in various social contexts, also laid
the foundations for an understanding of cases of ‘transfuges\ As dis­
tinct from the actor 'whose integration and adaptation is satisfactory
for the moment* and whose 'situation brings about . . . the predomi­
nance of a certain system of habits* ('we say that the man is “ in his
element” . Age quod agis/*), other actors see 'one of several systems of
habits* dominate 'according to the situation and its demands*, even
entering into conflict in certain cases ('now appeased and overcome,
now again exacerbated*). In this latter case, we can note 'interfer­
ences* between the two contradictory systems of habits: 'a given stim­
ulus may provoke, even partially, two kinds of antagonistic reaction*
and produce 'hesitation, trembling, indecision, inaction* (Naville,
1942, p. 221)32 - a wonderful analysis of the paralysis or discomfort
occasioned by the competition of schemes of action among those
who have embodied contradictory schemes within the same rep­
ertoires. When every social situation is perceived, assessed, judged
and evaluated on the basis of two opposing and competing points of
view, this ambivalence is a cause of suffering. If the opposing schemes
of action could always correspond to distinct social contexts closed
off from each other, if they systematically involved social practices
and domains of affectivity that were very clearly distinct, we would
not see a kind of constant competition and oscillation, but rather a
genuine peaceful doubling (between 'here* and 'there*). For example,
socially diversified cultural tastes apply also to objects or categories of
object (furniture, clothing, interior decoration, etc.) that are identical
between one social group (that of origin) and another (that of destina­
tion), and not only to different domains of practice. Socialized suc­
cessively but in part also simultaneously in worlds in which habits of
taste are different and even socially opposed, these 'class transfuges’
oscillate constantly - and sometimes in a mentally exhausting manner
- between two habits and two points of view.
The transfuges, in fact, in their crossing of social space, constantly
pass from a situation of peaceful coexistence of embodied habits to a
38
 T H E PLU RA L AC TO R

situation of conflict. Annie Ernaux,33 in Les Armotres vides, describes

the period of her childhood as one of calm cohabitation: This was
a good time, between eight and twelve years old; 1 swung between
two worlds, crossing from one to the other without even noticing. It
was enough not to make a mistake; no coarse words or noisy exple­
tives away from home, bound up as they were with the grey-green
corners of the rooms, with the burned cassoulet that 1 scraped from
the bottom of the pan* (1974, p. 71). This is the time when the child
learns, without too much trouble, to apply different schemes of action
according to context, and thus exert a kind of self-control. lA nice
balance for a few years. Until I was twelve this doubling was easy
work . . . The two worlds side by side without too much worry’ (ibid.,
p. 73). On the one hand the family, on the other the school. More
subtly still, on the one hand speech that is bound up mainly with the
family world and not yet engaged too much at school, and on the
other hand writing which is linked only with the educational context
and more readily enables the formation of new ways of speaking and
new linguistic habits (Bernstein, 1974):
I used my new words only for writing, [ gave them the only form
that was possible for me. I couldn’t put them into my mouth. Clumsy
verbal expression despite good results, wrote the teachers on my class
reports. .. [ carried two languages inside me, the little black characters
of books, those delightful crazy insects, alongside the fat and coarse
words so well rooted in the stomach, in the head, which made me cry
at the top of the stairs on biscuit boxes, or joke under the counter . . .
(Ernaux, 1974, p. 77)

As Richard Hoggart expresses the same condition: the scholarship

boy ‘is between two worlds, the worlds of school and home; and they
meet at few points. Once at the grammar-school, he quickly learns
to make use of a pair of different accents, perhaps even two different
apparent characters and differing standards of value’ (1998, p. 228).
The educational situation is indeed foreign, when seen, perceived
and felt via repertoires of schemes of action that are essentially
formed in the socializing context of the family:
There was something strange and indescribable, a complete change of
scenery. Nothing at all like the Lesur cafe and grocery, my parents and
my friends in the yard.. .. Not even the same language. The teacher
spoke slowly, in very long words, she was never in a hurry, she liked to
chat, and not like my mother. ‘Hang your clothes on the coathanger.’
My mother, when [ came in from playing, would cry out: ‘Don’t just
throw your coat down like that, who’s going to put it away? Your

39
 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF TH E P L U R A L A C TO R

socks are all screwed up!’ There was a world between the tw o .. .. This
unease, this shock, everything the teachers said or did about anything,
I listened to and watched, it was light, formless, calm, always to the
point. Real language was what [ heard at home: booze, victuals, get
screwed, old meat. Everything was immediate there, shouts and grim­
aces, overturned bottles. The teacher spoke and spoke, but things didn’t
exist.. . . The school was acting as if things were funny, interesting, all
right. The teacher gave her own radio broadcast, reading stories while
she twisted her mouth and rolled marbles to play the big bad wolf.
Everyone laughed, even I forced myself to laugh. Talking animals didn’t
interest me that much. I thought she was making fun of us by telling us
these stupid things. She jumped up on her chair so well that I took her
to be a bit backward and stupid for telling us these stories of dogs and
sheep. (Ernaux, 1974, pp. 53—4)
But the question of a ‘choice* between one world and another was not
yet raised.
Then, as educational success confirms, the world of school takes
the upper hand and becomes the "point of reference*: "Now there was
only books and school; the rest I began no longer to see* (Ernaux,
1974, pp. 85-6).
At the moment of that solemn communion, the transition to secondary
school, this odd feeling began to grow, of not being at ease anywhere
except with my homework, an essay, a book in the corner of the court­
yard, under the bedcovers on Thursday and Sunday, hidden at the top
of the stairs. . . . I began not to notice anything. To ignore it all. The
shop, the cafe, the customers, and even my parents. I wasn’t there, [ was
in my homework, in my books, as they say. ‘Don’t you get a headache
with all that?’ [ spoke less and less, it upset me. (Ibid., p. 91)
It is hard not to be upset by one’s parents when one gradually comes
to see them through the eyes of another world, on the basis of other
ways of speaking, looking, acting and feeling. But it is hard as well to
forget the ineradicable family and emotional tie that joins parents and
children. Because parents are within a child, through all the habits it
has constructed in its relationships with them, to despise them is to
despise oneself: "It is me that 1 hate. 1 rebel against their slaving away
at the counter, and despise them. . . . Perhaps it is me who prevented
them from buying a nice grocery* (ibid., p. 164). The transfuge or
"scholarship boy’ thus feels "cut in two*, "between two stools* (ibid.,
p. 181), belonging to ‘both the worlds of school and home’ at once
(Hoggart, 1998, p. 227).34
To return to the start of my argument - i.e. the impossibility of
making cases of "splitting of the ego* a general paradigm for an

40
 T H E P L U R A L A C TO R

approach to the plurality of the actor - 1 can note the fact that, like
any actor, the "class transfuges' are familiar with many other inward
contradictions or differentiations - in terms of schemes of action and
repertoires of these. They focus, however, on the main contradiction
that occupies the foreground - i.e. their consciousness. To forget
other differences that do not appear so clearly and consciously to the
eyes of the actor, those that only reveal themselves in the close analy­
sis of long interviews35 or in the wake of direct and systematic obser­
vation of behaviours in varying social contexts, that reveal unknown
to the person being studied their manifold little contradictions, their
behavioural heterogeneity - this would be placing too much emphasis
on the conscious subjectivity of the actor and the socially maintained
illusion of the coherence and singleness of the self.

41
 Scene 2

THE WELLSPRINGS OF ACTION

Presence of the past present of action

Two further major tendencies can be distinguished among theories
of action and the actor. On the one hand there are those models that
confer a determining and decisive weight on the actor’s past, and
more particularly on the very earliest experiences (most often pre­
sumed to be homogeneous) undergone in the course of infancy (e.g.
the various psychological or neuropsychological theories, psychoana­
lytic theory,1 the theory of habitus);2 and, on the other hand, there
are models that describe and analyse moments of an action or an
interaction, or a given state of a system of action, without concern for
the past of the actors (rational-choice theory, methodological indi­
vidualism, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology). In the first
case, past experiences lie at the root of all future actions; in the second
case, the actors are beings deprived of a past, constrained only by the
logic of the present situation: interaction, system of action, organiza­
tion, market, etc. In the former, study of the "order of interaction’ is
very commonly neglected, likewise the singular and complex charac­
teristics of the immediate pragmatic context of action; while, in the
latter, what is neglected, whether deliberately or not, is everything in
the present action that depends on the past embodied by the actors.
If the models of the actor "fully complete in interaction’ or "in the
situation of the moment’ that define him or her by place, role and
position exclusively in this present moment undoubtedly produce
knowledge of the social world, it is not within this sociological tradi­
tion that my own research work and theoretical reflection is located.
These sociologies of the actor without a past remain quite formal
and empty from the perspective of an analysis of actors, and their

42
 TH E W E L L SP R IN G S OF A C T IO N

concern is essentially less with the actor who acts than with the action
per se (its contexts, course, modalities, grammar), no matter what
the past of the actor effecting it. A sociology relieved of any theory
of memory, habit and embodied past, a sociology of anti-Proustian
inspiration, you could say. But it is just as legitimate that other litera­
ture can inspire other sociologies. My intention is therefore to take up
theoretically the question of the embodied past, of earlier socializing
experiences, while by no means neglecting or denying the role of the
present (of the situation) by pretending that our whole past acts 'like
a single person’ at each moment of our action, or by claiming that
what we are and are engaged in at each moment is the synthesis of
everything we have previously experienced, so that it is this synthe­
sis, this unifying principle, this (magic) formula generating all our
practices, that has to be reconstructed.
In fact, the question of the relative weight of past experiences
and the present situation in accounting for actions is fundamentally
bound up with that of the internal plurality of the actor, which is
itself correlative with that of the plurality of the logics of action in
which actors are inscribed or are led to inscribe themselves. If the
actor is the product of a homogeneous and unambiguous family con­
figuration X and encounters in the course of their life only situations
identical or analogous to X, then past and present are one and the
same thing. There is no longer any difference between what the actor
knew previously and what she knows now, and one can then observe,
in an expression of Pierre Bourdieu’s drawn from phenomenology,
a profound relationship of ontological complicity between mental
structures and the objective structures of the social situation, a com­
plicity that is at bottom that of the illusio - i.e. the enchanted rela­
tionship to the situation: the actor lives the situation in his element.
But then there is no longer either past or present (which is precisely
a formula like: ‘ [hjabitus spontaneously orchestrated among them­
selves and pre-adjusted to the situations in which they operate and of
which they are the product* (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 145), since the actor
has lived and continues to live in a homogeneous social space that
is never transformed. In a formula of the kind: ‘a present past that
tends to perpetuate itself into the future by reactivation in similarly
structured practices’ (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 54), the homogeneity and
singleness of the past is presupposed, and the problem of the encoun­
ter between an ‘embodied past’ and a ‘present’ that are different and
contradictory is prematurely closed.
The articulation of past and present, therefore, acquires its full
sense only when (embodied) ‘past’ and (contextual) 'present* are

43
 O U T L IN E OF A TH EO RY O F TH E P L U R A L AC TO R

themselves fundamentally plural and heterogeneous. If the present

situation cannot be ignored, this is, on the one hand, because there is
a historicity implying that what has been embodied is not necessarily
identical to or in harmonious relationship with what the present situ­
ation requires, and, on the other hand, because those involved are not
'One* - i.e. not reducible to a single formula that would generate their
practices, a single internal law or internal nomos.
If practices "cannot be deduced either from the present conditions
which may seem to have provoked them or from the past condi­
tions which have produced the habitus, the durable principle of their
production* (Bourdieu, 1990a, p, 56), a perfectly balanced formula
which it is hard not to accept, the theoretical model most commonly
applied implies a relative primacy of past experiences, in as much
as these are not simply the 'principle* for understanding subsequent
experiences, but also for selecting these (accepting, rejecting or
avoiding them):
Unlike scientific estimations, which are corrected after each experi­
ment, according to rigorous rules of calculation, the anticipations of the
babitust practical hypotheses based on past experience, give dispropor­
tionate weight to early experiences. Through the economic and social
necessity that they bring to bear on the relatively autonomousworld of
the domestic economy and family relations, or more precisely, through
the specifically familial manifestations of this external necessity (forms
of the division of labour between the sexes, household objects, modes of
consumption, parent-child relations, etc.), the structures characterizing
a determinate class of conditions of existence produce the structures
of the habitus, which in their turn are the basis of the perception and
appreciation of all subsequent experiences. (Ibid., p. 54)
Or again:
Early experiences have particular weight because the habitus tends to
ensure its own constancy and its defence against change through the
selection it makes within new information by rejecting information
capable of calling into question its accumulated information, if exposed
to it accidentally or by force, and especially by avoiding exposure to
such information . . . [Bourdieu gives here the example of homogamy.)
Through the systematic ‘choices’ it makes among the places, events and
people that might be frequented, the habitus tends to protect itself from
crises and critical challenges by providing itself with a milieu to which
it is as pre-adapted as possible, that is, a relatively constant universe of
situations tending to reinforce its dispositions by offering the market
most favourable to its products. (Ibid., pp. 60-1)

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 TH E W E LLSPR IN G S O F A C TIO N

The many occasions for maladjustment and crisis

If Bourdieu is right to emphasize the propensity of actors to try to avoid
major crises - i.e. situations that would go too forcibly or permanently
against their embodied programme of socialization - not only does
he confuse propensity (or desires) and real situations (which do not
always permit such avoidance and do not really leave the choice to
the actors), he forgets the existence of the many polymorphous crises
that beset actors in their everyday lives. In point of fact, by privileging
major crises bound up with important transformations of social posi­
tion in social space ('In the absence of any major upheaval (a change
of position, for example), the conditions of its formation are also the
conditions of its realization’; Bourdieu, 2000, p. 150), one ends up
neglecting all the minor or medium-level crises that actors are led to
experience in a differentiated society. By considering certain major
shifts in social space only in terms of the volume and structure of dis­
tribution of capital possessed (cases of social decline or great upward
social mobility), one ends up forgetting that there are also shifts and/
or changes in the world of the family (becoming a parent, divorcing
after being married . . .), the world of friends, etc., as well as those
of a socio-professional order (losing one’s job, changing employers,
moving from one kind of work or employment to another).
Privileging in this way the case of 'happy’ situations, those in which,
as Naville puts it, someone is 'in their element’, the model of magic
adjustment of embodied habits to situations (with which the actor
is confronted),3 Bourdieu remains blind to their multiple occasions
of maladjustment, uncoupling, that produce crises and reflections -
which should clearly not be systematically understood as scholarly or
metaphysical reflections - on action, on others, and on oneself. Crises
of adaptation, crises of the tie of ontological complicity or connivance
between what is embodied and the new situation - such situations
are numerous, multiform, and characteristic of the human condition
in complex, plural societies undergoing transformation. The model
of happy actors 'in their element’, feeling 'like fish in water’ since
they are made for the water and the water made for them, actors not
pulled or laboured by other impulses, embodied habits or tenden­
cies, but complete in their action - this model basically corresponds
more to what one might imagine as the life of an animal in its natural
element than to that of a man.
By way of summary, we offer a list here - undoubtedly not an
exhaustive one - of the cases of discrepancy, uncoupling or malad­
justment that observation of the social world allows us to distinguish:
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 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF TH E PLU RA L A C TO R

1 situations of enforced cultural contradiction in which the actors

cannot do otherwise than live in a situation of permanent cultural
contradiction to what they had previously embodied (e.g. the case
of many pupils forced to go regularly to school even when this
brings them into real crisis - "educational failure* and its various
manifestations being one such situation of crisis [Lahire, 1993a]
- or the situation of indigenous people in Mexico between the
sixteenth and eighteenth century, on whom the Spanish imposed
Western cultural and religious forms [Gruzinski, 1988]);
2 more or less enforced individual or collective transplanting from
one social world to another (e.g. long-term hospitalization, military
service, imprisonment, migration, movement of populations . . .);
3 major biographical ruptures or transformations in individual
trajectories (e.g. sudden social decline or upward declassement,
forming a couple, marriage, divorce or separation,4 the birth of the
first child, retirement, loss of employment . . ,);5
4 discrepancies between certain social properties of the actor and
those of his or her social environment, reminding actors of the
absence of "ontological complicity’ between a part of their disposi­
tions and the situation in which they live (e.g. being the only black
lawyer in a major New York office; a woman occupying a profes­
sion considered socially as masculine, or vice versa;6 coming from a
particular religious or ethnic community and frequenting members
of a different community after a mixed marriage,7 etc.);
5 being pulled between competing habits (tendencies) that lead a
person to live permanently out of phase and with a bad conscience
(e.g. the case of women divided between their housekeeping and
their professional role, or the related but rather different case of
fathers engaged in their professional sphere who experience bad
conscience about their absence from home and their children’s
education, but who conversely think of their work - which is not
getting done - when they devote time to their family);
6 the many small discrepancies (that provoke mini-states of crisis:
loss of temper, feeling of unease, anger, boredom, escape, inatten­
tion, etc.) between embodied past experiences and new situations;
these situations do not necessarily amount to deep questioning of
the socialization situations experienced previously, but neither do
they ever confirm them completely, presupposing therefore supple­
mentary embodiments that are heterogeneous but not contradic­
tory;
7 the minimal adaptations without conviction (at a distance from the
role) made possible by the fact that the stock of embodied schemes

46
 TH E W E L L SP R IN G S OF A C TIO N

is not completely homogeneous and thus enables actors to draw on

a part of them to 'tolerate*, temporarily or permanently, a situation
and adapt to it without too much suffering (especially if the other
embodied schemes turn out to be actualized in other contexts and
other social situations).

These discrepancies and situations of crisis are rarely isolated, and

may combine any which way, increasing troubles and multiplying
minor or major sufferings, questionings and self-examination, and
making existence heavy or burdensome.
It is consequently impossible to say - other than very approxi­
mately, very abstractly and very simplistically - that 'the same history
inhabits both habitus and habitat, both dispositions and position,
the king and his court, the employer and his firm, the bishop and his
see’, and that 'history in a certain sense communicates with itself,
is reflected in its own image* (Bourdieu, 1981, p. 306). This would
mean, for example, that the employer was reducible to his business
activity and that nothing occurs to disturb this miraculous adjustment
between his habitus as employer and his business. He would have in
a certain sense to have been 'born* (and raised) in the business. If the
formula of adjustment and correspondence between dispositions and
position (or at least dispositions and conditions of existence) is theo­
retically interesting, it is, however, never completely verifiable empiri­
cally8 or historically, for the simple reason that an actor’s dispositions
are not constituted in a single social situation, a single social world, a
single social 'position*. An actor (and his or her dispositions) can thus
never be defined by one single 'situation* or even by a series of social
coordinates.

The plurality of the actor and the openings of the

present
That man whom you saw so adventurous yesterday, do not think it
strange to find him just as cowardly today: either anger, or necessity, or
company, or wine, or the sound of a trumpet, had put his heart in his
belly. His was a courage formed not by reason, but by one of these cir­
cumstances; it is no wonder if he has now been made different by other,
contrary circumstances.
(Montaigne, The Complete Essays)
The 'present’ thus has all the more weight in explaining behaviour,
practice or conduct, the more the actors are plural. When these have

47
 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF THE PLU R A L AC TO R

been socialized in particularly homogeneous and coherent condi­

tions, their reaction to the new situations may be very predictable.
Conversely, the more such actors are the product of heterogeneous
or even contradictory social forms of life, the more the logic of the
present situation plays a central role in the reactivation of a part of the
experiences embodied in the past. The past is thus differently "open*
according to the nature and configuration of the present situation.
Rather than assuming the systematic influence of the past on the
present - in other words, rather than imagining that all our past, like
a block or a homogeneous synthesis, weighs at each moment on all
our lived situations (statistical and probabilistic approaches teach us
that the past of an actor opens - and closes - their field of present
possibilities but can in no case describe the relationship between past
and present in terms of causality, for example) - the field of investi­
gation proposed here opens up the question of the modalities of the
triggering of embodied schemes of action (produced in the course of
the whole set of past experiences) by the elements or configuration of
the present situation - i.e. the question of the ways in which a part
- but only a part - of the embodied past experiences is mobilized,
summoned up and reawakened by the present situation.
This scientific interest, if we examine it more closely, is already
present in those statistically based sociological arguments which,
rather than the routine and lazy practice of always using the classic
list of independent variables (socio-professional category, level of
education, sex, age, etc.), seek to determine the most pertinent vari­
ables as a function of the specificity of their object. The question is, on
each occasion, on the one hand to find those variables that are most
pertinent in terms of the object studied - i.e. those that best summa­
rize the particular and specific series of summaries of experiences (or
schemes) activated in the very particular case being studied (cultural
practice, diet, family behaviour .. .) and generate the maximum in
the way of differences within the population under research - while
on the other hand determining the most adequate indicator of the
contexts that are favourable or unfavourable to the activation and
triggering of the schemes in question.9 And even when the classic
variables continue to "function* well, the sociologist must always ask
what it is in such and such a variable that happens to explain the dif­
ferences established in this or that particular domain. Unless they are
(more or less) systematically discriminatory, synthetic variables end
up telling us nothing new about the operation of the social world.
For example, historical research tends to show the absence of a
direct relationship between literacy (or ability to write) and practices
48
 TH E W E L L SP R IN G S OF A C T IO N

of correspondence. Everything happens, in effect, as if 'mastery of a

skill [that of writing] is not sufficient in itself to arouse its mobiliza­
tion in a practical sense. Other reasons are needed. Economic and
social emancipation, which multiplies the circumstances in which
writing a letter is a necessity and opens up spaces that were long
closed in on themselves, making long-distance relationships neces­
sary, is one of these* (Chartier, 1991, p. 12). A favourable institu­
tional context (such as a nearby post office) is not by itself a sufficient
trigger ('the high density of the former does not always offer strong
indications of correspondence*; ibid., p. 19). In the same way, in
contemporary France, 1 have been able to show that women with the
equivalent of degree-level education write more in the home situation
than do men, developing their skills more by their position in the
family than by formal schooling (Lahire, 1993d, 1995b, 1997b). In
parallel with this, there are similarly confused effects of educational
skills in relation to practices of reading: students who obtain good
marks in French are not necessarily heavy readers, a section of them
that is far from negligible even being quite weak (Singly, 1993a).
According to the particular case (objects, domains of practice, etc.),
the variables that make it possible to account most pertinently for
differences in practices will vary. As the American sociologist Anselm
L. Strauss rightly says, these social conditions (social class, sex . . .)
'can be major or insignificant conditions, depending on the specific
contexts of social life that they may or may not much affect* (Strauss,
1993, p. 211).10
If the present situation certainly does not explain anything by
itself, it is this that opens or leaves closed, awakens or leaves in
reserve, mobilizes or silences the habits embodied by the agents.11
Negatively (by what they leave 'unexpressed* or 'unactualized*) as
well as positively (by what they allow to be 'expressed* or 'actual­
ized*), the elements and configuration of the present situation have
a quite fundamental weight in the generation of practices. And this
is indeed confirmed by Freudian psychoanalysis, with its finding that
'a memory may be reactualized in one associative context while, in
another, it will remain inaccessible to consciousness* (Laplanche and
Pontalis, 2006, p. 248).
It is paradoxically from Henri Bergson, generally viewed as an anti-
sociological author, that we can draw the elements of a sociological
analysis of the relationship between present and past. By slightly
transforming certain formulas of this philosopher (as well as setting
aside another part of these),12 we can thus assert that the present
(the present situation) has the ability to 'supplant the past* and allow

49
 O U T L IN E O F A T H E O R Y OF T H E P L U R A L AC TO R

only those memories or habits that can 'fit’ into the 'present attitude’
('that which resembles the present perception from the point of view
of the action to be accomplished’). This same 'present attitude’ ('the
necessities of the present action’) also possesses the negative 'power
to inhibit’ that part of the embodied past which cannot find a way of
activation in the context in question. As Bergson writes, 'it is from
the present that comes the appeal to which memory [or we could say
'habit’] responds’ (1912, pp. 114, 220, 199,197).
It is also quite surprising to see how the sociological tradition that
emphasizes the 'weight of the past* is basically able to neglect the
role of the present situation, even though it is this that often 'decides’
what of the past is allowed to resurface and act within the present
action. This is the case when Bourdieu evokes the analysis that Erich
Auerbach offers of a passage in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse,
to argue for the importance of the past in everyday actions and reac­
tions (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 124), even though this very
example equally reveals the importance of the triggering event (i.e.
trying on a stocking). We need only think of those schemes of action
that, because of radical social transformation or more or less enforced
individual transplantation from one social universe to another (e.g.
imprisonment, long-term hospitalization, migration, war, sudden
social decline or lightning social ascent, etc.), no longer find the con­
ditions of their happy and harmonious actualization to remind or
convince ourselves of the importance of the present situation.

Conditional dispositions
The essential characteristic of the dispositional term, its conditionality
- if Sj then b. most of the time becomes degraded into an unconditional
‘act’.
(J, Van Heerden and A. J. Smolenaars, ‘On traits as
dispositions: an alleged truism’)

Failing to understand that dispositions result from this continuous

exercise of activity is the act of a completely foolish mind.
(Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics)

Like physical 'dispositions’ (e.g. fragility, inflammability, elasticity,

solubility ...) , social ones (the dispositions to act, feel, evaluate,
think, appreciate in such and such a way) are never directly observed
by the researcher. They are unobservable as such (as empiricist logi­
cians like Quine have not failed to note; Crane, 1996, p. 1), yet they

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are supposed to be ‘at the root’ of observable practices. The researcher

must reconstruct them on the basis of (1) the description (or recon­
struction) of practices, (2) the description (or reconstruction) of situ­
ations in which these practices are deployed, (3) the reconstruction
of elements deemed important in the history (itinerary, biography,
trajectory, etc.) of the practitioner.
Is it useful, then, to continue speaking of ‘dispositions* if it turns
out that this term is more serviceable to theoretical rhetoric than to
the understanding and explanation of social practices? Are we faced
here with an empirically useful concept, without which research work
and accounts of it would not be what they are, or rather with what
Michel de Certeau had no hesitation in calling a ‘mystical reality’,
a ‘supplementary category* (between structures and practices) that
sociologists need to close their theory (Certeau, 1984, pp. 57-9)?
Contemporary philosophers do not give sociology much support
on this question, since as many arguments against the notion of dis­
position are to be found as those in its favour. Jacques Bouveresse, for
example, following here Hilary Putnam, notes that, for certain practi­
cal aptitudes, such as knowing how to use a language, ‘a description of
the practical knowledge that makes the practice in question possible
risks being in the end not very different from a description taken from
the practice itself* (1995, p. 582). In point of fact, what extra have
we said when we speak of ‘linguistic competence’ (or ‘dispositions* to
produce linguistic utterances) in order to ‘explain’ the ‘linguistic per­
formances’ of speaking subjects? We are not far removed here from
the ‘virtus dormitiva' of opium. Bouveresse, however, develops this
line of argument and enables us to illuminate the problem, or at least
present it in better terms:

Explanations in terms of ‘disposition’ or ‘habitus’, when these cannot

be the object of a sufficiently independent characterization of the simple
description of the kind of behavioural regularities to which they give
rise, can evidently be suspected of remaining essentially verbal. As
Quine has remarked, a dispositional explanation resembles the recogni­
tion of a debt that one hopes to be able to repay one day by producing
the description of a property of corresponding structure, as chemists
have done for such dispositional predicates as ‘soluble in water’. (Ibid.,
pp. 592-3)

The example of chemistry strikes me as particularly enlightening,

and one can put it to good use in order to draw a series of conclu­
sions. Imagine the following (very) modest experimental procedure:
take a piece of sugar and a glass filled with water; place the sugar in

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the water and it will be seen to dissolve. Can the result of this experi­
ment be summed up by saying that the 'quality* or 'property* of sugar
is to be soluble in water? Can we say that sugar 'has* this property
('solubility*) in the sense of a 'potentiality already there’, a 'disposi­
tion* that exists before any contact with water, taking up therefore the
Aristotelian distinction between 'disposition* and 'action* ('hexis and
energeia’)? That the 'disposition to be soluble’ (solubility) is revealed
by water? Or again that the 'solubility* of the sugar is 'actualized* in
contact with water? Is water simply a ground of actualization, a site
of 'revelation* of a property 'in itself’, a substantial property? Or is the
water itself a co-producer of this 'solubility*, which belongs neither to
the water nor to the sugar, but to the point of their encounter?
Water does not have the power to dissolve any product; sugar does
not dissolve in air. And so there is no property-in-itself that is lodged
somewhere in the sugar, and it may even appear desirable, from a heu­
ristic point of view, to avoid speaking of the 'solubility* of sugar, so
as not to reify the product of an interaction. Instead we can describe,
as we began by doing, the act of dissolution of the sugar in the water.
The property or the disposition in question is a 'relational property’,
a 'property of interaction’, and it sometimes seems preferable to keep
to the description of actions rather than to assume a 'potential* that
'actualizes* itself on the occasion of the encounter (in the 'accident*
that this 'occasion* constitutes). In all cases, to attribute a 'disposi­
tion* to an object, a substance or an actor is to wager (though in some
cases, such as the physical and chemical sciences, the wager is a sure
bet, whereas in others we remain in probabilistic reasoning) on the
propensity or tendency of the object, substance or actor to act (or
react) in a certain fashion in determinate circumstances.
In the order of social behaviour, it would be far too naive to play
with (or on) words by rhetorically distinguishing what is only the
occasional 'trigger* of these behaviours (the event or the context)
from their 'real determinant’ (the embodied disposition). In point
of fact, neither the 'triggering* event nor the disposition embodied
by the actors can be designated as the real 'determinant* of practices
(which would assume a quite improbable model of human action).
The reality here is in fact relational (or interdependent); the behaviour
or the action is the product of an encounter in which each element is
neither more nor less 'determinant* than the other.13 By positing the
triggering event or the context as simply the 'occasion* for liberating
the virtual power or potential of schemes or dispositions, we would
surreptitiously draw on the Saussurian model of speech as simple
actualization (exemplification or illustration) of language (code or
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system) - a mode) which we well know prevented in its day the study
of practices of language and contexts of utterance. Besides, by pro­
ceeding in this way, we completely avoid the fact that the absence
of the triggering or contextual events in question (or the presence
of other types of trigger) has the negative power of leaving dormant
(or silencing), or at least inhibiting, according to the particular
case, memories, skills, dispositions, attitudes, habits, and schemes
of action. As J. Van Heerden and A. J. Smolenaars emphasize: It
is imaginable that an object or person has a certain disposition that
never or rarely reveals itself because its manifestation is blocked by
other factors’ (1990, p. 299).
A first limit to the comparison between the lump of sugar and
the actor on the one hand, the water and the present situation on
the other, lies in the fact that the sugar has no ‘past* and reacts in
exactly the same fashion no matter what particular water (H20 ) is
involved. The sugar has not constituted its ‘disposition to dissolve*
by way of a history of past contacts with water, whereas the actor is
the product of his or her multiple past experiences, multiple acquisi­
tions - more or less complete - made in the course of situations that
have been lived previously.14 There is thus a profound complicity
between actors and social situations, a kind of natural communion,
the actor being the product of the embodiment of multiple situations.
The question raised is therefore that of the mode of accumulation and
restructuring of lived experiences and the actualization of this capital
of experiences (embodied in the form of schemes) as a function of the
situations encountered.
A second limitation follows from the fact that, if dispositions -
whether physical or social - are manifested only in particular condi­
tions or circumstances (e.g. the solubility of sugar in water; a social
situation S), the result of the encounter is more ambiguous with social
dispositions and conditions. There is always an uncertainty here, as
to (1) what actor A will ‘retain* in the situation S, and (2) what in
actor A will be triggered by the situation S. It is hardly possible to
find ‘social conditions* and ‘actors* of whom it would be possible
to predict with certainty the manifestation of a singular disposition
equivalent to the dissolving of sugar in water. Sociological determin­
ism is never as unambiguous as physical or chemical determinism
(Becker, 1994). The behaviour of an actor may well be completely
socially determined, but it is impossible to predict as easily as in the
case of the chemical experiment the appearance of this behaviour.
That depends on the social complexity of the situation (never reduc­
ible by the sociologist to a limited series of parameters, contrary to

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the reduction of the situation to a formula of the kind "H20 ’), which
is also never totally identical to those that the actor has lived previ­
ously (as distinct from the water, which remains identical to itself),
as well as the internal complexity of an actor whose stock of habits
(schemes) is more or less heterogeneous. Apart from these differences,
the example of the sugar and the water pinpoints the tendency to
verbalism and reification that lies in wait for anyone who speaks too
rapidly the language of "dispositions* and substantializes the realities
of interactions.
There is always a great risk of (1) forgetting the conditional (cir­
cumstantial, contextual) dimension of dispositions and (2) ignoring
their scientifically constructed15 nature, or (3) increasingly disasso­
ciating the potential from the acts that have socio-genetically consti­
tuted it. The cases of abuse of language (in Wittgenstein’s sense) are
thus very numerous among adepts of dispositional explanation in the
social sciences.
For example, in everyday life (and sometimes also in science) we
face the temptation of reifying into personality traits the behaviours
or attitudes of an actor that are the product of past socialization
and the situation in which the embodied past is actualized. Then a
person is said to be "calm*, "anxious*, "scornful*, aggressive*, etc.,
whereas these "dispositions* are not properties inscribed in them but
rather relational realities (of interactions) that are observed only in
the encounter between this person and something or someone else.
To convert into dispositional language (solubility, aggressiveness,
etc.) what can be described more simply as a situated behaviour (it
dissolves in water, he was aggressive towards his classmate . . .) does
not increase our knowledge of the social world. In effect, if an actor’s
disposition can be seen only in moments of action, in various prac­
tices, one may wonder whether the distinction between "dispositions*
and "practices* is really useful. In such a case, it is always preferable
to privilege the precise description of the action in its context (Lahire,
1998b). But one could even say that, if dispositional language some­
times does not add a great deal to the circumstantial description
of an action, it can also say too much, in so far as it transforms a
disposition under certain conditions into a general and transposable
disposition. From aggressiveness towards a classmate, we move - by
excessive generalization - to a general aggressive disposition towards
other people.
Once the slippage is made from "conditional* dispositions to per­
manent dispositions, generalizable and transposable to any situation
whatever - in other words, once the clause "under certain conditions*

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is dropped - the role of the context is seriously diminished - and

sometimes even eliminated. For example, omitting the fact that social
dispositions are indissociable from the actions on the basis of which
they can be scientifically constructed, but also by way of which they
are developed and constituted in the socialized body, one ends up
imagining the existence of dispositions which may always remain ‘in
a virtual state’16without ever being actualized. If chemical or physical
analysis of the properties of certain materials can indeed maintain that
a substance is soluble even if it has never been put in water, or that a
glass vessel is breakable without its ever having been broken, because
these properties {not acquired) are stable and identical, what should
be said of a sociological proposition that consists in maintaining that
a person is logical, without their ever having been seen to realize a
logical solution of a problem or without indirect evidence having
been received that affirms the existence of such situations? There is
even a tendency to make embodied dispositions into (internal) motors
of action, self-propelled and self-sufficient: the disposition then seems
to dictate its law, its womos, outside of any particular context, in the
form of a strong injunction, a compulsive ‘it’s stronger than me’.
From the (reconstructed) potential to the act (observed and on the
basis of which the potential in question is reconstructed), it seems
that one ends up forgetting what the words we have chosen - or that
others have chosen for us - mean, and the ties between the two terms
(potentiality/manifestation, cause/effect, assumed/observed) remain
problematic.17
It is never totally possible to avoid dispositional explanation if one
wants to take into account the past experiences embodied by each
actor, but this should be used with caution, avoiding excessive gen­
eralization, and always looking out for manifestations and counter­
manifestations of these dispositions, circumscribing their fields of
activation and their fields of inhibition. Sometimes, even, the notion
of disposition is useful in order to show what these micro-practices
have in common.18 But this should never give researchers the right
to generalize the force of the disposition they believe they can reveal
as being the origin of certain practices, beyond the field of practices
concerned.
Is it possible, none the less, after having observed the diversity of
practices of one and the same actor in very different situations, to
reconstruct ‘general dispositions’ that would account, beyond visible
differences, for a profound unity of attitude, orientation, relationship
to the world and to others, behind the purely phenomenal motley
of behaviours? The perfectly legitimate theoretical ambition hidden
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behind this desire to grasp the fundamental wellspring of action, the

one "principle* of all practices, etc., leads us back, however, to our
initial question as to the singleness or plurality of the actor.

The negative power of the context: inhibition and

latency
The present thus defines and delimits what of the embodied past can
be actualized. By approaching things the other way round, as is com-
monly done, one can say that the present is seen, perceived and inter­
preted by way of our summaries of past experience (appropriation of
a situation in terms of perception schemes already constituted), but
this is to deny the active role of the present situation (of its elements
and/or its overall structure) as a structure of selection, as a filter that
offers the possibility for certain schemes to be activated ("expressed*,
"opened up’), but at the same time closing any other possibility for
the "expression* or "actualization’ of other schemes. This means
very specifically - one could almost say politically - that the social
situations in which we live (from the most formal and institutional
through to the most informal) represent genuine "activators’ of the
summaries of embodied experiences that are our schemes of action
(in the broad sense of the term) or our habits, and that we are thus
strongly dependent on these social contexts (institutional or not) that
"draw* from us certain experiences and leave others in a state of gesta­
tion or latency. A change of context (professional, conjugal, familial,
friendly, religious, political . . .) is a change in the forces that act on
us.
And if these forces sometimes require of us things that we are
unable to give, then we generally have no other choice but to find a
different way of continuing our life - the least bad possible - in the
same context (minimal adaptation), changing the context (escape),
or radically transforming it to make it more liveable (reform or revo­
lution). The nature of the contexts that we are led to pass through
determines the degree of inhibition or repression of a smaller or
greater part of our reserve of competences, skills, knowledge and
know-how, ways of speaking and doing of which we are bearers
(e.g. the cases of children with unlikely educational success, class
transfuges, and children in educational difficulty who are forced to
repress their everyday verbal skills when they are placed in a situation
of academic speech reveal from this point of view a high degree of
repression or inhibition).

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In what sociology has been able to observe of these phenomena,

despite a rather unfavourable theoretical context, we have all pos­
sible cases of competences, habits, dispositions and schemes . .. inert,
torpid, asleep, that are made temporarily or more permanently latent
(for ‘their time’) or suspended. Bringing them back to activity may
depend on the social micro-situation (e.g. interaction with a par­
ticular actor, a certain situation, permitting schemes or habits to be
actualized that are inhibited in some other type of interaction and/or
with some other actor), on the domain of practices (e.g. applying in
relation to food consumption different cultural schemes from those
applied in relation to cultural consumption), on the social universe
(e.g. doing in the family or leisure world what one cannot do in the
professional world), on the social group (e.g. doing in a certain social
group what one would not do in some other social group),19 or again
on the moment in the life cycle (e.g. habits embodied unconsciously
in childhood or during the period of adolescence20 reappear - after
a longer or shorter interval of dormancy - at a different moment in
the life cycle: establishing themselves outside the family home or the
first work situation, forming a couple, embarking on parenthood,
their own children leaving home, retirement. ..). In the final case, the
actors may thus be bearers of habits (schemes of action) embodied in
childhood but which become active and effective only in adult life.
These schemes are then, as it were, products in waiting (for releas­
ers, triggers, demands, external solicitations, favourable contexts),
products (of socialization) with deferred uses.
We can observe, for example, the dual and ambivalent behaviour
of women in a working-class milieu who, on the one hand, work in
their capacity of ‘wives’ to maintain their husband in the home terri­
tory by struggling against his propensity to flee the domestic space in
order to occupy various external spaces (the garage, the bar, places of
hunting and fishing, etc.), and, on the other hand, are the first, in their
capacity of ‘mothers’, to develop in their sons (but not in their daugh­
ters) the desire to ‘go out’ (Schwartz, 1990, p. 208). The behaviours,
attitudes or practices (as you like) around one and the same event
thus appear different according to the identity (of wife or mother)
engaged in the situation.
In the same way, we know that forming a couple or establishing
a family with the birth of the first child (as particular moments in
the life cycle) can transform certain women in a quite surprising way
(particularly for those around them - i.e. those who knew the woman
in question before she entered a relationship, in a single situation,
but also for herself). This is the case, for example, with those women
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who seem to have broken with the model of housewife as represented

by their mother, and who, once they form a relationship, whether
for the first or a subsequent time, often find themselves back in this
traditional role whose habits they had embodied in the course of
their childhood and adolescence, often without even having realized
it,21 The same person thus reveals herself to be bearing at least two
heterogeneous domestic schemes of action, and, depending on the
mode of interaction established with her partner (expecting a woman
attached to the domestic space or one more attracted by a profes­
sional career), one of the two schemes is activated and the other put
in reserve (Kaufmann, 1994, p. 307). According to the particular
case, different identities or embodied habits, different and sometimes
even contradictory internalized schemes of action, find their terrain
of expression either in other sites than that of the domestic space (in
the mode of compensation) or at particular moments in the life of the
couple, whether in a conflictual or a pacified mode.22
In the course of my own research on educational behaviour in
primary school (Lahire, 1995d), 1 was able to establish major varia­
tions in behaviour as a function of the scene in question, thus indi­
cating the activation of different social dispositions and schemes of
action according to context. In a kind of game proposed to class
teachers for the third year of primary school, who were asked to posi­
tion each of their pupils systematically from the standpoint of per­
ceived educational categories,23 1 obtained contradictory responses on
many occasions, provoked by kinds of micro-conflicts of evaluation
that arose from taking into account different educational contexts.
Those teachers who tacitly anchored their evaluations or apprecia­
tions in the context of the classroom and the time spent strictly teach­
ing did not have any particular problem in carrying out this task. On
the other hand, when a certain variety of educational micro-contexts
or types of educational interaction were taken into account by the
teachers, the difficulty of classification could become insurmountable.
A pupil could thus prove ‘good* in one context (the class) and ‘bad* in
another one (the playground).
For example, in the list of pairs of adjectives proposed, a woman
teacher (private Catholic school in Lyon) judged one of her pupils,
Anne-Sophie, on the positive side: calm, polite, active (but ineffec­
tive), having sufficient desire to work if she was in good conditions
(only if she had excellent emotional surroundings), participative, dis­
ciplined, stable, not really disorganized, having a good memory, quite
rigorous and stubborn; and, on the negative side: fearful, anxious,
emotional, not very reflexive, rather babyish, lacking self-confidence,

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often asking for explanations but especially for affection, not autono­
mous at work, laborious from the standpoint of comprehension,
irregular in work effort, not very logical, not very cultivated, not
particularly curious, not particularly gifted, 'pedestrian*, not very
careful and influenced by her schoolfriends. She also assessed her
as kind and agreeable in interaction with adults but very aggressive
and disagreeable with her schoolfriends, reserved with adults but
talkative with schoolfriends. Above all, the teacher emphasized Anne-
Sophie’s radical change of behaviour between class and playground.
'She is completely different in recreation with other children. She
always rushes in with the boys; she is very boyish, she wants to play
football with the boys, and Pd say she had a very masculine side to
her.* According to the situation in question, the adjectives used for
her could often be opposed: ‘One could almost have put down the
opposite.*
The same type of situation was found in a completely different edu­
cational context (state school in a Lyon suburb). Akim was a pupil
with some educational difficulty, but posed no problem to his teacher
in the classroom. Contrary to many pupils who were very weak aca­
demically, ‘got nothing out of working in a group* and ‘remained
passive*, Akim had good relations with his classmates in the groups:
‘He is quite able to join in with the group; he can take his place
and even has things to say.* But the particular reason he is assessed
as 'special* is that his behaviour in class is quite the opposite of his
behaviour in the playground. 'Although he*s just a child, when you
see him in the playground you say: “ He must be horrible” , and it*s
true that he behaves hatefully, he defies the teachers and people whom
he doesn*t know. When he*s in class, he gets down to work.* Though
the teachers are horrified by his behaviour in the playground (T saw
him there again early in the afternoon. He approached a pupil with
his "little ruffian” side and began to threaten him . . .*), he turns out
to be very disciplined in the classroom: 'Whereas in class, apart from
asking me questions, l*m hardly aware that he*s there. 1 don*t have to
do anything. Not a thing!* His teacher reacts very clearly to the list
of adjectives shown her: 'Careful about this one, he*s completely dif­
ferent in class and in the playground. There*s nothing in common at
all. In class I hardly hear him*, (whereas in the playground) 'he kicks
up a racket, he*s aggressive, a leader, everything that he isn*t in class!*
Akim seems to have made a division of his habits according to the
situation (classroom or playground), disciplining himself in class and
letting his more aggressive dispositions run riot in the playground ('a
horror*).

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An important question, therefore, already raised by the work

of Pierre Bourdieu and Abdelmalek Sayad on the situation of the
Algerian peasants, remains that of knowing whether the different
schemes of action or different habits embodied by the actors in the
course of their past experience can be reactualized within the same
social contexts (e.g. in the couple for spouses), or whether their het­
erogeneity and their contradictory character are such that they can
only tolerate lives separated into types of interaction, social situa­
tions, social groups or social worlds that are dispersed and relatively
closed off from one another with different persons and in different
spaces and times (e.g. the peasant who evaluates his agricultural
production in money when it is sold to dealers, but remains in a pre­
capitalist logic when he is within the family or community).24 In the
second type of case, only one part of social being is "realized* in the
couple, another part in the sphere of work, a further part in the exer­
cise of cultural activity, and so on - the nightmare then being, both
literally and figuratively, finding all these persons in one and the same
situation.25 In fact, contrary to the proverb that maintains that "the
friends of my friends are my friends*, condensing a whole vision of
interpersonal involvement as always identical to itself, the friends of
my friends are precisely not necessarily my friends. In point of fact it
is not "entire* actors with homogeneous habitus that spend time with
one another, but actors who adapt or agree among themselves some­
times on precise points and in well-defined situations. This simple
fact accounts for the many cases of social intransivity (if x is on good
terms with y who is on good terms with z, this does not mean that x
is on good terms with z).

'Code switching' and 'code mixing' within the same

context
If we had to cite just one field of research that had finely worked
through the question of the plurality of habits and their circum­
stantial triggers within the same context, we would have to refer to
several works of North American sociolinguistics. Working in mul­
ticultural contexts (from the standpoint of socio-economic position,
but also ethnic origin in their subjects), on the terrain that they have
adopted (practices of language), these sociolinguists have studied in
depth the phenomena of heterogeneity of embodied linguistic and
language habits. Thus John Gumperz noted that

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minority groups, in fact, pass a large part of their days in sites where
the dominant norms prevail. . .. This juxtaposition, symbolized by a
permanent to and fro between modes of action and expression that are
internal to the group and others that are external, produces consider­
able effects on everyday behaviour. .. . Those who belong to majority
groups and have never lived this disjunction between public and private
behaviour often find it hard to appreciate its effects. (1989, p. 80)
What is particularly to be observed with such actors is the change
of language between one ‘sentence’ and another (‘code switching’),
and even in the course of the same ‘sentence’ (a mixture of languages
or ‘code mixing’). These changes are never the result of chance or an
incoherence due simply to repeated cultural contacts with a tongue
different from the maternal one. The subject of conversation associ­
ated with the world of the mother tongue (Spanish, for example)
can suddenly trigger a shift into this language.26 When the theme of
discussion becomes more formal, or the relationship between the two
interlocutors is less warm and friendly, the bilingual subject may pass
from his or her mother tongue to English - in the same way as one
moves in French from the familiar to the polite form of address. And
similar facts are observed within the same language, between differ­
ent styles of speech (in a social hierarchy from the more prestigious to
the more stigmatized), as William Labov notes in his account of a case
of sudden triggering of language habits that were kept carefully inhib­
ited up until then thanks to a great self-control (hyper-cor recti on):
I interviewed a foreman on the railroads in Atlanta, and my wife, who
is a sociologist, interviewed his wife. The wife had an educational level
and social origin that was lower than her present position. What was
surprising, given the social characteristics of this subject, is that no
double negative - a form highly stigmatized in English - appeared in her
discourse. Up to the moment that my wife asked her a question about
cooking: ‘Do you measure the quantities?’ Spontaneously, she replied:
‘Honey, I don’t measure nothin’.’ The researcher here touched on a
key theme of symbolism in cooking. A good cook does not measure.
Measurement is bound up with a superficial knowledge drawn from
recipe books. The symbolic of vernacular cooking implies use of the
vernacular language, in particular the double negative. (Labov, 1983,
p .71)
But it is David Efron’s (1941) anticipatory analysis that offers the
prototype of all sociolinguistic studies. Efron studied gestural behav­
iour, starting with the provisional hypothesis that this varied cultur­
ally from one group to another. To test his hypotheses, he undertook
primarily in New York, and secondarily in the Adirondacks, the

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Catskills and the town of Saratoga, a series of direct observations

(and in a ‘natural* situation, with subjects who did not know they
were being observed, in houses, streets, parks, markets, theatres,
religious buildings, restaurants, hotels, at public political meetings, in
schools, colleges and universities, summer resorts . . .) of the gestural
habits of several socio-cultural groups* These were Eastern Jews of
Lithuanian origin and Southern Italians hailing from the Naples area
and Sicily, each group divided in turn into two categories - i.e. ‘tradi­
tional* (preserving the habits of their country of origin, or that of their
parents) and ‘assimilated* (more or less removed from the customs
of their group of origin, adopting North American habits, with the
feeling of being well integrated). If one of the lessons of this study
is certainly the empirical finding that gesture is in no way innate but
varies culturally, Efron considered all the same that one of the most
significant aspects of the gestural behaviour of Americanized Italians
and Jews consisted in the combination of gestures issuing from the
groups or communities of origin with gestures specific to Americans
of Anglo-Saxon origin. He called this kind of combination ‘hybrid
gesture* or ‘gestural bilingualism*.27 The cases that Efron mentions
show very weli how what triggers the use of this or that gestural reg­
ister can vary according to the situation: use of language (using Italian
gestures when speaking Italian), the interlocutor (whose cultural
origin spontaneously triggers the use of associated gestural habits),
the style of the utterance (use of North American gestures in argu­
mentative reasoning and gestures from the Jewish community in a
moment of impassioned emphasis). Efron even indicated the possibil­
ity of actors embodying the gestural habits of more than two groups.

Actors uncertainly swinging

University students, for the first time in their educational progress,
have to face up to a fundamental problem in their studies. This
problem, which is resolved right away by institutions with strong
educational support (lycees, the preparatory classes for the grandes
ecoles, departments for higher technicians, university technology
institutes .. .), consists in organizing and arranging one’s daily,
weekly and annual time.28 Leaving students ‘free* to organize and
occupy a large part of their time, the university institution leaves
them objectively free to fail in the practical (cultural) resolution of
this problem. If those students (who are then still more like pupils)
with the strongest educational support experience long sequences of

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 TH E W E L L SP R IN G S O F A C TIO N

unambiguous activities, constrained to an educational mono-activity

for a relatively long period, university students on the other hand con­
front a difficulty (new in their educational trajectory) of establishing a
context of educational study most often in a non-academic domestic
world.29 They must set up for themselves specific places of study, and
especially specific times, within space-times that are most often mul­
tifunctional, in which several activities can compete within the same
temporal sequence. Why get up at seven or eight in the morning if
classes don’t begin until two in the afternoon? Why not watch televi­
sion, chat with one’s parents, brothers and sisters or friends, when
writing up course notes or preparing for the end-of-year exams can
wait a while - or at least appear to wait?
When the separation of the educational context from the non-
educational context and the fluctuations between them are no longer
objectified and institutionalized (as was the case in the context of
the lycee), they become 'personal’ problems that each student must
seek to resolve. As Erving Goffman writes, if a 'collectively organized
social activity’ is 'often marked off from the ongoing flow of sur­
rounding events by a special set of boundary markers or brackets of
a conventionalized kind’, and these conventional parentheses 'occur
before and after the activity in time and may be circumscriptive in
space’ (Goffman, 1974, pp. 251-2), university students must then
invent markers of this kind so as to work in the absence of any exter­
nal and coercive imposition of particular moments of work:

We become so used to measuring time in order to use it fully that we

no longer know what to do with those portions of duration not so
measured, when we are on our own and outside the current of external
social life, as it were. These could become so many cases where we
momentarily forget time but rediscover ourselves. Quite to the contrary,
we are aware of what are really empty intervals, and our problem is
knowing how to pass the time. (Halbwachs, 1980, p. 90)

University students, particularly in the less supported faculties, are

differentiated among themselves from the standpoint of the degree of
self-discipline, self-government and asceticism they are able to display
as a function of their family socialization and earlier education.
Very often, however, for some of them it is a question of repressing
or inhibiting hedonistic dispositions, which they are well aware act
against a part of themselves that desires to work.
Recent research in cognitive psychology tends to show that
the human being - child, adolescent and adult - is endowed
with a composite mental structure, in which heterogeneous and

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 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF THE P L U R A L AC TO R

even contradictory schemes of perception, representation and action

coexist. In the context of tasks to realize, the inhibition of 'danger­
ous* or 'disturbing* schemes (from the standpoint of the nature of
the task), which coexist with pertinent schemes, enables individuals
not to fall back into the trap that is held out to them. Thus we do
not have, in the context of mental development, a simple linear pro­
gression from inadequate schemes towards more adequate ones, but
rather the coexistence of heterogeneous and logically contradictory
schemes (from the most 'rational* to the most 'irrational*). Success in
the task thus presupposes the activation of the pertinent schemes, but
also necessitates the inhibition of competing schemes which, if they
were triggered, would lead towards an error of perception and/or a
failure of realization (Houde, 1995; Pascual-Leone, 1988; Pascual-
Leone and Baillargeon, 1994). One could thus say that success here
lies, for a large section of students, in their ability to inhibit social dis­
positions that are inadequate (in relation to the objective of success in
their studies). We thus observe a real struggle by these students, and
sometimes a very conscious one, against a part of themselves that they
do everything to keep dormant. There is only one thing they can draw
on for this: the work context. This is then chosen consciously and
conscientiously - which is otherwise a rather uncommon situation -
with a view to arranging the most favourable conditions, those most
propitious to establishing ascetic and educational dispositions and,
conversely, avoiding dangerous temptations.
Choosing to study on the university premises (in the library or a
study room) is sometimes a deliberate way of avoiding the domestic
space, site of all (bad) temptations and 'bad habits*, which concen­
trates the greatest number of triggers of anti-scholastic dispositions
or pretexts not to work (TV or hifi almost instinctively switched on,
family members demanding attention and breaking the continuity of
school work, musical instruments that silently invite students to close
their books, a fridge that invites constant nibbling . . .). The university
location makes it possible to place oneself in optimal conditions for
establishing ascetic schemes. For all that, the university library can
also be the site of informal discussion with friends, which stops work
from advancing. It is also necessary to choose partners in one*s work
or else isolate oneself in individual study cubicles. Certain students
are aware of the conditions in which they can draw best advantage
from themselves {'1 know myself . . .*) and deliberately act {'This
forces me . . .*) on the work context: the choice of work site and the
arrangement of the work situation constitute a kind of technique of
self-control.

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 THE W ELLSPR 1N G S OF A C TIO N

Besides, often being on both sides of the opposition between ascetic

and hedonistic dispositions, students can, in the light of changing
encounters from one year to another (depending on whether the
fellow students they hang about with are hard-working or rather
bohemian), acquire the taste for extra-curricular pleasures (going out
in the evenings, group sociability, relaxing, love affairs . . .) and give
expression to hedonistic dispositions that were previously repressed
or postponed or, on the contrary, reinforce their studious dispositions
(mutual aid between students, motivating educational discussions
• )-30
•

65
 Scene 3

A N A LO G Y AND TRANSFER

Practical analogy and the triggers of action and memory

Our daily life is spent among objects whose very presence invites us to
play a part: in this the familiarity of their aspect consists.
{Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory)

Action (practice, behaviour, etc.) is thus always the meeting point of

individual past experiences that have been embodied in the form of
schemes of action (sensory-motor schemes, schemes of perception,
evaluation, appreciation . . .), of habits, of manners (of seeing, feeling,
saying and doing) and of a present social situation. In the face of each
'new* situation that presents itself, the actor will act by 'mobilizing*
(without necessarily being conscious of this mobilization) embodied
schemes that the situation calls forth.
In this opening up of the embodied past by the present, in this
mobilization of the embodied schemes of past experience, the role of
practical analogy seems especially important. It is in the capacity to
find - practically and globally, and not intentionally and analytically
- a resemblance (what Wittgenstein called an ‘air of resemblance*)
between the present situation and the past experiences embodied in
the form of summaries of experience that actors can mobilize the
'competences* which enable them to act in a more or less pertinent
manner. (Social life is indeed not poor in misunderstandings, in
'errors* of diagnosis on the part of the actors; Gumperz, 1989).
Practical reasoning of the type 'this resembles that*, which rarely
needs to be made explicit, is a reasoning that is generally approxi­
mate and variable. It can both neglect certain features of the situation
under way in order to retain only a general relational scheme (the

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 AN ALOGY A N D TR A N SFE R

man-woman relationship, that of mother-daughter, of hierarchical

superior to inferior, etc.) and attach itself to a detail totally de-con-
textualized from the situation as a whole (a gesture, a smell, a taste, a
word, a voice, a noise, an object, a place - house, landscape, quarter
- a photograph, etc.).1 Since the analogy or resemblance is most often
not thought of as such by the actors, the latter can even, in certain
cases, have an impression of dejd vu or dejd vecu - i.e. an intuition of
having experienced the same situation, felt the same sensations, feel­
ings, etc. - in short, of having played the same scene or seen it played
in a more or less distant past.
What it is in the order of memory that can lead someone to say ‘this
reminds me of* (seeing this, hearing that, smelling a certain perfume
. . .) is more rarely explicitly manifest in the order of action, where
what is involved is rather ‘this makes me act in this or that way*, the
‘this or that* here being ways of acting that were earlier acquired, and
are more or less nuanced and modulated according to the demands of
the new situation. We are dealing here with a kind of (weakly instru­
mented) jurisprudential comparison between the present ‘case* and
‘cases* already experienced (which form ‘precedents*), which reopens
the past in order to resolve a problem (more or less new for the actor)
that the present situation generates, or, more simply, in order to react
adequately to this situation. The legal metaphor - though limited by
the infinitely weaker degree of objectification, formality and reflexive
consciousness in more everyday and less institutional situations -
makes it possible none the less, on the one hand, to avoid an overly
formal recourse to theories of action that invoke norms or rules by
which actors orient their action2 and, on the other hand, to insist on
the importance of the present in the mobilization of the embodied
archives of the past: if there were no new cases to ‘deal with*, the
past would not be mobilized in terms of the specific logical character­
istics of these new cases. If it is possible to insist on the operation of
the ‘reactivation of] the sense objectified in institutions* (Bourdieu,
1990a, p. 57) by the habitus as practical sense, one should not neglect
the converse operation of the reactivation of the embodied past by
institutions. By appropriating an object, a situation, an institution or
a place, actors give life to what went unheeded, but, conversely, it is
because they find themselves in the presence of the object, situation,
institution, place, etc., that this arouses what would otherwise have
remained temporarily or more permanently in a latent state.
Studies of the relationships of interdependence within family con­
figurations, for example, reveal the fact that certain types of conflict
within couples (husband-wife) arouse and reactivate daughter-father
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 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF T H E P L U R A L ACTOR

conflicts.3 In other cases, the daughter-father relationship is explicitly

mentioned by the female interviewee in order to be able to talk about
the husband-wife relationship: if the former relationship could make
the second possible (the commonplace idea of the daughter who finds
in her partner physical attitudes or characteristics that ‘remind* her
of her father), the second in fact reopens the first more or less con­
sciously. Sometimes, however, the same couple that can on occasion,
in certain circumstances, reactivate the daughter-father relationship
instead reactivates more the mother-son one (the woman being to her
husband what the mother was to her son).4 In the same way, in family
interrelationships, certain practical convergences or associations of
two "empirically* different individuals lead to a relationship with one
being lived in a way that may be bound up with the history of the
relationship with the other: this was the case with one of my female
subjects, whose interview described the rancour she feels towards her
sister-in-law (her brother’s wife) and who also developed an aggres­
siveness towards the wife of her husband’s cousin, whom she seemed
spontaneously to perceive as analogous in some way to her sister-
in-law. Almost unknown to herself, therefore, she could play scenes
with the second individual that she habitually played with her sister-
in-law, and the sociological interview in such a case was the moment
when this became conscious.
But the analogy between situations can be still more complex, and
bring into play both characters in an interaction. Thus the account
by one interviewee enabled me to reconstruct a relationship that had
been experienced a few years before. The two protagonists in this
scene were both academics: the first was a young Moroccan man, not
yet thirty, who had come to France to attend a conference; the other
was a French woman of about fifty, one of the conference organizers.
During the man’s stay, a friendly relationship was established (the
origin of which we can well imagine), the second individual invited
the first for dinner, and they gradually revealed their respective life
stories: the man was the son of divorced parents, and had basically
lived with his mother, with whom he maintained a very strong tie;
the woman had been divorced about ten years earlier, and lived alone
with her son of fifteen. The interview with the first individual told of
how he experienced a feeling of deep affinity with this woman whom
he had only known for a few days. The woman who invited him - still
according to the account that he gave - seems to have experienced
the same almost magical feeling. Everything happened as if these two
people, unknown to one another, university colleagues for the time of
this conference, had played out a mother-child scene, given that both

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 A N A LO G Y A N D T R A N SFE R

shared a common situation in the family positions that they occupied.

One could say that the charm or magic of the situation here lay in the
fact that they were sufficiently conscious to "tell the difference* ("He
is not my son*, "She is not my mother*), yet without being able to do
otherwise than operate practical convergences, analogies and tacit
associations that led them to relate to one another in the context of
a quasi mother-son relationship. These two individuals were still in
regular touch with each other three years after their first meeting.

Involuntary action and memory

And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect
of a depressing tomorrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of tea in which
I had soaked a portion of the madeleine.
(Marcel Proust, The Way by Swanns)
Thus is gradually formed an experience of an entirely different order,
which accumulates within the body, a series of mechanisms wound up
and ready, with reactions to external stimuli ever more numerous and
various, and answers ready prepared to an ever growing number of pos­
sible solicitations. We become conscious of these mechanisms as they
come into play; and this consciousness of a whole past of efforts stored
up in the present is indeed also a memory, but a memory profoundly
different from the first, always bent upon action, seated in the present
and looking only to the future.
(Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory)

Maurice Halbwachs explained "forgetting* by the disappearance of

the social contexts of memory that allow us constantly to mobilize
and reactivate our recollections: if the groups, institutions, individu­
als, objects, etc., that sustain our memory disappear, this puts in ques­
tion a whole part of our mnemonic capacity, not because this has
disappeared, but because it no longer finds in the experienced present
the triggering elements capable of recalling to consciousness what
then seems definitively and desperately forgotten (Halbwachs, 1992,
p. 172).
Simply noticing something familiar in an everyday surrounding
(landscape, urban space, apartment . . .), the sight of a detail (a
gesture, an object, a piece of clothing . ..), an auditory stimulation (a
voice, a laugh, a noise . . .) or one of taste or smell (whether natural
or artificial) can trigger a memory (and in this way provoke great
emotion), reopen a whole piece of the past that one believes forgot­
ten ("that reminds me of . . .*), or impel to action by provoking the

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 O U T L IN E OF A T H E O R Y OF T H E PLU RA L A C T O R

operation of a scheme of action or a habit {‘this makes me act like

. . .*). As Maurice Halbwachs writes on the subject of the child who
has 'left one society in order to pass into another*, and who seems
to ‘ have lost the ability to remember in the second society all that he
did and all that impressed him, which he used to recall without dif­
ficulty, in the first. In order to retrieve some of these uncertain and
incomplete memories it is necessary that the child, in the new society
of which he is part, at least be shown images reconstructing for a
moment the group and the milieu from which the child had been torn*
(ibid., pp. 37-8).
One can thus conjure up, in the manner of Proust, the experi­
ences of involuntary action and involuntary memory that are an
everyday part of our relationship to social situations. By involuntary
memory Proust understands memory that is the product not of a con­
scious intellectual effort, but rather of a 'spontaneous* trigger, often
mysterious for the person who experiences it, of fragments of the
embodied past. Without this being done voluntarily or intentionally,
consciously sought, actors are invaded by a past that imposes itself
on them under the effect of minute external stimuli.5 An evocative
little nothing, a minuscule and seemingly anodyne event (the taste of
tea or a madeleine, the scent of hawthorns, the smell of a bungalow,
stumbling on the uneven paving of a courtyard, the marbled pink
of a pond, etc.) can thus activate a past sensation, and along with it
the whole context or set of experiences that are associated with it.
The famous episode of the softened madeleine dunked in tea gives
us the very paradigm of this involuntary memory: a smell and a taste
suddenly trigger the memory of analogous sensations in the past6 or
reawaken these sensations by bringing ‘the whole of Combray* to
consciousness - i.e. the whole context of the time with which these
sensations are irrevocably bound up. More realistic and correct than
those realist novelists who organize their story chronologically at the
cost of destroying the multiple links between the present action and
the remobilized past, neglecting the constant provocation of the past
by the present, Proust deemed real life to be 'very little chronological,
with so many anachronisms intervening in the passage of days* (cited
in Raimond and Fraisse, 1989, p. 108).
The model of involuntary action can be conceived along similar
lines: instead of and in the place of memory, we then have aschemeof
action (a habit) that is triggered by continuous contact with elements
of the context that surrounds the actor.7 It is this type of action that
Bergson was seeking to describe8 when he spoke of ‘an instantaneous
recognition, of which the body is capable by itself, without the help

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 A N A LO G Y A N D TR A N SFE R

of any explicit memory-image* (1912, p. 109), This certainly does

not mean that we let ourselves be guided, in the course of our action,
by the different sensory stimuli that we find along our way. Such a
specimen of actor - a kind of permanent flaneur - would not get any­
where, and never achieve any goal. Thus, in the example that Bergson
gives after the above definition ("1 take a walk in a town seen then for
the first time. At every street corner 1 hesitate, uncertain where 1 am
going. 1 am in doubt; and 1 mean by this that alternatives are offered
to my body, that my movement as a whole is discontinuous, that
there is nothing which foretells and prepares future attitudes. Later,
after prolonged sojourn in the town, 1 shall go about it mechani­
cally, without having any distinct perception of the objects which
1 am passing*; ibid, p. 110), it seems clear that the actor may well
have intentionally decided, for example, to go to his place of work.
But the practical knowledge of the route, acquired by regularly fol­
lowing it, means that this can be realized in the mode of involuntary
action. Though decided intentionally (which again does not mean
"freely*), the route that takes me to work does not consist in a series
of voluntary, intentional and conscious acts.
Rather than "remembering* things from the past - i.e. "representing*
the past and maintaining a mnemonic relationship with it - actors
"see* their past (embodied in the form of schemes of action and habits)
activated and triggered for action. We must make clear, however,
that this "action* is not restricted to "bodily* or "gestural* action. The
habit that we have of viewing action (as in "action* novels or films
where things "move* - i.e. where spectacular physical events con­
stantly recur) as necessarily "active* (rather than "passive*) often leads
us to neglect the action of thinking, imagining, daydreaming, speak­
ing, writing, etc. The word "action* thus has to be understood in the
broad sense of the term: speaking and responding, thinking or men­
tally imagining a "thing* or a situation, making a gesture, running,
walking, lying down, turning, pivoting, jumping . . . The analytic
dividing line between memory and action simply indicates conscious­
ness of the past in the one case and the absence of consciousness in
the other.9 In remembering, the actor locates in the past images that
arise and impose themselves under the effect of a particular trigger.
By acting (speaking, thinking, moving . ..), the past comes to "expire*
(Bergson*s word) in their action, but it does not appear as such; it is
acted or replayed rather than being newly presented or memorized.
In these triggers of schemes of action (habits of thought, language,
movement . . .) the past is at the same time so present and so totally
invisible, so perfectly imperceptible as such, that, as distinct from

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memory, it is confused with perception, appreciation or gesture.

'Habit rather than memory, it acts our past experience but does not
call up its image* (Bergson, 1912, p. 195).

The role of habits

Man is a creature who can get used to anything, and [ believe that is the
very best way of defining him.
{Fyodor Dostoevsky, Memoirs from the House o f the Dead)
From a historical inquiry into the concept of 'habit* in sociology,
Charles Camic concludes that it is the institutional struggles of sociol­
ogy (dominated) against psychology (dominant, particularly - in the
United States - in its behaviourist version) that largely explain the
marginal place that this concept has occupied in sociology (Camic,
1986). The concept has been in some ways the victim of the desire
for autonomy and legitimacy on the part of the sociological discipline
and its revolt against behaviourism. By abandoning to psychology the
study of 'habit*, sociologists have in a certain sense - for reasons of
scientific strategy - lost a battle in order to win the war (recognition
and institutionalization of their discipline); they have sacrificed a part
of what could have been their territory in order to ensure the success
of their legitimate claim for autonomy. It is sometimes better to lose
part of one*s territory and ensure one*s independence than to fight on
all fronts and risk losing everything. It is in this way that the notion of
'habit* was dismissed and reduced to the idea of a 'mechanical reac­
tion to determinate stimuli*, deprived of ref lexivity and self-generated.
In the minds of many American sociologists of the first half of the
last century, the term 'habit* was necessarily tied to the reductionist
notions of behaviourism in the study of human action. Habits and
other conditioned reflexes were unable to win the favour of sociolo­
gists, for whom reflective action was of principal importance. From
W. 1. Thomas and F. Znaniecki, via R. E. Park and E. W. Burgess
to Talcott Parsons, the primacy and central place of consciousness,
reflection, the intellectual elements of action, rules consciously fol­
lowed, etc., was regularly emphasized - i.e. those dimensions that
ultimately differentiate us from the animal realm and the physiologi­
cal register. Rather than 'habit*, the preferred term was 'attitude*.
Why then go back10 to a notion that seemed to have been definitively
buried?
First of all, for the converse of the reasons that led to its abandon­
ment. Today sociology is in a position to renew its ties with psychol­

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 A N A LO G Y AND TR A N SFE R

ogy (in its various forms: from experimental psychology through

clinical psychology to cultural psychology)* We could even say that it
must do so if it does not want to continue living with an outmoded
conception of psychology, embedded in its theories of action, emotion
and cognition. Also because, as distinct from the notion of habitus,
which alone in contemporary sociology - along with that of ‘routine*
used by certain North American interactionists (Strauss, 1993) -
refers centrally to embodied habits, the notion of habit makes it pos­
sible to avoid a fatal confusion in social science - i.e. between habit
as a modality of action, involuntary and unintentional, and the kind
of habit (reflective or non-reflective - e.g. having the habit of kicking
a football rather than that of taking a grammatical look at language).
Thus habit can be a habit of theoretical thinking, a habit of reflection,
of planning, conceptualization, etc., and is in no way at all reduc­
ible to pre-reflective behaviours. An intellectual and scholarly habit,
which presupposes the highest degree of reflexivity, is not any the
less applied pre-reflectively in the everyday reasonings of researchers.
Scientists may make use of the specific habits of reflexivity without
being aware of it, without having to think of it, without any particu­
lar need for reflexivity - and it is this that enables them to proceed
very quickly in their reasoning. Being reflective (about a point, in
the face of a situation, a piece of work, an object, a proposition . . .)
does not mean putting one’s reflexivity to work reflectively, since this
reflexivity comes from habits that are contracted (embodied) in pro­
tracted scholarly activity, family or social conversation, the reading
of scientific or philosophical works, etc. Thus the pre-reflective kind
of habit is not the only one possible. As against a very widespread
usage in the social sciences, we will not oppose ‘habit* or ‘routine* and
‘reflectivity* or ‘consciousness*, but rather speak of bodily, gestural,
sensory-motor, etc., habits, and of reflective, deliberative, rational or
calculatory ones. The latter kind of habits are not any less constructed
socially in formal or informal repetition and training.11
Habit, as a scheme of action, lies at the root of all involuntary
action (similar to involuntary memory). It is bound up with a whole
socializing past that has gradually constituted it, from the first steps,
the first hesitant and clumsy stumblings, painful and slow, through
to virtuosic practices that may be in the register of gesture, speech,
perception, evaluation, etc.). For habits and schemes of action to
exist, therefore, there has to be repetition. ‘It is by working as a
blacksmith that one becomes a blacksmith* - Aristotle’s expression
in The Nicomachean Ethics, which has become a popular proverb,
says the essential thing about the mode of constitution of habits. Only

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accumulation and repetition (voluntary or otherwise, organized peda-

gogically or drawn from social experience) of behaviours and prac­
tices that are relatively analogous can constitute these ‘summaries
of experience’ - as Piaget happily called them - that are schemes of
action or habits. These are often so well internalized and naturalized
that one could even believe they were their own motor, forgetting in
this way the infinitesimal triggers that activate them.12
When they are triggered and brought into action, those gestural or
bodily habits that are sufficiently constituted13 can leave the field of
consciousness free for habits of reflection, internal conversation and
daydream, just as the automatic pilot of a plane relieves the pilots of
part of their vigilant attention. It is possible to set gestures under way
in a quite natural fashion, without any need to instruct the body to do
them, without any conscious calculation intervening to guide them.
We can thus drive a car while reflecting on our worries at work or
in the family,14 cook while thinking of what we are going to do next
weekend, organize our files while mentally preparing a letter we have
to write, etc. Habit of a non-reflective kind, however, is constantly
rectified, corrected and controlled by the trigger of habits of reflec­
tion, at the same time as practice is under way, for the circumstances
of action rarely permit consciousness and reflection to absent them­
selves completely. Something unforeseen, a difficulty that arises, etc.,
leads non-reflective habit to be coordinated and coupled with more
reflective habits of behaviour. Far from overloading action, slowing
it down or even paralysing it, reflection and reflective decision then
supervene to facilitate it and permit it to resume its normal course.

From analytic transfer to the interview relationship

We find congruent remarks on the way in which memory and action
are triggered in psychoanalytic discussions of the question of ‘analytic
transfer', enabling past situations (conflictual and often repressed) to
be reproduced, replayed (action) or re-evoked (memory) by analogical
transfer in the context of the relationship between analyst and patient
(Laplanche and Pontalis, 2006; Bakhtin, 1987). The specific structure
of this relationship thus constitutes the context that provokes the
'awakening’ and reactualization of sedimented past experiences. By
modifying the configuration of the analyst-patient relationship, other
elements of this past can be aroused, and we see clearly here how the
relationship between past and present is not simply deductive, with
the present ‘arising' naturally, purely and simply from the past.

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Freud posited a difference between the revival of memory and

transferential repetition. In the first case, the analytic relation­
ship, which must be conducted in a kind of analytical neutrality (in
which the psychoanalyst particularly seeks to suspend any norma­
tive judgement - moral, religious or cultural - towards the patient),
provokes the awakening of memories either by the technique of free
association on the basis of a given trigger (word, image, etc,) or by
the very relationship that is established between the two protagonists
of the analytic scene. In the second case, instead of remembering, the
patient replays in the relationship to the psychoanalyst a (conflictual)
relationship they have had with their father, mother or any other
key figure from their past. They thus treat the analyst, by practical
analogy, as a quasi-father, quasi-mother, etc., and reproduce (never
quite identically) the relationship that they had with the latter. The
opening up of the past by trigger elements or by the form of relation­
ship established between psychoanalyst and patient inevitably has
cathartic effects for the latter.
But one can just as well consider the situation, more commonplace
for sociologists and yet rarely conceived as such, of the sociological
interview: at bottom, subjects always recount their ‘life* (their prac­
tices, opinions, tastes, emotions, etc.) through the structure of an
interaction between interviewer and interviewee. The research situa­
tion thus plays an important role in the determination of what, out of
the ensemble of past experiences, will be effectively mobilized. It plays
a powerful role of selection, implying that a part of these experiences
remains buried, non-activated, and sometimes even consciously silent
(Singly, 1982); such experiences may reappear on other occasions if
the new situation permits this.15
The interview situation is like a particular social framework in
which part of the ‘memory* of the interviewee (their experiences,
practices, etc.) can be actualized. Academic routine tends to consider
the interview as a situation in which information (opinions, repre­
sentations) is extracted that pre-exists the interview relationship, like
an object contained in the head of the interviewee. The sociologist is
then to the words of the interviewee what the fisher is to fish: with
a good technique, the fisher can catch in their net fish that pre-exist
the act of fishing. And yet words are not waiting there (in the head
or the mouth of the interviewee) for a sociologist to come and ‘catch*
them. They are the product of the encounter with an interviewee
endowed with schemes of perception, appreciation, evaluation, etc.,
that have been constructed in the course of the various earlier social
experiences and with a singular social situation that is defined both

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by its major characteristic properties (which distinguish it from other

forms of social relationship, and in particular from other schemes of
verbal interaction such as the police interrogation, the administra­
tive interview, the employment interview, the journalistic interview,
the oral examination, the religious confession, the analytic cure, the
social conversation, the exchange of ritual insults .. .), and by various
other properties - far from secondary - bound up with the circum­
stances of the interview, its location, the way in which researchers
present themselves and conduct the interview, etc. When sociologists
fix the objective of grasping the experiences of the interviewees, they
must consequently seek to constitute a mechanism that triggers these
experiences, whether this arises from a situation of trust or is based
on the most material elements of the situation. For example, when 1
conducted interviews about commonplace educational practices of
schoolteachers in working-class milieus, 1 made an effort to orient
the interviews towards class situations, class practices, descriptions
of the procedure of lessons, etc., most often asking teachers to give
examples. They cited these 'from memory’, but just as frequently got
up in the middle of the interview to look for students’ exercise books,
a textbook, or their preparatory notes, to show exercises that had
been done or 'mistakes’, and to read extracts from students’ writings,
etc. The quasi-totality of the interviews took place in the classroom,
where the teachers questioned in their professional context visibly
felt still caught up in the 'worries’ of the day, surrounded by all the
exercise books, preparatory notes, textbooks and different pedagogic
materials which had been used that very day or in the course of the
week. They were invested in their status of teacher, the classroom
attesting to what they were saying and imperceptibly supporting them
at each moment (Lahire, 1993a).
The experiences mentioned by the interviewee, the manner in
which these are related, the experiences intentionally left silent as
well as the unconscious ones unable to appear - all this depends on
the particular form that the social relationship of the interview takes,
which thus constitutes a kind of 'deciding’ filter between what can
and what cannot be said, favouring the utterance of certain events
and constituting a powerful obstacle to the evocation of others, etc.
Elements as evident as the gender of the interviewer, their age, ethnic
or social origin, thus exert a very strong influence on the type of
discourse that the interviewee is able to conduct.16

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A relative transferability
There is some justification for basing a judgment of a man on the most
ordinary facts of his life; but in view of the natural instability of our
conduct and emotions, it has often seemed to me that even good authors
are wrong to insist on fashioning a consistent and solid fabric out of us.
(Montaigne, The Complete Essays)
Sociology has lived for too long on the unquestioned self-evidence of
necessary transferability (transposability) and the similarly "generaliz­
able* character of cultural schemes or dispositions. To the extent that
sociologists have borrowed here once again - without too explicit a
reference - from the scientific findings of a particular historic state
of psychological research (essentially the school of Piaget), it may
be useful to reopen the doors of past and contemporary psychology
in order to put in question what formerly functioned, at best, as a
theoretical academic routine making it possible, despite everything, to
study the links and transitions from one domain of activity or exist­
ence to another, and, at worst, as simply a kind of tic (bad habit) of
language, with no consequence at all in terms of the construction of
objects for research and the production of knowledge about the social
world.
A return to the repressed (psychology) makes it possible not only
to locate the origin of the problems raised by the notions of transfer
or transposition, but also to stress the growing distrust of many con­
temporary psychologists towards these notions - concerned as they
are to escape from the laboratory and the logic of experiment to work
"outdoors* in varied and contrasting social contexts.
The fundamental problem that the notions of "transferability*,
"transposability* or "generalizability* present could be called one of
"excessive or premature generalization* (or, alternatively, "lack of
theoretical modesty*). What makes for this problem, in fact, is a
subtle and scarcely detectable slippage from the potentially trans­
ferable and generalizable to the empirically observed and attested
generalization. It is not scientifically questionable that a scheme or a
disposition is "disposed* to be activated in contexts different from -
but analogous to - those in which it was acquired, constructed and
constituted. What is more questionable is the idea that these schemes
or dispositions are all transferable and generalizable on every occa­
sion.17 This simple semantic slippage leads to a series of errors of
interpretation and a great deal of laziness on part of researchers.
Passing directly to the "presumed transferable and generalizable*,
they thus short-circuit the normal investigative procedure and avoid

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the tiresome comparison of practices between one domain of activity

and another, or even one situation and another, which alone makes
it possible to say whether there has indeed been a transfer or gen­
eralization (empirical laziness)* Moreover, researchers then deduce
too hastily - from analysis of the behaviour, actions and practices
of an actor or a series of actors in one particular domain of activity,
social context or micro-situation - schemes or general dispositions,
in short, habitus, that operate similarly everywhere else, in other
places and in other circumstances (error of interpretation)* It would
be impossible to list all the books and articles in the social sciences
that authorize deducing, from an interview or observation of an
actor in a particular type of context, dispositions that are supposedly
general and transposable. Whatever may be said, the social sciences
then do no better than common sense does with a notion like that
of 'character’. With the mere difference that disposition is explicitly
considered as socially constituted through conditions of existence,
the sociologist generalizes and reifies - into constant, permanent and
transposable dispositional traits - attitudes, types of reaction and
action, etc., that are drawn from direct observation of behaviour in a
restricted context - or, more frequently still, from its reconstruction
on the basis of interviews. There are few works that seek to follow
the same actor (let alone a series of actors) in very different domains
or situations of practice. How can the claim be made, in such con­
ditions, to grasp a general habitus (a system of dispositions) on the
basis of examination of behaviour observable in very particular and
limited circumstances?
The differences in observable behaviour between one context and
another are then seen simply as the product of a refraction of the
same habitus (the same system of dispositions) in different contexts.18
The generalized transfer regime thus prevents conceiving (or observ­
ing) the existence of schemes with a very local application (specific
to particular social situations or domains of activity), partial modes
of categorization, perception, appreciation, evaluation or sensory-
motor action that are attached to specific objects or domains. By this
abusive generalization, the notions of transfer and generalization lose
their imaginative power (which attracts the researcher’s attention to
analogical connections between one domain of practices and another)
and become theoretical obstacles to knowledge of part of the proc­
esses observable in the social world.
The origin of French sociological conceptions of transfer is essen­
tially to be found in the psychological work of Jean Piaget, who
defined 'schemes of action’ in the following way:
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We shall apply the term ‘action schemata’ to whatever, in an action, can

thus be transposed, generalized, or differentiated from one situation to
another: in other words, whatever there is in common between various
repetitions or superpositions of the same action. For example, we shall
apply the term ‘reunion schemata’ to behaviour such as that of a baby
piling up bricks or an older child assembling objects in an attempt to
classify them; and we shall find this schemata repeated time and time
again, right up to logical operations such as the linking of two classes
of things {‘fathers’ plus ‘mothers’ = ‘parents’), [n the same way, ‘order
schemata’ will be recognized in widely different kinds of behaviour,
such as making use of certain means ‘before’ achieving a goal, arranging
bricks in order of size, constructing a mathematical series, and so forth.
Other action schemata are much less general, and their completion does
not involve such abstract interiorized operations: for example, the sche­
mata involved in swinging a suspended object, in pulling something on
wheels, in sighting an object, and so forth. {Piaget 1971, p. 7)

One can recognize in this text the main source of the more ‘technical*
- i.e. more precise - definition of habitus given by Pierre Bourdieu.
This definition particularly deserves the contemporary reader’s atten­
tion, since it contains both what Bourdieu took over from his reading
of Piaget (in the first part of the quotation) and what he left out (the
second part).
As regards the first part of the quotation, we find the definition
of schemes as what in an action is generalizable and transposable
from one action to another, but we also find the same certainty as
regards the transposability of schemes of action from one situation
or domain of activity to another. There seems to be no doubt for
Piaget (as also for his prestigious successor) that the ‘combination
scheme’ that the baby applies in piling up bricks is actualized later
on in connection with ‘logical operations such as the linking of two
classes of things’ .19 As a psychologist, Piaget developed an ideal
and linear conception of child development. For him, in fact, ‘the
sensorimotor schema is applied to new situations and thus dilates to
embrace a larger realm’ (Piaget, 1952, p. 139). By way of its multiple
experiences, the child comes to ‘generalize the schema* by applying
it to other objects, other situations and other problems (by sucking
the mother’s breast, objects placed in its mouth, its thumb, tongue,
bottle, etc., the child establishes the ‘sucking’ scheme a bit more on
each occasion). A balanced process of assimilation of situations to
embodied schemes is thus developed, and of accommodation (cor­
rection) of schemes earlier acquired to variations and changes in the
situation. In this model, no place is left for anything of the order of

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a cognitive or sensory-motor crisis in the child deprived of schemes

enabling it to deal with the situation. A "correction of schemes that is
always more active* makes it possible to understand "how the good
forms take the place of the less satisfactory ones through a gradual
accommodation of the structures to experience and to each other*
(ibid., p. 393). The "new* (the present situation) is forcibly assimi­
lated to the "old* (the scheme acquired earlier), and the "difference*
that the "new* brings only leads the old scheme by accommodation
to a greater degree of generalization: "To the extent that the new
objective resembles the old one, there is recognition and, to the
extent that it differs from it, there is generalization of the schema and
accommodation* (ibid., p. 411). We are even justified in wondering
how new schemata can be established in such a model of develop­
ment, which privileges the reproduction and adaptation of schemes
already present very early on in the child’s development, and which,
from correction to recognition, from accommodation to generaliza­
tion, from adaptation to assimilation, the child, adolescent and adult
follows from the first games and manipulations of infancy to the
most rational and complex structures of logic and contemporary
science. The idea according to which accommodation consists in a
"progressive extension of the total schema that enriched itself while
remaining organized* (ibid., p. 133), and that, for its part, the "repro­
ductive assimilation* that "constitutes the schemata* is nothing but
"the tendency of every behaviour pattern or of every psychic state to
conserve itself and, toward this end, to take its functional alimenta­
tion from the external environment* (ibid., p. 411), could be reduced
to a formula of the kind "how to make old into new* or, better, "how
to continue doing the old on the basis of the new*. Mutatis mutandis,
almost the same terms reoccur in Bourdieu’s arguments: "As for the
principle of this minimum coherence, it cannot be anything other
than analogical practice founded on the transfer of schemes, which
takes place on the basis of acquired equivalences facilitating the
substitutability and the substitution of one behaviour for another
and making it possible, through a kind of practical generalization,
to master all problems of similar form capable of arising in new
situations* (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 57).
But what if, instead of expanding, these schemes were simply
inhibited or disactivated to make way for the formation or activation
of other schemes?20 If there were situations that could not be readily
assimilated by the child or adult because the schemes acquired earlier
are unable to accommodate them? Piaget seems to have seen "gradual
accommodations* only in the context of a fairly simple hierarchy

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from less satisfactory schemes to more satisfactory ones, or from

more effective or adapted to less so. But the sociologist’s problem lies
in the fact that it is socially difficult to conceive such a hierarchy and
homogeneity of schemes: what is adequate for the actor as father [vis-
a-vis his son), for example, is not so for the son (towards his father);
what is satisfactory or pertinent in one social world (e.g. professional
or educational) is no longer so in a different one (e.g. that of the
family). Which schemes are socially pertinent depends on the social
contexts of their application (social micro-situation or configuration,
specific social world, field, etc.). Instead of expanding and general­
izing, they may be no more than specific social schemes with a well-
circumscribed domain of validity. The same actor learns to develop
different schemes of action (sensory-motor schemes, schemes of per­
ception, appreciation, evaluation, etc.) in different social contexts: he
is not necessarily quite the same as father, as office worker with his
colleagues (different again in the same professional situation but in
the presence of his hierarchical superiors), as son, or as member of a
voluntary organization or religious community.
Each social context can trigger specific schemes (and this is a ques­
tion that theory cannot and should not settle a prion). But the same
goes for the most basic sensory-motor schemes. If normally ‘the sight
of stairs suffices to set in motion appropriate movements of the legs
and feet in the subject accustomed to climbing a staircase’ (Piaget,
1952, p. 129), whereas the sight of a hand stretched out in front of
me spontaneously triggers the movement of my own arm and hand,
which stretches out in return, we can imagine what would happen in
a psychologically more rigid world in which only the scheme ‘shaking
hands' was acquired, and constituted the sole response to any con­
frontation with external ‘obstacles': before a staircase one would then
observe individuals improbably stretching out their hands . . . But it
occasionally happens in the social world that certain actors lift their
leg when you stretch out your hand towards them! From temporary
distraction or a more lasting lack of social adaptation, actors may
activate schemes that are (deemed) totally unadapted to the situation
and produce behaviour that provokes laughter (e.g. many characters
in novels who are permanently out of phase with the situations they
are led to live),21 annoyance (e.g. class transfuges or ‘school failures'
who frequently offer answers that are ‘not with it', apparently absurd,
and whose conversations with the teachers are a dialogue of the deaf)
or fright (e.g. cases of ‘madness' or ‘delinquency’). Cognitive-social
rigidities of this kind have often been pointed out even in the world
of science - for example, the case of the monomaniac customs of a
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research method denounced by the authors of The Craft of Sociology

(Bourdieu, Chamboredon and Passeron, 1991, pp. 48-9).
The working-class 'school failures* that 1 have studied are some­
times led to experience situations so disturbing that assimilation and
accommodation become quite problematic. They can swing between
different characteristic cases: (1) they deal with situations at school
according to their own logic but experience negative sanctions for
this reappropriation - i.e. rejection of their homework and educa­
tional injunctions (Lahire, 1993a);22 (2) they clumsily try to grasp the
new logic and then experience fairly negative sanctions (if less severe
than in the first case); (3) a number of them manage in a more or
less fragile way, more or less painfully, to construct specific cultural
schemes for school that are in total or partial dissonance with the
schemes previously acquired within the family world (they then draw
on their family configurations and begin to make sense of the double
life that is constructed) (Lahire, 1995a).
Finally, with respect to the second part of the Piaget quotation, we
cannot help noting Bourdieu’s forgetting the possibility that Piaget
opens of understanding less general and more specific schemes that
correspond to limited situations. Piaget himself, however, rarely
recalls the case of these less abstract and general schemes in his
definitions of the scheme: ‘By sensory-motor schemes we mean the
sensory-motor organizations susceptible of application to an ensem­
ble of analogous situations, which thus attest to assimilations of
reproduction (repetition of the same activities), of recognition (rec­
ognizing objects by attributing to them a significance in terms of the
scheme), and generalization (with differentiations as a function of
new situations* (Piaget, cited in Dolle, 1988, p. 61).

From general to partial schemes

Contemporary psychological work is far from supporting the idea of
a generalized process of transfer. Jean Lave, for example, shows that
learning transfer across time, and from one situation to another, is far
from being an obvious fact, even when the research findings of theorists
of cognitive transfer are taken into account (Judd, 1908; Thorndike,
1913; Simon, 1980). In many studies, for example, subjects who pass
experimental tests in which they have to resolve problems of analogy
(set up as such by the researchers) do not manage to transfer the mode
of resolution from one problem to another unless their attention is
explicitly drawn to the connection between the two problems (Lave,

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1988, p. 27). But if many studies cast doubt on the evidence of cogni­
tive transfer from one experimental situation to another in the case of
resolving a problem - even when these situations are homogeneous
contextually (they are always tests) and cognitively (the same type
of task: a problem to resolve), and are conceived so as to maximize
the probability of a transfer appearing (distinct formal problems
proposed immediately after one another, with the explicit indication
of a possible transfer)23 - transfer is still more debatable when we
are faced with the transition from experimental or educational situa­
tions to those of everyday life, or from one situation of everyday life
to another. For example, rather than a transfer of arithmetical skills
acquired through education to other situations of everyday life that
require an activity of calculation (such as purchases in a supermarket),
we observe different practices of arithmetic in different situations
(ibid., p. 63; Carraher, Carraher and Schliemann, 1985).
The issue of the generalizable character of schemes as well as of
their transferability has been particularly well raised and dealt with at
length by researchers seeking to show the ‘cognitive effects’ of prac­
tices of writing. One of the key points in the work of Sylvia Scribner
and Michael Cole (1981) has precisely been to cast light on the exist­
ence of partial schemes that are contextualized, bound up with very
specific contexts, and whose effect is not ‘felt* (or ‘measured’) beyond
these contexts (‘Instead of generalized changes in cognitive ability, we
found localized changes in cognitive abilities’; ibid., p. 234).24 In the
debate between psychologists, historians and anthropologists, these
authors have contributed to demonstrating the fact that the presence
of ‘writing’ in certain societies can in no case be taken as an indicator
of the existence of general (meta-)cognitive competences or faculties
(ibid., p. 229).
Among the Vai peoples of Liberia whom they studied, the use of
a syllabic type of writing (and without space between the words) is
occasional, brief and belated (towards the age of twenty). It is taught
sporadically in the course of special occasions or encounters (the
need to send a letter, for example, and the presence of a friend able
to write letters and willing to show howto proceed). Instead of being
taught for their own sake in a formal and institutional relationship
of apprenticeship,25 reading and writing are learned through inter-
personal relationships, and inscribed in particular social practices (a
particular ‘need’ to write) and in forms of particular discursive genres
(you don’t learn to read and write a wide variety of texts, but to read
or write a letter, a list of donors and gifts drawn up on the occasion of
a funeral, plans, records of financial transactions, of family work, of

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goods or customers . . .). Moreover, social life is organized, in several

fields of practice, without any recourse to the practices of writing and
written skills. The greater part of the processes of embodiment are
thus effected without the mediation of writing (no body of knowledge
objectivized in writing, no practices of writing and reading associated
with this knowledge, etc.). As a consequence, the social contexts of
the use of writing remain relatively marginal and occasional, and con­
tribute only little to producing and reproducing the different domains
of social life. The absence of a specific place and time for appren­
ticeship in writing, moreover, is readily understandable.26 From the
fact of this objective social situation, the cognitive effects tested by
Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole display more in the way of partial
schemes, particular knowledges limited to particular situations, than
of general schemes that are durable and transposable (general capaci­
ties to generalize, abstract, define, formalize, deduce .. .). When the
uses of writing are limited in this way, the schemes acquired by way
of these uses can be transferred only to a reduced number of con­
texts or highly circumscribed domains of activity. Conversely, when
the contexts of use are uncoupled, the occasions for schemes to be
transferred proliferate.
But what is then clearly apparent to the eyes of the researchers
is the fact that the presumed 'general capacities* measured by psy­
chologists (along the lines of those elaborated by Binet and Simon)
for logical or psychological tests are capacities just as limited as
any others, but more highly valued socially - i.e. capacities that are
learned through formal education. The unschooled Vai people do
not get good results in these tests when they require the definition of
words, distinguishing an object from its name, applying syllogistic
reasoning or explaining what is wrong in the case of ungrammatical
utterances - all these being skills acquired through the school system.
Children or adults who have attended school are regularly trained
in this kind of exercise, and pass the tests successfully in as much as
they immediately recognize in the situations and problems proposed
the tacit educational injunctions that are lodged in them. As a result,
there is certainly in such cases an analogical transfer of educational
skills into the test situation. But the latter are, from the point of view
of their main contextual and cognitive properties, quasi-educational
situations. For example, if the school attenders manage better than
others to formulate explanations verbally on the reasons for their
replies, this is quite simply because 'such skills are demanded by
typical teacher-pupil dialogue in classrooms . . . Teachers often
require students to respond to questions such as “Why did you

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give that answer?” or “ Go to the blackboard and explain what you

did” ’ (Cole, 1996, p. 234). Michael Cole concludes, ironically but
quite correctly, that the reality that the psychologists make into a
‘dependent variable* (the battery of tests) stands in an intimate and
even incestuous relationship with that referred to as the ‘independent
variable* (education).
What can we conclude as to the generalization of schemes or the
strength of processes of transfer? The evidence shows (though routine
has eventually made us forget it) that schemes prove that much
more general when they find a greater number of social situations
to which they can be applied or in which they can be usefully and
adequately mobilized. Their degree of transferability or the power of
their generalizable character thus does not depend on themselves (on
their quality or their intrinsic property as Piaget defined these), but
rather on the objective forms of organization of social life that decide
on the scope of their transversal it y (transposability). A scheme of
action (sensory-motor, of perception, evaluation, appreciation, etc.)
is general when it finds a multitude of social situations propitious for
its deployment (its transfer); it is partial and local when it can be acti­
vated only in situations of social space that are limited, particular and
relatively uncommon. The general (or partial) character of a scheme
thus depends directly on the degree of social and historical generali­
zation of the contexts in which it is susceptible of being actualized.27
And the question of knowing the extent to which a scheme that is
observed and reconstructed in a given context can be considered as
a central cognitive, sensory-motor or affective characteristic of the
actor, which is applied in a whole series of other contexts, should be
posed by the researcher and not presupposed. When it is impossible
to reply to such a question, the latter should at all events seek to avoid
excessive generalization of findings of knowledge that are indeed
limited, but contextually pertinent.
The fact that schemes of action (sensory-motor, schemes of moti­
vation, appreciation or perception) are always, to one degree or
another, partial schemes attached to a finite and limited - however
important - context of mobilization or activation can appear to be
self-evident if we take, for example, the case of motor skills. Learning
to ski or learning rock-climbing implies setting a series of particular
sensory-motor schemes. In everyday life these motor skills (sense of
balance and of position, suppleness, particular muscle strengths .. .)
do not generally find the opportunity to be actualized (except in the
ensemble of professional or quasi-professional activities that require
such capacities: Alpine chasseurs, mountain rescuers, fire-fighters

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...). Only exceptional situations can mobilize them (for example, in

the case of climbing, going up a tree to retrieve a ball caught in the
branches or a scared cat). These genuinely are specific skills bound up
with specific contexts and domains of practice, like those that Piaget
discusses - swinging a hanging object, pulling a cart or aiming at a
target. The idea of conceiving them as general schemes of action that
are transposable to any situation should not arise here. And even
the direction of the effort, training or asceticism acquired in regular
sports training is not necessarily transferable to other social contexts
(e.g. professional, educational or domestic). Sometimes a part of the
sensory-motor schemes originally established in the repeated experi­
ence of climbing or skiing - but only a part - can be transferred at the
price of some adaptation to the new situation: a move, for example,
from mountain skiing to water-skiing, from sailboarding to surfing,
from Formula 1 to rally driving, from the manual dexterity acquired
by learning to sew to that required in certain industries for the
assembly of electronic apparatus, etc.
Some psychologists now refuse, as a general rule, to deal with cog­
nitive problems (memory, attention, perception, reasoning, categori­
zation, etc.) "in general’, but prefer to view them as processes bound
up with 'contents’ - i.e. domains of skill or activity that are always
specific (Shweder, 1991; Loarer et al., 1995). For example, rather
than speaking of 'memory’ or 'mnemonic capacity’, researchers
discuss 'specialized forms of memory’ appropriate to specific activi­
ties. According to the domain in question, actors will have ‘more or
less’ good mnemonic performance, and can never be ascribed a (good
or bad) memory 'in general’.28

From generalized transfer to limited and conditional

transfer
I do not agree with the judgment given in favour of Sophocles, on the
strength of seeing one of his tragedies, that it proved him competent to
manage his domestic affairs, against the accusation of his son. Nor do
I think that the conjecture of the Parians sent to reform the Milesians
was sufficient ground for the conclusions they drew. Visiting the island,
they noticed the best-cultivated lands and the best-run country houses,
and noted down the names of their owners. Then they assembled the
citizens in the town and appointed these owners the new governors and
magistrates, judging that they, who were careful of their private affairs,
would be careful of those of the public.
(Montaigne, The Complete Essays)

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Coming back to my starting point, it appears presumptuous, there­

fore, to act as if every scheme were generalizable, of systematic and
universal application, whatever the domain of practice in question:

The habitus . . . is a general, transposable disposition which carries out

a systematic, universal application - beyond the limits of what has been
directly learnt - of the necessity inherent in the learning conditions.
That is why an agent’s whole set of practices (or those of a whole set of
agents produced by similar conditions) are both systematic, inasmuch
as they are the product of identical (or interchangeable) schemes, and
systematically distinct from the practices constituting another life-style
. . . [from] different habitus - systems of generative schemes applicable,
by simple transfer, to the most varied areas of practice. (Bourdieu,
1984, p. 170)

When sociologists postulate the existence of such socio-cognitive

processes, they dangerously short-circuit the whole series of precau­
tionary and fastidious empirical analyses (still under way, need we
recall?) that, as we have seen, cast on each term employed (scheme,
transfer, systematic transposition, general disposition, systematic and
universal application, etc.) the shadow of doubt and of contextualized
questioning. By universalizing the findings of a state (not completely
outdated, that goes without saying) of contemporary psychology
(that of Piaget), psychological concepts are imported into sociology
in a reified manner, undiscussed and unchanged for two decades,
concepts that - like any scientific concept - are no more than a kind
of resume of the state of psychological research that was among the
most advanced on this question at that time.
We need only take the example of ‘writing* that Bourdieu gives
(1984, p. 193), following Merleau-Ponty,29 to illustrate ‘the trans­
fers from one field to another of the same scheme of action* in order
to realize the limitation of the model of generalized transfer. The
manner of graphically tracing letters keeps its coherence through
changes of medium or of writing instrument. But can we go as far as
saying that the same dispositions at work in handwriting are to be
found in a whole series of other social behaviours (personality, style,
character . . .)? This hypothesis of graphology is extremely debatable
scientifically.
If there may well be dispositions or schemes that are general and
transposable, that ‘colour* almost every moment of our existence,
that run through every domain and constitute the foundation of what
is commonly called ‘personality* (accent, speech, ways of carrying
oneself or of laughing .. .), not only can this situation never be taken

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for granted and must be empirically attested by the systematic obser­

vation of behaviour, but it should not constitute an obstacle to the
study of more partial schemes, 'local* or contextualized.
The process of analogical transfer remains, as we have seen, one of
the principal means for sociologists to account for the cognitive, sen­
sory-motor, appreciative, emotional, etc., functioning of actors, but
this transfer is never effected irrespective of the domain of activity or
situation in question (regime of generalized transfer). There is rather
a limited and conditional transfer (conditioned by social situations).

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 Scene 4

LITERARY EXPERIENCE: READING,

DAYDREAM S AND PARAPRAXES

For it seemed to me that they would not be ‘my’ readers but the readers
of their own selves, my book being merely a sort of magnifying glass
like those which the optician at Combray used to offer his customers -
it would be my book, but with its help [ would furnish them with the
means of reading what lay inside themselves.
(Marcel Proust, Time Regained)

When 1 began to work on reading, and more precisely on working-

class modes of appropriation of texts, I was broadly guided by a
philosophical and sociological interpretative scheme, that of the
opposition between aesthetic and ethical-practical dispositions. This
dichotomy, in various forms, can also be found in Mikhail Bakhtin’s
analysis of aesthetic criticism and in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology
of cultural production and consumption. The aesthetic disposition
assumes that the artistic form {style, manner, representation, etc.)
is privileged in relation to the content or its function, and is thereby
opposed to the ethical-practical disposition that rejects the disas-
sociation between form and function, form and content, mode of
representation and represented content, etc. Bakhtin described the
ethical-practical intent as the viewpoint of those whose orientation
in the social world is by way of 'ethical and practical cognitive cat­
egories (those of the good, the true, and those of practical goals)’
(Bakhtin, 1984, p. 109), and who, by that fact, prefer to live stories
(heard, read or produced) rather than entering into a aesthetic rela­
tionship in the strict sense. Thus the child who plays with his friends
at being

the leader of the highwaymen, lives his highwayman life from inside. It
is through the eyes of the highwayman that he sees a second kid run past

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a third, who for his part is the traveller . . . The relationship that each
of them maintains with the event in life they have decided to play - the
attack on the stagecoach - is nothing more than the desire to take part
in the event, the desire to live this life in the capacity of participant.. . .
This relationship to life that is expressed in the desire to live it in one’s
own person is not an aesthetic relationship to life; in this sense, the
game is similar in kind to daydream or the naive reading of a novel,
in which one identifies with the principal character in order to live, in
the category of the self, their reality and their interesting life, in other
words dreaming precisely under the direction of an author, but this has
nothing in common with the artistic event. (Ibid., p. 89)1

Though my own work on modes of reading in working-class

milieus was inspired by Bourdieu’s comment that this was a gap in
research (Bourdieu, 1984, pp. 32-3), what I actually found was some­
thing else. In fact, there was no sociological study comparable to my
own on ‘middle-class’ modes of reading; on the one hand, therefore, I
had the results of an empirical study on ways of reading in a working-
class milieu and, on the other, supposedly cultivated readings that
engaged an ‘aesthetic disposition’. As I was expecting, those readers
with poor educational qualifications invested in their various readings
of printed matter a desire for these texts to be anchored in a differ­
ent reality from simply the textual one: in a practical configuration
(books and practical magazines designed for practical application), in
a space that was already known and experienced (local papers, lists
of births, deaths and marriages, ‘human interest* stories .. .), in the
natural and physical world (popular science books and magazines),
or in contexts and schemes of past or present experience (novels,
biographies and autobiographies . ..). Their mode of reading literary
texts seemed to reveal clearly this ethical-practical disposition, pre­
supposing a participation and identification, an anchoring of the text
in elements of past or present everyday experience. This anchoring of
reading in a different reality from just the literary one explained the
fact that the theme, the subject and the reality effects produced by the
style and/or the context (e.g. the author of the novel or autobiography
being familiar from television) were far more often emphasized than
were the author or the style, and what was never mentioned, in con­
nection with novels, were literary tendencies or publishing houses.
A pragmatically anchored reading, which all evidence shows is quite
contrary to forms of reading with a literary anchoring, which obtain
their meaning in relation to other readings, in the functioning of rela­
tively autonomous literary references . . . (Lahire, 1993b, pp. 101-27;
1993c; 1995c).

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 LITER A R Y E X P ER IE N C E

And yet, as soon as we leave the terrain of the assumed 'aesthetic

disposition* for that of empirical study of the reading of readers with
higher educational qualifications, the theorist is greatly disappointed.
Those readers with a more academic culture act just like our readers
from working-class milieus: they immerse themselves in situations,
identify with the characters, love them or hate them, anticipate what
will happen next or imagine what they would do themselves, appre­
ciate or disapprove the moral of the story, feel emotional frissons,
laugh or cry as they read the novel . . . Strictly aesthetic reading is
not absent from their discourse (and even working-class readers can
mention the 'beautiful style* or 'fine writing*), and they may enjoy
comparing authors or literary tendencies, but this is certainly not
what holds them and retains their interest in the stories that they read
This reference reading or stylistic reading certainly exists, but in
actual fact it characterizes mainly professional readers: reader-pro­
ducers, and particularly those belonging to the literary avant-gardes,2
whose sociological characteristic is to place style above all else, and
reader-critics, who ritually repeat that 'the story matters little, as long
as there*s style*. The opposition that 1 was basing myself on here,
therefore, was not what 1 believed. It was rather one that divided lay
readers, external to the issues of the literary field, simple consumers
and spectators (ignored, as 1 previously remarked, in the theory of
fields of cultural production) from professional readers, who were
agents involved in the competitive struggles of the field (writers,
critics, cultural journalists, etc.).
On the other hand, lay readers are very obviously divided among
themselves according to the types of social experience to which they
are sensitive. Not living the same lives, the same social conditions of
existence, not having had the same trajectories in education, family,
love, work, etc., readers do not all have the taste for the same types of
story. When our working-class readers insist on rejecting what they
call 'fictitious*, stories 'without rhyme or reason*, they often designate
themes or subjects that are too far removed from themselves (from
their own experience) to really interest them. How can one appreciate
presentations of grown-up people perpetually in search of themselves,
posing themselves a thousand metaphysical questions on the meaning
of existence, feeling the absurdity of life, etc., when one actually
belongs to a social milieu in which these scenes are not part of eve­
ryday life? How can one put up with narratives of endless to-ing and
fro-ing in bourgeois and petit-bourgeois love life, when one does not
have the same view of love or married life? This is where the real dif­
ferences among lay readers of literature are to be found - apart from

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differences bound up with mastery of different lexica) or syntactical

registers according to level of studies. The taste for stories that are
"true*, "real*, "down to earth* - or at least written as i f they were true
or real3 - is a relatively universal taste among non-specialists (even if
not expressed in this way in all social milieus). On the working-class
side, the loss of a baby, drugs, life with a disabled child, the period
of German occupation, the struggles a woman waged to get back
her child . . . in short, all the themes that could make possible, by
cultural and social proximity, a positive or negative participation and
identification with the story, and thus make it possible to apply in
imaginative mode the schemes of one’s own experience, all these are
the themes that delight readers.
And so it is not just working-class readers, as 1 started off believ­
ing, who engage this type of reading of literary texts. Narratives
of this kind enable all readers to read in them situational models,
models of behaviour, solutions (reactions, behaviours . . .) to happy,
difficult or problematic situations. For all of them, the novel (or,
more rarely, theatre) supplies typical situations, roles, possible trains
of events, schemes of action (sensory-motor, schemes of perception,
evaluation, appreciation, etc.). For all of them, it can be read as a
manual or a practical guide, through which one tries out, in a kind
of jurisprudential comparison between situations experienced (past
or present) and the written situations, new roles and new situations
(possible, conceivable or inaccessible). With everyone, the novel can
play a restorative and therapeutic role, in the wake of dramas of
existence (‘it’s an enormous help at difficult moments’, a woman
reader said), making it possible to work through a painful experience
so as the better to accept it, to try to make sense of what appears
senseless and intolerable (e.g. the death of a loved one, a painful
separation . . .).4
On the basis of present-day knowledge about investment in literary
reading, we can even put forward the hypothesis that the situations
of maladjustment and disconnection that are provoked by crises of
different strength5 are particularly propitious occasions for this kind
of symbolic work. Moments of rupture in personal biography and
identity (divorce, separation, the death of a loved one, etc.), certain
major moments in the life cycle (adolescence, ‘apprenticeship’ in the
role of mother or father, retirement) are favourable circumstances for
the appearance of reading of this type.6 At a time of crisis (e.g. ado­
lescents reading novels that present situations analogous to those that
they live or believe themselves living) or after the event (e.g. reading
by uprooted individuals of novels that recall their region or country

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of origin that they left many years ago), reading makes it possible to
(re)develop schemes of experience and identities.
But not all novels can fulfil this function for all readers, both on
account of the linguistic and stylistic mastery that they assume on
the part of the reader (this is the first barrier of access to books, by
linguistic code, which depends on the time spent at school in reading
texts that ate lexically and syntactically complex) and on account of
the themes that they develop, the experiences they recount (this is
the second barrier, which depends on the stock of schemes embodied
by different readers as a function of previous social experience). It is
obvious that both types of obstacle are sometimes combined, but not
systematically (and the problem is posed more acutely for less edu­
cated readers than for others, to the extent that the first type of obsta­
cle prevents them right away from appreciating the ‘story’, whereas
more educated readers can read certain texts without experiencing
any linguistic difficulty, but aware of their lack of sensitivity to their
‘content’).
The ‘sensitivity’ of various readers to different texts essentially
depends not on a one-to-one correspondence (e.g. that workers
would like novels that describe the working-class situation, women
would like novels speaking of women, Catholics or Jews books with
Catholic or Jewish characters . . .) between written and lived situa­
tions, but rather on the possibility for the reader to enter - by some
imaginary modifications or transformations - into the world of the
text (Ricoeur, 1984-8, vol. 2, pp. 228-63). A simple analogy - even
very distant and vague - between situations facilitates this work of
imagination on the part of the reader: whether a love affair between
a woman and a man takes place in medieval England or late twenty-
first-century New York does not prevent a young Frenchman of our
own day from ‘seeing himself in it. A taste for this or that literary
work, therefore, does not presuppose a simple similarity between the
world of the reader and the world of the text: the most approximate,
distant and vague analogy is amply sufficient to produce the literary
emotion. We could even say that this literary emotion is produced at
the confluence of the near and the distant, the same and the other,
the similar and the different: the charm of the literary text, interest­
ing because it ‘recalls’ a lived situation, always lies in the gap that
separates it from this same situation. One ‘finds oneself’ at the same
time as one discovers other worlds, one finds the familiar through
discovery of unfamiliar characters, places and situations.
The meaning of reading or, better, the experiences that readers
live through books is a question that sociologists have almost totally
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ignored. The sociology of reading has remained, until now, marked

very largely by a sociology of cultural consumption.7 Texts are often
reduced to the names of their authors, to their titles or to the generic
categories to which they are deemed to belong (romantic novel, detec­
tive story, classical literature .. .), and this information functions as
an index of their lesser or greater cultural legitimacy. This reduction
of the reality of texts makes it possible to relate these first indicators
to other socio-demographic indicators (socio-professional categories,
educational level, age, class, sex, etc.). It is not surprising, then, that
surveys8 should establish that reading increases as we move towards
those socio-professional categories that presuppose high cultural
capital (though business leaders share the most distinctive practices
of those most weakly endowed with cultural capital). They show the
specific effect of educational level still more clearly when they measure
statistically, on this basis, the frequency of practices of reading: rising
up through the hierarchy of qualification we find an increasing
number of heavy or very heavy readers, people who exchange books,
often buy them, go to the library at least once a week, and read books
in connection with their work. None of this is at all surprising, given
that reading (the basics of reading as well as certain specific modes of
appropriation of texts)9 is taught at school, and that school remains
the fundamental matrix of socialization to books.
But the taste for reading a particular kind of literary work can in no
way be simply deduced from a cultural (aesthetic or ethical) disposi­
tion, and therefore from a certain volume of cultural capital (lesser
or greater). No more can it be assigned to a single social criterion
of specification - i.e. position in social space. This literary taste or
sensibility, which can vary individually according to the point in the
reader’s social trajectory, their social situation at the time of reading
(child, adolescent, adult, senior; single, cohabiting, divorced, etc.),10
their gender, social experiences that have left a lasting mark on them
or that preoccupy them during the period of reading - all this can
in no way be reduced to a simple effect of legitimacy (so that legiti­
mate readers would read legitimate books . . .), but rather depends,
as I have said, on the stock of embodied summaries of experience.
Reading as a social experience is thus not reading as viewed by a soci­
ology of cultural consumption. It fits completely into the framework
of a theory of action such as I conceive this.
The appreciations expressed about books or literary genres lin
general* often indicate a very different logic from that applied to an
individual book. The task of the sociologist studying singular liter­
ary experience thus appears indispensable, in order to get beyond
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 L IT E R A R Y E X P E R IE N C E

the very flimsy kind of "party game* that investigations of cultural

practices often propose to their subjects: What do you think of so
and so? Which do you prefer? Classify these books in a decreasing
order of preference . . . With this procedure, there is every chance of
grasping only the connection between more or less legitimate books
and readerships endowed with more or less educational capital (given
that questions are asked only rarely about the nature of this capital
- scientific or literary, for example). But this tells us nothing about
the actual practices and receptions, whose contents and forms clearly
are less readily explained as the effects of educational socialization.
Besides, if literary experience were reducible to questions of cultural
legitimacy, nothing would enable us to distinguish between religious,
scientific, magical, sporting or culinary experience. By reducing
everything (the social reality of the readers as well as the literary
content) to differences in cultural legitimacy, and thus to spaces of
positions organized into a hierarchy (market in symbolic goods,
social space), nothing is grasped of the contents of experience, which
are just as much socially determined, and the semiotic nature of the
work (pictorial, textual, musical, theatrical, etc.) may be completely
ignored. Structural equivalents (in terms of position in their respective
aesthetic fields) are grouped together without even asking whether
this does not amount to a fantastic abstraction, a tremendous de­
realization from the standpoint of the experiences undergone with
these works. Taken seriously, the experiences people have with books
show on the contrary that a text is not a picture, which is not a film,
which in turn is not a work of music; and, more precisely still, that a
Manet is not a Picasso, a novel by Proust is not a novel by Balzac . . .
This line of questioning does not lead to a flat positivism, but forces
sociologists to reconfigure the objects they construct if they want to
grasp even a little of what people do with works of art, what their
actual relationship is to these, what is the real reception of such works
(and not that intended or dreamed up by critics, cultural producers,
authors or editors).
Anselm L. Strauss began his career by conducting a study o f the
daydreams of his students (1993, p. 6). These imaginary scenes, pro­
jected in moments of inactivity or distraction (in relation to a main
action), or accompanying gestures that are made without the need
for much conscious attention, divide into two categories: "anticipa­
tory daydreams’, in which the authors construct little scenarios in
which they try out or practise future roles (certain, probable or hoped
for), imagining that they might act or react in this or that manner in
a particular circumstance, and "retrospective daydreams’, in which

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the actors replay scenes that they experienced and that disturbed or
upset them, imagining how things might have turned out differently.
We can expand Strauss’s thesis by considering that retrospective day­
dreams can just as well concern pleasant and agreeable themes which
the actor constantly replays 'in the mind* - like a scene from a film
that you particularly enjoy, except here with possible modifications.
Now, these beginnings of a sociology of daydreams - which Strauss
subsequently abandoned - could inspire a research programme for a
sociology of literary experience. Works of literature, in fact, provide
support for daydreams of this kind. Rather than creating their sce­
narios out of the whole cloth, or instead of drawing on past experi­
ence in order to 'replay’ scenes experienced, actors can appropriate
scenes, plots, characters and sequences of events that others have
written for them, and continue to apply the schemes of their personal
experiences.
Literary texts are thus triggers of daydreams that make it possible
to return to an action, to continue it, support it or prepare it. Far from
being a passive activity disconnected from courses of action, reading
is part and parcel of the action. Readers sometimes seek out books
with the desire to 'apply’ this or that type of experience (e.g. the case
of mothers looking for stories that present problems of adolescence,
or divorced women who appreciate stories of marital conflict. . .), but
they can always emerge from their reading with other past situations
that they had stopped thinking about having been reactivated, with
other possible scenarios that enable them to reawaken and test certain
impulses of theirs that remain unsatisfied, to 'try out’ 11 roles that
are highly improbable, or else ones that can be envisaged in a near
or more distant future. One draws from books the resources needed
to 'escape’ from or give meaning to (and sometimes sublimate) the
monotonous, boring and painful reality, as well as to prepare oneself
to confront the most problematic, embarrassing, sombre or painful
situations. The 'world of texts’ is so intimately mingled with the expe­
riences of the reader that the latter may sometimes no longer be able
to distinguish a personal memory from an analogous literary scene, as
Maurice Halbwachs remarks:
First of all, [ have since read a number of factual and fictional accounts
describing impressions of a child who is entering a class for the first
time. It may very well be that, when [ read them, the personal remem­
brance that [ had kept of similar impressions became intertwined with
the book’s description. [ can recall these narratives. Perhaps in time [
have preserved and can retrieve, without being certain as to what is
what, my own transposed impressions. {1980, p. 70)

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 L IT E R A R Y E X P E R IE N C E

The first steps of a (North American) sociology of dreams and day­

dreams broadly confirm the closeness of the situations of reading and
dream (especially of daydreams). In both cases - literary and dream
experience - actors project (or project themselves into) scenes or situ­
ations that concern them very deeply. For instance, the sociologist
Delores F. Wunder (1993) asked the brothers and sisters of disabled
people for tales of night-time and daytime dreams that they might
have had about such people. The dreams revolved around various
themes - anticipations of certain scenes of everyday life with the disa­
bled person, presentations of the dreamer as rescuer, winning respect
for having come to the aid of a disabled person, construction of
scenes in which the disabled person made a miraculous return to nor­
mality, feelings of guilt for being able oneself while the other person
was disabled, scene in which the disabled person dies12 - and all show
the constant symbolic work done to make it possible to tolerate, and
sometimes help to resolve, a difficult situation. Statistical analysis of
thousands of dreams similarly reveals that, no matter how strange
certain of them appear, they are always bound up with places, char­
acters, actions and emotions that constitute everyday and familiar
elements of the waking world.13
The reading situation is one social framework and context among
others, but not quite Mike* others. As in daydreams and play (which
constitute ‘make-believe* par excellence; Goffman, 1974, p. 52), it
makes it possible to try out roles, to manipulate (replay, modify,
invent) scenes, without risk or immediate social consequence. And
one may well ask what the confrontation with the text triggers in the
reader’s past, from their personal social experiences, to give them
sometimes the impression of ‘knowing themselves better* or feeling
‘revealed to themselves* through books (Tralongo, 1996).
We can put forward the hypothesis here that, as in dreams and
daydreams, embodied summaries of experience or schemes of action
(whether these concern impulses, motivations, dispositions . . .) that
do not find a way to actualize themselves in the various forms of
social life in which the actor participates can find expression in the
literary experience. As I have already noted, the plural actor can acti­
vate various schemes of action (dispositions), sometimes even contra­
dictory ones, in different social contexts. It is possible therefore for
the researcher to discover, through a sociology of literary experience
and sensitivity, dimensions and aspects of the subjects that they do
not necessarily display in current social situations.
For a better comparison with the themes tackled by psychoanalysis,
and a better grasp of the specificity of my object, I could say that, as
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distinct from the reading of a literary text or a dream, certain catego­

ries of parapraxes can be sociologically interpreted as the surfacing
of behaviours or intentions (and thus the activation of schemes of
action) in a social situation that should properly - for reasons of
social norms - forbid their presence (e.g. declare a meeting closed
when one was supposed to declare it open, forget to bring home one’s
homework . . .).14 Parapraxis consists in the infiltration into a social
context of an "intention*, an "attitude*, a "sentiment* or a "sensation*
that could generally be expressed (because of social norms) only in
other social contexts (and often more behind the scenes, in Goffman’s
sense,15 than on the official stage). Forgetting, misreading, lapse, mis­
laying an object, a clumsy action, and so on, often indicates that the
actor is beset in this kind of social situation by various desires, orien­
tations, inclinations, injunctions and schemes of action. Freud defined
parapraxis in terms of "the interference of two intentions*.
As a singular social situation, a particular context for triggering a
portion of the reader’s schemes of action, the situation of reading lit­
erary texts turns out - apart from a few differences - to be very much
like that of daydreaming. This proximity thus brings the sociology of
literary sensibilities close to a sociology of daydreams, and ultimately
also to a sociology of action.16

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 Act II
Ref lexivities and Logics of Action
 Scene 1

SCHOOL, ACTION AND LANGUAGE

The scholastic break with practical sense

Man possesses the ability to construct languages capable of expressing
every sense* without having any idea how each word has meaning or
what its meaning is - just as people speak without knowing how the
individual sounds are produced.
(Ludwig Wittgenstein* Tractatus logico-philosophicus)
Of all the major socializing worlds, it is that of the school where the
break with linguistic practical sense is made most systematically and
lastingly. This is a truism, experienced by a whole population, and yet
not considered in its specificity, its historic originality and, ultimately,
its radical strangeness. For what happens at school, right from the
primary level (and often even earlier), is weird and astonishing, to say
the least. At all events, this is how we need to view the school if we
are to have any chance of understanding it.
Everyone knows that primary school is the place where language is
taught. The phrase ‘teaching language* is a commonplace today, self-
evident, though it should really be surprising. Teaching language*
does not mean ‘learning to speak*. What the school designates by this
expression is a specific activity that consists in bringing children into
a structured linguistic world, with letters, words, sentences, texts,
rules of composition for words, grammatical rules, rules of spelling
and textual constraints (narratives, descriptions, arguments, etc.).
There is nothing comparable with the gradual and unnoticeable first
entry into linguistic exchange, in forms of social life that are always
particular, nothing in common with the internalization by the child
of schemes of verbal interaction or social functions of speech by way
of example and practice, by hearing and saying. The situation of

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teaching at school is quite contrary to that which phenomenology

describes in respect to language: 'I begin to understand the meaning
of words through their place in a context of action, and by taking part
in a communal life’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 179), or again:

As for the meaning of the word, [ learn it as [ learn to use a tool, by

seeing it used in the context of a certain situation .. . [Subjectivity] does
[not] constitute the word, but speaks as we sing when we are happy; nor
again the meaning of the word, which instantaneously emerges for it in
its dealing with the world and other men living in it, being at the inter­
section of many lines of behaviour, and being, even once ‘acquired’,
as precise and yet as indefinable as the significance of a gesture, ([bid.,
pp. 403-4)

School aims first and foremost - even before correcting expression

- at a particular relationship to language: a relationship that is reflex­
ive and distanced, that makes it possible to deal with language like
an object, to dissect and analyse it, to manipulate it in every possible
sense and discover the rules of its internal structuring. To objectify
language means subjecting it to a radical ontological transformation:
the child was in its language, she now holds this in front of her and
observes it, divides it, emphasizes it, classifies it and arranges it in cat­
egories* The child previously used language to say or do things, and
could almost ignore its existence, given how its presence was indisso-
ciable from situations, objects denoted, other people, intentions, emo­
tions, actions* She is now made to become conscious of language as
such, in its materiality and its specific operation, and not really taught
to make use of it in the context of particular usages, but rather to
discover its specific laws of operation, to see how it serves its purpose.
'Talking well* is not enough to be a good student; you have to be able
to show that you know what you have done and how you have done
it. Just as Plato criticized the mimesis of the oral poets, since it was
not enough, according to him, just to relive experience, you have to
know how to analyse and examine it, to think what you say instead
of just saying it, separate yourself from the discourse by becoming
a 'subject* who remains outside the 'object* in order to reconsider
and evaluate it (Havelock, 1963), so the school is not content with a
talking subject who 'plunges into speech* (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p.
403) instead of making speech an object of study and questioning,
and it refuses to acknowledge as 'mastery* what is mastered pre-
reflexively. If, as Roman Jacobson writes, 'Peirce gives an incisive
definition of the principal structural mechanism of language when
he shows that every sign can be translated by another sign in which
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it is more completely developed’ (1981, p. 41), we have to add that

the semiotician was describing above all the written-scholastic opera­
tion of language, as embodied by the dictionary, and not a universal
language ‘mechanism’.
To be rigorous, one should speak in relation to school of ‘tongue’
and not ‘language’. A ‘tongue’ is a system of signs constituting ‘an
abstraction, arrived with a good deal of trouble and with a definite
cognitive and practical focus of attention’ (Bakhtin, 1973, p. 67); this
is exactly what children are confronted with at school. This tongue
is objectified and materialized in dictionaries, books of spelling,
grammar, reading, etc. It is the fruit of a long historical work that has
made it possible, and above all the result of the slow invention of the
written alphabet. But once again here, school deploys an instrument
that is no longer perceived as a rather curious cultural product but
simply as a natural everyday object. The written alphabet? A perfect
duplicate of speech. Yet it required erudition, analysis, and many
inventions to reach this system of alphabetic signs. The first writing
- in Mesopotamia and Egypt around 3000 b c - began as what are
variously known as pictograms, ideograms or logo-syllabics. These
graphic representations, writings and quasi-paintings of things, were
gradually schematized, de-themed (the profile of a mountain was no
longer recognizable in the sign for mountain), and steadily undertook
a slow progression towards phoneticization without ever becom­
ing totally and systematically phonetic. It was from these systems
of writing that the Sumerians and Egyptians acquired the means for
analysing language. They established its first objectification: writing
breaks up the chain of sound, the continuous flux of oral utterances,
into discontinuous signs, leading to an awareness of the reality known
as the ‘word’, which did not pre-exist its discovery by writing. It is
because our habit of writing (with the convention of leaving a space
between words) gives us the feeling that we speak with ‘words’ that
we cannot see anything extraordinary in this logographic invention of
the ‘word’ unit. But by thinking in this way we reverse (in everyday as
well as scientific usage)1 the real course of history; we now conceive
speech in terms of the categories that writing has enabled us to con­
struct. Before writing there were no words, no syllables, no sentences
- just varied linguistic usages that did not give a handle on language
as such. The means disappears in favour of the (diverse) ends that it
fulfils.
When scribes wrote lists (semantic or graphic) of words, they
detached what had previously existed in contexts of specific state­
ments and extracted the ‘words’ from the utterances in which they

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were generally found. Hence a double abstraction: from the context

of statement {and the speaking subjects) and from the context of the
specific utterance. And it is this double abstraction that constitutes
what can be called a 'tongue*. Once objectified, language can undergo
treatments that were not previously conceivable, and we have the
start of that great work of ordering, classification, etc., that represents
the first steps towards a science of language.2 Far from being a dupli­
cate, a fixative, a mere recording of 'speech*, it is writing that made
possible its symbolic and reflexive conquest and mastery.
Around the beginning of the eighth century b c , the Greeks made
the transition from the syllable as graphic unit to the 'letter*, which
represented a tremendous abstraction (Havelock, 1976, pp. 49-50).
As a genuine phonetic analysis of speech, alphabetic writing effected
a clear distinction between meaning and sound, signs and their refer­
ents. From now on, language was the object of all kinds of reflection
(grammatical, logical, rhetorical, etc.), which gradually formed bodies
of knowledge about 'language* that were relatively autonomous, or
rather - as these knowledges were not attached to a pre-existing
tongue - that constructed this tongue in an increasingly differentiated
manner. The system of language grew more complex, the number of
possible classifications of the same linguistic sign increased. Lists and
tables were drawn up, detailing analogies, contradictions, contrasts,
differences. Phonological, morphological, semantic, logical, gram­
matical and rhetorical classifications could be made. And it was this
scientific reality that we take today for a natural duplicate of speech.3
It is this same reality that is the object of systematic instruction within
the school system.
From the age of six (and steadily earlier) children are placed in
situations akin to those in which scribes or 'scholars* (philosophers,
grammarians, rhetoricians, logographers) lived several thousand
years ago. They discover first of all the specifically phonological
reality, learning to decompose and analyse the flow of sound. They
work to separate words (Chervel, 1981, pp. 31-2) (and children’s
resistance to this lexical separation still recalls today how the notion
of 'word* is something cultural; Lahire, 1993a, pp. 104-13), to clas­
sify them according to various principles, to combine letters to make
words, to assemble words into 'sentences’, those purely grammati­
cal units that contain at least a subject and a verb, beginning with a
capital and ending with a full stop.
Whether in relation to phonological or grammatical reality, pupils
at school do not truly use language in everyday situations where it
always has a social function, but manipulate, displace, transform,

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analyse and classify the elements of language, so as to experience the

existence of a system of signs. They focus their attention, according
to the particular case, either exclusively on the signifier (e.g. exercises
in recognizing letters, syllables and sounds, in combining letters and
syllables) or exclusively on the signified (e.g. to classify words accord­
ing to a given semantic principle). They envisage different signs from
the standpoint of their grammatical function (noun or verb?) or their
role in the text (e.g. introduction-development-conclusion). The
pupil enters, with greater or less ease according to whether or not
his or her parents are already the product of a prolonged schooling,
the complex world of the tongue, which is not that of everyday lan­
guage, produced without even a thought in the multiple situations of
everyday life.
Thus pupils do not learn to speak, they learn to construct, to decon­
struct and to reconstruct, to combine (e.g. letters, words, groups of
words, sentences . . .), to transform (e.g. give a sentence the form of a
question, put it into the past tense, find the masculine or plural . . .),
to order or recognize signs according to different principles of organi­
zation (e.g. put this word into the list of words beginning with ‘p’,
the list of names of animals, the list of adjectives, adverbs, nouns or
verbs), to compose sentences with the help of elements denoted by the
name of the boxes into which they have already learned to order them
(e.g. a noun + a verb + a complement of place), and so on. All these
linguistic signs (even those without any meaning of their own, such as
letters and a large portion of syllables) have a virtual place in various
boxes in which they can be grouped according to the particular case.
These boxes are lists or paradigms that make it possible to have a
constant hold on the language-object by cutting it up in a thousand
ways and defining its coordinates. A word may be recognized and
classified on the basis of one or several of its letters, of its grammatical
function, its word family, its homonyms, synonyms, etc. The word is
not in contact with a situation, articulated to a gesture or a person,
involved with an intention or an emotion; it is an element susceptible
of being noted, named, distributed, transformed, displaced. The same
goes for oral education and textual production, which are sometimes
curiously known as ‘oral expression* and ‘written expression*, but are
in no way the spontaneous expression of feelings or experiences. To
speak explicitly and in a grammatically complete and correct fashion
(Lahire, 1991a), to introduce, conclude, spell out, punctuate, to be
able to stick to the same guiding thread throughout a narrative, to
privilege the coherence and autonomy of one's textual construction
(Lahire, 1992) - all this pertains to a conscious game of construction
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and has little connection with the pre-reflexive language habits that
are triggered in appropriate situations.
Basically, the school makes language the object of a particular
attention, a conscious, voluntary and intentional manipulation (to
follow Vygotsky, 1962). It develops a reflexive attitude towards
objective language, keeping this at a distance and considering it as
an object to be studied in and for itself on the basis of various per­
spectives. There is a radical difference between practical mastery of
language in its various ordinary usages (linguistic practical sense) and
the kind of symbolic mastery (there could indeed be other kinds) that
the school proposes (historically, educationalists have often spoken
of this second mastery, which orders and reasons what comes from
simple habit and usage) in learning alphabetic reading and writing, in
the teaching of grammar and orthography or in that of oral or textual
production. Far more than merely becoming aware of a medium that
usage tends to make us forget, or to confuse with intentions, emo­
tions, objects, individuals, situations, etc,, it involves the discovery
of a system (with its units and rules) that is totally new to the child.
As a world of written culture, the school is indeed the central place
where the attempt is made, systematically and durably, to make
children conscious of language, by multiplying the angles of attack
on language per se through a constant work on it by means of exer­
cises, questions and incessant reflexive correction - a place where the
break is made with practices of language that are "spontaneous* and
"everyday*.
Research that seeks to measure the cognitive effects of school
always shows how schooled children or adults succeed better than
others in those tasks that require verbal explanation (e.g. to explain
why a sentence is grammatically correct or incorrect, and not simply
judge whether it is so), that demand the production of explicit verbal
instructions (e.g. concerning a game that is already mastered in prac­
tice) or that require sticking to the verbal message alone in the reso­
lution of a problem (e.g. the case of syllogisms) (Scribner and Cole,
1981; Goody, 1987, p. 235). For example, in a study conducted on
the Mayas and Mestizos of the Yucatan peninsula, D. Sharp, M,
Cole and C, Lave show that those subjects with little or no school­
ing generally resolve syllogisms by referring to everyday information
about the world, rather than by keeping simply to the information
contained in the problem. To a syllogism of the type: "If Juan and
Jose drink a lot of beer, the mayor of the town gets angry. Juan and
Jose are drinking a lot of beer now. Do you think the mayor is angry
with them?’, certain subjects would respond that so many men drink

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beer they don't see why the mayor should be angry {Cole, 1996,
p. 83) . ..
1 have myself shown in a series of observations conducted in class­
rooms over three years that the pupils with educational difficulty in
primary school are those who are unable to take this distance from
language, to view it as an object that can be studied per se: they have
difficulty analysing the chain of sound right from their first introduc­
tion to reading and writing, for lack of the ability to maintain their
attention on the phonological level, persistent collage or inadequate
partition of ‘words' (e.g. ‘the safternoon' for ‘this afternoon', etc.),
comprehension problems in reading that are partly bound up with
their inability to seek intra-textually the indications that make it
possible to construe the meaning of the text, difficulties in the field
of grammatical analysis and a pragmatic reappropriation of certain
grammatical demands, poor meta-linguistic mastery of the words in
a vocabulary that can also be mastered practically, frequent mistakes
in orthography (especially grammatical mistakes) that signal an insuf­
ficient mastery of the paradigms and syntactical relationships that
connect the elements of different paradigms (e.g. so as not to write
‘Je les cueilles* but lJe les cueille\ you need to recognize the verb and
its subject, and to know that the verb agrees with the subject), an
oral expression in which the predominant aspects are implicit - i.e.
gesture, mimicry, posture, intonation - and which thus appears ‘poor'
in the eyes of teachers who privilege the explicit (e.g. ‘confusion of
tenses', juxtaposition rather than textual organization of ‘ideas',
profusion of facts with no connection between them apart from that
they happened in the same period of time . . .). All these manifesta­
tions of educational failure remind us - by the resistance that they
show towards educational forms of apprenticeship and educational
knowledge - of the originality and specificity of the world of school.
By observing over a protracted period the reactions of pupils in crisis
to the pedagogic desire to draw them into this system of signs that is
language, one may end up doubting formalist and structural linguis­
tic theories of the linguistic system. And we can be sure that one of
the elements that explains why Ludwig Wittgenstein abandoned the
‘speculative and hyper-theoretical attitude' of his Tractatus logico-
philosphicus was his experience as a country schoolteacher in the
years from 1920 to 1926 (Bouveresse, 1987, p. 569). It is certainly
not accidental that, without initially knowing this biographical fact, I
was able to use several philosophical remarks by this author to illus­
trate the behaviour of children in difficulty towards the exercises and
demands of school.4

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Saussure, or the pure theory of scholastic practices on

language
I could summarize my argument here by saying that school is pro­
foundly Saussurian5 (and by the same token anti-pragmatic and
anti-phenomenological), or conversely that Saussurian theory is the
most scholastic of theories about linguistic facts. Indeed, the linguis­
tic theory developed by Saussure describes quite precisely the way
in which the educational system deals with language. It is Mikhail
Bakhtin, a bitter critic of formalism in linguistics and champion of
a pragmatic and dialogical conception of language practices, who
comes to my assistance in showing the unsuspected connection
between Saussure and the school. Bakhtin criticizes the "abstract
objectivism’ of Saussure in studying "units of language’ and not "units
of verbal exchange’. The unit of language is the "proposition’:

This is not bounded at its two ends by the alternation of speaking sub­
jects, it is not in immediate contact with reality (with the trans-verbal
situation) and no more does it have an immediate relationship with
anyone else’s utterances, it does not possess a full significance and is
unsuited to arousing a responsive attitude on the part of the other
speaker, i.e. to determining a response. The proposition as a unit of
language is grammatical in nature and has limits, a completion, a unity,
that derive from grammar. (Bakhtin, 1984, pp. 280-1)

Bakhtin’s critique, therefore, amounts to saying that Saussure sub­

jected the units of verbal exchange ("utterances’) to a radical trans­
formation that could be called "grammaticalization’. This operation
disconnects the utterance from any social situation and any speaker,
converting it into an object that has neither a sender nor an addressee
and does not arouse any particular verbal or non-verbal reaction ("the
isolated monologic utterance’; Bakhtin, 1973, p. 78). A proposition of
the kind "the pope is dead’ does not trigger any particular emotion or
reaction, in as much as it is simply an example of grammar.6 Linguistics,
moreover, treats with the same neutralizing attitude the propositions:
"The pope is dead’ and "The pope is alive’, which, if they were uttered
in a particular social situation, would undoubtedly produce very differ­
ent effects. For linguistics these are no more than simple actualizations
or illustrations of one and the same grammatical structure: subject/
verb/predicate. The opposite of the "active responsive comprehension’
that the utterance implies is "passive comprehension’ (Bakhtin, 1984,
p. 289), suited to someone who treats the mother tongue as a "dead
language’ - i.e. the object of various kinds of dissection.
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But school proceeds no differently from the linguistics that Bakhtin

criticizes here, and Saussurian linguistic theory is a marvellous instru­
ment for describing the educational practices of teaching language.
Pupils learn when they embark on alphabetic writing to distinguish
between the signifier (the acoustic image), the signified (the concept)
and the referent, to make a difference between units that are lacking
in meaning (letters and a large number of syllables) and units of
meaning (words); they learn to order the different elements of the
linguistic system in lists and paradigms (paradigmatic relationships)7
and to combine them (syntactical relationships);8 they utilize a
'common treasury* of linguistic signs that the dictionary materializes
very concretely, etc.
Dictionaries and textbooks of grammar, moreover, give a quite
correct idea of Saussurian language as a system of signs. On the basis
of a limited number of phonemes it is possible to produce an unlim­
ited number of sound chains; on the basis of a limited number of
words and (grammatical) rules for their combination it is possible to
produce an endless number of acts of speech. And it is not accidental
that the closure of a system of signs, in which only relations between
the signs count, can make us think of a 'mathematical formula*
(Bakhtin, 1973, p. 54), and that algebra has been seen as a kind of
'logical ideal* of grammar (Vendryes, 1959, p. 154). The Saussurian
theory of language, however, cannot be considered as a universally
pertinent theory, in as much as, once it emerges from the world of
education (or the scientific world that is very close to education), it
atrophies and immediately loses its descriptive power.
And yet Bakhtin does not draw all the theoretical consequences
from the facts he establishes. Like other theorists attentive to the
links between language and social activities, situations of statement,
etc. (pragmatists, phenomenologists . ..), he stops midway on the
theoretical road on which he has embarked.9 He is wrong to some
extent in not seeing how Saussure was partially right, at least as far
as the world of education is concerned. Language does indeed some­
times present itself to us as a kind of constraint, with its principles,
rules and internal logics of operation. And this is indeed the experi­
ence that pupils have at primary school when they learn grammar
and orthography, or more simply just to read and write. It is wrong
to maintain that 'the speakers subjective consciousness does not in
the least operate with language as a system of normatively identical
forms* (Bakhtin, 1973, p. 67), or that 'There is no analysis capable of
making language crystal clear and arraying it before us as if it were
an object* (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 391), since this is what the school
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and Saussurian linguistics generally practise very rigorously. Saussure

was certainly mistaken outside the walls of the school - and his critics
are right to stress the limitations of his model - but he remains just as
pertinent for understanding the quite surprising fashion in which the
school tackles language.
Bakhtin rejects the Saussurian theory by arguing that 'the result of
all this is a fundamentally erroneous theory of understanding* (1973,
p. 73). Now, if we take Saussurian linguistics for what it is - i.e. a
kind of pure theory of written educational practices, a kind of con­
ceptual explanation of a series of educational practices of language
and an educational (and written) relationship to language - we then
have to admit its specific scientific interest. Bakhtin, blinded by his
critique,10 seems to have forgotten his own analyses of the relation­
ship between linguistics, the daughter of philology, and the school:

Monuments were made over from heuristic documents into a classi­

cal model of language for the lecture hall. This second basic task of
linguistics - its creating the apparatus essential for instruction in a deci­
phered language, for codifying it, so to speak, in line with the aims of
lecture hall transmission, made a substantial imprint on linguistic think­
ing. Phonetics, grammar, lexicon - the three branches of the system of
language, the three organizing centres for linguistic categories - took
shape within the channel of these two major tasks of linguistics: the
heuristic and the pedagogical. (Bakhtin, 1973, pp. 73^4)

If linguistics is a response to educational demands, it is impossible to

sweep it away with a wave of the hand by terming it a 'false theory of
understanding’. The relative scientific 'error’ of structural linguistics
actually corresponds to a social reality: that of written educational
work on language and of the written educational relationship to
language.

The social conditions of departure from practical sense

The reflexive relationship to language that the school both constructs
and demands is steadily developed by way of exercises, questions,
situations and corrections, which all contribute to drawing the child’s
attention to the specific properties of the system of linguistic signs.
It is prolonged socialization in this kind of social world that enables
actors to acquire a series of reflexive habits in terms of linguistic prac­
tices. Not all pupils will become professional grammarians, linguists
or philologists, they do not all succeed in appropriating these scho-

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las tic situations with such ease, but none the less they all undergo,
for a long period (at least ten years, between the ages of six and
sixteen), exercises that are the fruit of thousands of years of work by
these communities of scholars. They will later handle writing, which
always demands a minimum in the way of meta-linguistic awareness,
whether in terms of construction (textual order), making a sentence
(grammatical order) or simply spelling (lexical and orthographic
order).
The distanced relationship to language, therefore, is not simply
developed in any situation whatsoever, in any which way, by any
kind of practice or exercise. It is precisely constituted by educational
exercises based on a system of inscription and objectification of
language (alphabetic writing) and on bodies of accumulated written
knowledge (grammatical, orthographic, stylistic, alphabetic-phonetic
. . .) that constitute specialized and relatively autonomous reflexive
regards bearing on particular aspects or singular dimensions of lan­
guage. Everything thus begins with alphabetic writing - which, as
we have seen, is in no way a natural duplicate of speech, but rather
an instrument of objectification of language and the basis of its sym­
bolic mastery (and of apprenticeship to it). Specialist knowledge of
language itself varies historically (e.g. grammar was first introduced
at primary-school level in France in the mutual schools of the early
nineteenth century) and could be other than it is. One could imagine,
for example, that the primary school might partly replace the teach­
ing of grammar (whose function is indissociable from the teaching of
spelling; Chervel, 1981) by that of rhetoric. Such changes, while sig­
nificant, would be secondary in relation to the reflexive attitude that
it is intended to develop. These then are the indissociably social and
intellectual conditions for the construction of a reflexive relationship
to language.
If 1 emphasize here the concrete conditions for the social construc­
tion of such a relationship to language, this is because there is an
alternative point of view on this question that places at the heart of
the problem the suspension of temporal urgency and removal from
economic necessity. To have free time and not to be subject to the
practical demands of existence (conceived as economic necessity) are
in this view the two major conditions for the formation of the reflex­
ive and detached relationship to language, as likewise for the aesthetic
disposition, the scholarly viewpoint, etc. This is the thesis that Pierre
Bourdieu maintains, and which has been only rarely criticized, but
which 1 believe is both abstract and imprecise.
For example, the aesthetic relationship to creative works that sees
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the form or the medium (iconic, verbal, written, etc.) as primary in

relation to their function or their content, and assumes that language
is the object of a specific attention, certainly does require time, being
outside the "pressure of temporal urgency .. . which makes it impos­
sible to linger over interesting problems, to approach them several
times, to go back* (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 287) and, as a result, dispos­
ing of favourable economic circumstances that free one from the
immediate practical concerns of existence. But it also implies above
all a specific work on language as such, a work that was historically
made possible by the invention of writing and the multiple cognitive
deployments of written knowledge. In point of fact, the "withdrawal
from economic necessity* or the "objective and subjective distancing)
from practical urgencies* (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 54) are not enough to
achieve this distanced relationship to the world - either theoretical,
scholarly, distanced reason or the aesthetic disposition. If sociology
is to understand what these dispositions are, it cannot dispense with
analysing the practices of language by which these have taken form.
If we did not proceed in this way, we would fail to grasp how those
in the social categories most removed from immediate economic
necessity, but in some degree lacking in educational qualifications
(leaders of business and industry), very often share the cultural judge­
ments, tastes and practices of those fractions of the working class
most lacking in economic (and educational) capital.11 And yet the
sociological interpretation of these educational dispositions continues
to be based on a reduction of society to a ladder that is decreasingly
subject to practical urgency as one moves up the scale:

As one moves away from the lower regions of the social space, char­
acterized by the extreme brutality of the economic constraints, the
uncertainties diminish and the pressures of economic and social neces­
sity relax. As a consequence, less strictly defined positions, which leave
more scope for manoeuvre, offer the possibility of acquiring disposi­
tions that are freer in respect of practical urgencies - problems to
solve, opportunities to exploit - and seemingly preadjusted to the tactit
demands of the scholastic universes. (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 16-17)

It is not that this theoretical model is faulty as such, since it well

describes a part of the social world as seen from an economic per­
spective. But it lacks the ability to account for such dispositions.
Particularly missing is the distinction between the regular (intel­
lectuals, scientists) and the secular12 (e.g. top leaders of business
and industry), the latter being still further removed from personal
economic worries (their large economic capital enables them to "take

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things as they come’) but no less caught up in economic and social

issues, in the most pressing secular action that leaves them hardly any
leisure (or desire) to cultivate a reflexive relationship to language, an
aesthetic disposition or a theoretical relationship to situations. Actors
living in the greatest material comfort, but men of action involved in
the business of the economic world.
From the standpoint of the educational experience that is com­
pulsory for all, a certain suspension of the economic conditions of
existence is shared by all children of a generation. Whether their
origin is working class, petit bourgeois or bourgeois, all children and
adolescents are protected for a lengthy period from the need to work
and face up to the hazards of existence. On the other hand, they are
very unequally prepared culturally by their socialization in the family
to establish a reflexive relationship to language. When they manage
this, however, despite the initial cultural obstacles, their social origin
and the economic modesty of their conditions of life do not prevent
them from developing their educational and scholarly skills (see
Hoggart, 1988).n For adults, moreover, the reduction in weekly and
annual working time for all employees makes it ever less plausible to
assume a direct effect of time (devoted to earning a living, or removed
from economic constraints) on cultural behaviour and attitudes. The
Tree time, freed from the urgencies of the world, that allows a free
and liberated relation to those urgencies and to the world' (Bourdieu,
2000, p. 1) is not enough to account for the emergence of educational
perspectives. Time can also be devoted to leisure activities or occupa­
tions that are far removed from aesthetic, speculative or scholarly
questions.
The basic problem, in an interpretative scheme of this kind, is that
the school is viewed as an unreal place, socially - or more exactly
economically - outside the game: "The scholastic situation (of which
the academic world represents the institutionalized form) is a site and
a moment of social weightlessness’ (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 13-14). To
say that the apprenticeship of schooling is in this way Treed from the
direct sanction of reality’ (ibid., p. 17), or that it is distinguished from
Teal situations’, is to assume that on one side there is the Teal’ and on
the other something that is not real (ibid.), and we then have to ask
what it is.14 In this explanatory model, of course, it is the economy
that fixes and defines the nature and quality of the Teal’: "Learning sit­
uations, and especially scholastic exercises in the sense of ludic, gratu­
itous work, performed in the “ let’s pretend” mode, without any real
(economic) stake . . .’ (ibid., p. 14). What is real, with social weight
and immediate necessity, is economic, and outside of this we fall into

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weightlessness, inconsequence, make-believe, play, etc. But how then

should we conceive a particular scholarly exercise, for example that
presented by Austin as an example of what he calls the 'scholastic
view* - i.e. 'the fact of enumerating or examining all the possible
senses of a word, without any reference to the immediate context,
instead of simply observing or using the sense of the word which is
directly compatible with the situation* (ibid., p. 12), in relation to the
immediate needs of economics? The economistic reduction of social
reality makes it quite impossible to understand the transition from the
non-reflexive and pragmatic relationship to language (as described by
phenomenologists and pragmaticians) to the reflexive relationship to
language.15 To appeal to liberation from economic pressure in order
to understand scholarly exercises of this kind {'the neutralization of
practical urgencies and ends, and more precisely, the fact of being
detached for a more or less long time from work and the world of
work, from serious activity, sanctioned by monetary compensation
.. .*; Bourdieu, 2000, p. 14) is like trying to collect water in a sieve.
It is not denying the importance of economics to maintain that this
has no direct effect on the type of relationship that one establishes
with language, and that it is preferable to grasp the sociogenesis of
knowledge and of the exercise techniques that produce a reflexive
relationship to language rather than believe that one has analysed the
essence of such scholastic exercises by describing them all as 'playful*
and 'inconsequential*, sparing oneself an observation of educational
practices and the elaboration of a theory of these.
Finally, using the same expressions {'distanced, inconsequential,
detached* or 'scholastic vision*) to denote an exercise carried out at
primary school, a question in an opinion poll, or the most avant-garde
concepts in the literary or pictorial field ends up making these 'amor­
phic* expressions in Weber*s sense. The theoretical satisfaction that
one may experience in attacking such different furrows with the same
plough is inversely proportional to the heuristic power of the con­
cepts. We have therefore to return to the empirical analysis of singu­
lar practices and authorize only cautious and limited generalizations.

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 Scene 2

THE EVERYDAY PRACTICES OF

WRITING IN ACTION

Depend upon it there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.

(Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘A case of identity’)

What matters is not the subject but the eye. If there is an eye, a subject
will be found; if there is no eye, if you are blind, you won’t find anything
in the subject.
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky, A Writer s Diary)

No one studies such everyday and seemingly insignificant objects

as shopping lists, reminder notes, travel itineraries, jottings made in
diaries, on calendars or on mere pieces of paper without some theo­
retical perspective in mind. We might wonder, indeed, what scientific
legitimacy should be granted to such trivial objects of study. More
than one sociologist - with their (good) sociological practical sense
- will immediately detect a sociologically suspect object, without
any social bearing, too tiny and too removed from the 'basic* theo­
retical debates of their discipline. Academic dignity prefers that the
only objects studied should be those socially (symbolically) worthy
of interest. Practices of writing thus appear to academic understand­
ing as a "bizarre* or 'insignificant* object, of no importance in rela­
tion to the 'big problems* or 'major themes’ already established - a
typical object for the ethnologist, in other words. This is the way of
the vita academica and the flair of good researchers who seek out
and find "good objects*, those resembling the 'really good objects*
of the sociologist, which, because they correspond to these all too
perfectly, reinforce interpretative laziness and rarely take sociological
knowledge forward.
And yet one might still be inclined to think that the big theoreti­
cal problems could and should be posed on the basis of the study of

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objects that are apparently minor, and that the latter imply neither a
quest for exoticism at home nor a systematic focus on the marginal
One may prefer, like Bourdieu, to 'expect a solution to such and such
a canonic problem from case studies’ (1996b, p. 178), rather than
remaining enclosed for all time in the four walls of texts that already
have been commented on to death. The theoretical insight that 1
have always kept in mind during my research on writing (whether
in school, at work or in the home) is the question of practical sense.
Little by little, from interview to interview, observation to observa­
tion, case study to case study,1 it became clear to me that the everyday
practices of writing basically constitute fantastic exceptions and tre­
mendous counter-examples to what the theory of practice and practi­
cal sense describes. These practices represent real acts of rupture with
practical sense, practical logic, and may be understood on the basis of
the negative relationship that they have with the embodied practical
memory of the habitus. They make possible the symbolic mastery of
certain activities, as well as their rationalization.
Without this fundamental question of practical sense, at the heart
of the theory of action, the researcher perceives only the most striking
features of these practices and can only arrive at formal typologies
that are rather weak, never seeing what they have in common. Among
the many kinds of domestic writing, one can distinguish for example
those that are (quasi-)compulsory (e.g. filling in administrative forms
or writing various administrative documents) from those that relate
to social habits. Among the latter, one can again separate 'family’
practices (e.g. shopping lists, notes on a household calendar, mail
orders, classification of administrative papers, writing or copying
of kitchen recipes, labelling of food products . . .), and these in turn
from more 'personal’ practices (writing in a diary, crosswords), aes­
thetic practices (writing stories, poems or songs, keeping a personal
journal), 'functional’ or 'utilitarian’ practices (e.g. calculations of
family accounts, keeping a 'log book’ for the car .. .), regular prac­
tices (e.g. family correspondence, little notes from one family member
to another, written memos, lists of things to do . ..), occasional prac­
tices (e.g. list of things to take on holiday, travel itinerary, notes in a
photo album . . .).
But it is more by asking what the indissociably social and mental
dispositions (relationship to time, to space, to language, to self and
others) are that these make possible, and to a large extent that they
establish, that it is possible to grasp the social logic of these motley
practices.

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Embodied memory, objectified memory

We must start by taking very seriously the endogenous interpretation
that consists in people saying that they do not write in their domestic
life, that these little means of objectification are not used, because
mnemonic abilities are sufficient. In effect, those who are not accus­
tomed to written memos, lists of errands or things to do, notes made
in the course of a telephone call or before making a call, jottings in
a diary or calendar, etc., frequently appeal to their 'good memory’.
Some subjects also speak, for example, of the diary as a 'central
memory’ (the expression used by a woman with high educational
capital) or admit the fallibility of a too uncertain memory. In one way
or another, whether people are adept at them or totally reject them,
these everyday writings seemed to be, in their very commonplace
character, at the heart of the question of memory: objective memory
is differentiated here from embodied memory.
'Full-time’ housewives, constantly full of all the concerns of the
family circle, sometimes have no need to write things down, their
embodied memory being permanently mobilized and activated. One
woman whose husband was a skilled worker said: 'I’ve got a good
memory. I remember everything I’ve done. It’s me who reminds him
[her husband): “ You’ve got to do this and that,” I’m the memory.
Yes, I keep everything in my head.’ In the same fashion, when you
have to keep track of the stock of household provisions on a daily
basis, embodied memory is constantly activated and the written shop­
ping list becomes less necessary {'[As I pass along the shelves] that
reminds me what I’ve got and what I haven’t.’).
Men who very largely 'desert’ the territory of domestic writing
(Lahire, 1993d, 1995b, 1997b) 'justify’ this particularly by appeal
to a kind of masculine pride or honour bound up with embodied
memory. This kind of memory, ora) and alive, seems to be a specifi­
cally masculine resource and pride. Women thus note the exceptional
memory of their husbands - 'like an elephant’s’ - who never write
anything down, as opposed to themselves who 'haven’t the head
for it’. It is hard to judge the pertinence of this everyday discourse
on 'good masculine memory’ and women’s difficulty in 'keeping
things in’. Not only do women have to think of (family) things from
which men are completely disengaged and do not need to keep in
mind, but women who maintain that their husbands don’t write
things down because they 'remember them’ may very well write
them down instead, so that their menfolk don’t forget certain things
- thus unconsciously contributing to create the myth of the husband
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with a "good memory’ (they make lists for their husbands when they
do the shopping, or write lists or memos of things for them to do).
Sometimes it is even the husbands (or sons) who ask their wives (or
mothers) to remind them of certain things or note them down. At all
events, resort to writing seems in the eyes of men a proof of 'weak­
ness’. Writing things down to remember them already means taking
the risk of not using one’s memory. This is particularly noticeable
when the husband criticizes his wife for their children getting into the
habit of writing things down to remember them instead of stimulating
them to use their memory.
1 already established from a study of the work-related writing and
reading of semi-skilled manual workers (Lahire, 1993b, pp. 57-73)
that, tied to their machine and their colleagues at work, caught up
in a mimetic mode of embodiment of work, workers were led to
read and write only on rare occasions. In fact, if we take the case of
assembly plans and certain technical instruction sheets (indicating the
number of different pieces that an apparatus contains), then, against
what one might rather naively have started by thinking, use of the
plan or instruction sheet is not in the eyes of workers a sign of greater
skill or competence. Quite the contrary, it is seen as characteristic
of a novice, still 'green’. To the extent that the experienced worker
immediately recognizes the kind of apparatus to be assembled on the
basis of the components supplied, he has no need to consult the plan
or read the name of the apparatus. The more skilled you are, the less
your need to read a plan or instruction sheet. Writing in this case is
clearly associated with beginners, who, deficient in practical bearings,
may need written indications reminding or explaining to them what
they risk forgetting or what they have not yet completely embodied.
As well as this, a number of statements indicate a sharp criticism of
the use of plans: looking at the plan, one worker says, is not working,
and not making the effort to remember. Writing is thus considered as
apt to destroy or weaken the (valued) capacities of memorizing. In this
perspective, the plan and writing are only substitutes, external sup­
ports, crutches for the deficient memory of novices who do not have
the job inside them, don’t have the plan 'inscribed’ in their memory
- in fact for those who have not embodied the habits of assembly.
Through the question of practices of writing, we touched here on
the problem of practical sense, since writing seems to intervene when
embodied practical sense does not or does no longer suffice.
Writing is thus perceived by a section of my respondents - more
commonly those from working-class milieus than those with greater
educational endowment, and more often men than women - as a

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supplementary means of "reminding yourself’. Once writing is per­

ceived only in its mnemo-technical function, it is viewed as a kind
of palliative for a deficient memory. Practices of writing can thus
be negatively perceived by those who proudly reply that they "don’t
need it at the moment’, as if it were a question of a pair of glasses
to compensate for a deterioration in vision or a stick to help with
walking. Using writing thus marks the existence of a handicap, a dif­
ficulty. Quite unintentionally, these studies link up with the critique
that Plato gives in Phaedrus. Opposing mnhne as living memory
to hypomnesis as remembrance and consigning to memory, Plato
tells us, in the person of Socrates, that writing has not resolved the
problem of living memory but, on the contrary, contributes increas­
ingly to destroying this by releasing men from the obligation of
making the effort of reminding themselves (certain respondents even
say that they "force’ or "compel’ themselves not to write, so as to
"make their memory work’).
And yet the idea that writing is for novices is not unique to the
world of manual work, but is also met with in a professional milieu
as far removed from material production as that of the schoolteacher.
In fact, we note a steady reduction - without total disappearance -
in the professional written activity of teachers in primary school as
their career continues (Delon, 1997). There is less resort over time to
a daily notebook and preparation sheets. The reasons for this steady
decline are relatively simple.
First of all, writings of this kind are a means of entry into the trade
of schoolteacher, of acquiring its identity. A kind of rite of passage,
they enable novices to fee) a difference in relation to what they were
previously, by meticulously and intensely engaging in one of the
gestures of embodiment in this new professional world. Application
and rigour here are in part a sign of working on identity. But writing
what one is going to do in the week or the day is also and above all
a way of objectifying in the form of a "use of time’, and keeping in
mind what has not yet been completely embodied. This makes it
possible to reassure oneself, to "know where you’re going’, to "have
a framework’, to guide one’s action, to "plan’ it for the sake of being
"effective’ and not to "lose your footing’. If teachers say, at a few
years’ remove, that at the beginning "I did too much’ to be "secure’
or "serene’ in class, they also recognize that this overproduction of
writing was an "indispensable path’: "Beware of improvising, I don’t
risk this any more.’
When the rhythms, progressions and sense of inscription - in the
shorter time of interaction with the pupils and the longer time of

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organizing the day or week, longer still of programming the year

- have been embodied, then internal memory is gradually substi-
tuted for objectified-external memory. Teachers, almost like manual
workers, call this 'learning the trade’, gaining 'experience’, 'habit’ or
'facility’. Having avoided the risks of adventurous (and dangerous)
improvisation, teachers can then leave more place for improvisa­
tion based on experience. The early period of abundance of 'written
records’ is followed by that of steady 'pruning’ and a 'reduction to
essentials’.
The gradual reduction of this writing, however, is not a linear
process, in as much as each change of level challenges the routines
formerly acquired, forcing one to 'start practically from scratch’. It
forces re-establishing a new capital of pedagogic sequences, exer­
cises and mini-progressions, and consequently reinvesting the time
of written preparation. If, as distinct from the case of the manual
worker, this writing never completely disappears, it is simply because
it is partly destined for others: writing for possible stand-ins, or for
the attention of the school inspector. Thus it is also kept up so as to
facilitate a change of personnel and to remain within the rules.

Everyday breaks with practical sense

It was analysing an extract from an interview which led me to pose
this problem more clearly. A building worker, who left school at the
age of fourteen, replied as follows to a question on the use of diaries
and calendars:
I tell you frankly, it’s instinct, it’s memory. You know that next week
you’ve got something to do; okay then, you don’t write it down, you
only note . . . Yes, dates that are a bit further ahead, if you like: a dentist
gives you an appointment, or an eye test or something like that, they
give you an appointment for a couple of months’ time. You won’t still
remember in two months, okay, it’s marked down, you know that on
that day . . .

It was certainly this worker’s appeal to 'instinct’, recalling the

vocabulary often used to describe practical sense, that put me on
the right track. The respondent noted in a diary, or wrote a memo,
when it was a matter of appointments some time away that he might
forget. But for regular activities, repetitive or close at hand, it was
left up to 'memory’ or 'instinct’. There is here a kind of implicit
theory of everyday practices of writing that intervene when practical

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sense might fail or not be enough. A large portion of anticipatory,

pre-reflexive practical acts are performed without any need to write
them down. Someone who wrote down things that were too 'obvious*
would immediately be perceived as ‘ill’ or ‘old’, or as having lost their
memory or their ‘head’. Everyday practices are very often carried
out before any reflection, in a practical reactivation of non-reflexive
habits that have been embodied in the form of subconscious necessity
and self-evidence. Who would write down, for example: ‘1 have to
get washed, then take the dog out, then eat, then go and pick up the
children from school’? From this absurdity (even if the absurd is still
a possible case, as we shall see), we can realize that the obviousness
of the world and the majority of practical acts in everyday life assume
a kind of non-conscious adjustment of a socialized body to social
situations.
A further ‘absurd’ example that can set us on the path of practi­
cal sense is that of the child who systematically writes down lists of
things to do or little memos. A mother of three (teacher of German
in a grande ecole) has developed an implicit mini-theory of everyday
practices of writing and children’s relationship to the world when she
explains that her children do not make memos or lists of things to do
because they have fewer things to keep in mind and need less prepa­
ration in their activities - prepared for them by adults - and they
are also more spontaneous than adults: ‘They have so many projects
going on, things to do, telephone this person . . . When my daughter
telephones, it’s “I’m going to phone up so and so” , and she doesn’t
wait three days before she decides; it’s on the spot*’ The projects of
adults are opposed to the ‘immediate’ action of children - planning to
simple common sense.
Practices of writing and drawing introduce a distance between the
speaking subject (or the acting actor) and their language and give them
the means for symbolic mastery of what they had previously mastered
practically: language, space and time* The means of objectification of
time (diary, calendar, planner . . .), lists of things to say or do (like
action plans or future speech), itineraries or routes marked out,2
personal diaries and the various aesthetic forms of writing (poems,
stories, essays, etc.) are all instruments for shaping our temporality,
our spatiality and our language, which establish daily exceptions to
the pre-reflexive adjustment of practical sense to a social situation.
We can note the same distance between the experience of time that
simply ‘passes’ (polyrhythmic) and the homogeneous and linear time
organized with the help of means of objectification as between the
spontaneous journey of a car driver and the travel itinerary that plans

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a route, prepares it, divides it into stages, or again as between spon­

taneous speech in the context of interaction and its elaborated and
controlled writing down. Practices of writing thus constitute real acts
of rupture in relation to practical sense; they are acts that break with
the practical logic of performance of practices in the obviousness of
things to be done, with the logic of practical sense as applied in the
practical urgency of action (Lahire, 1993c).
We have seen how there exist many different cases of maladjust­
ment or non-Coincidence between the stock of embodied schemes
and social situations that generate situations of greater or lesser
crisis, more or less long-I as ting.3 These moments of maladjustment
and crisis (adolescence with its burden of conflicts and sense of mis-
understanding, divorce, the transition to retirement, a serious illness
affecting a spouse that disorganizes the life regularly lived and breaks
the customary ties of sociability, a deep feeling of loneliness or a lack
of communication with loved ones who have died or moved away,
the break-up of a love affair; Allam, 1996) sometimes give rise, when
favourable conditions come together,4 to an intensive production of
personal writing that compensates for an uncertainty or emptiness of
identity. On the other hand, the break with practical sense provoked
by reflexive, planning, calculating, etc., adjustment is in no way a
situation of crisis, but rather connected with ordinary moments of
social life* The application of reflexive and planning habits is never
something that follows a crisis. It even presupposes practical involve­
ment in activity. These maladjustments and discrepancies sometimes
even produce a search for identity on the part of the actors involved
(who am 1 then?), whereas the ruptures that 1 discuss here do not raise
the question of the "wherefore* or "ends’ of action (why am 1 doing
this or that?), but often remain in the domain of "how’ (how to do this
or that?) and "means’.
It is by gradually reconstituting the different possible cases of
recourse to writing in the domestic space that 1 was able to cast
light on the break effected in relation to the logic of practical sense.5
Rather than enclose oneself in the illusion of the particular case, it
is preferable to consider that "progress is apt to be commensurate
with our ability to draw a wide range of pertinent cases into view’
(Hughes, 1971, p. 316). The question is thus to practise a systematic
variation of cases in order to reach the limiting ones, and even some­
times absurd ones. To understand the reasons why a case is absurd
is also a good way of penetrating the logic of normal cases. Besides,
each time that a subject says "1 write only when . . .’, the sociologist
is put on the track of a singular property of the social uses of every­

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day writing. The sine qua non that is indicated here specifies the use
of this writing and defines the limits of its use. T never write, except
when . . .’ or T always write, except when . . .’ are apparently banal
comments, but they give valuable assistance to the researcher. If the
respondents do not talk, the sociologists have themselves to construct
these 'conditions’ or "contexts of use’ by a comparison and variation
of cases.

'Doing it like that'

"Doing it like that’ is an expression in everyday language that can
be the object of sociological commentary in as much as it seems to
denote non-reflexive habits that relate to practical sense - i.e. the
pre-reflexively adjusted action of a socialized body (habitus) to a
social situation. In the discourse of the respondents, the "like that’
refers first and foremost to a situation in which no cognitive arte­
fact6 or technical sophistication is used, and in particular no means
of writing. The idea that written and objectified memory, means of
storing information outside the body, etc., are cognitive artefacts that
provide resources in and for action is interesting in so far as several
respondents believe that only oral memory is authentic and natural.
The written, for its part, is a manner of "cheating’ in relation to the
deficiencies or limitations of oral memory. From this point of view,
the notion of cognitive artefact at least remains faithful to a portion
of the social representations (the written placed on the side of the
artificial).
Unskilled workers often describe their entry into a job by saying
that they learn it "like that’, 'from the others’, "working it out’, "on
the spot’, "seeing others do it’, "imitating’ those already there, who in
turn had gradually inserted themselves in and through the practice
of work (Lahire, 1993e). The respondents often speak in the same
way of other learning processes that they had outside of any formal
teaching situation.
Here, the respondents often indicate situations in which they recall
things or act without recourse to writing, the support of objectified
memory, as situations in which they remember and act "like that’:
keeping in mind an itinerary "like that’ ("he looked at the map and
remembered it like that’), packing a suitcase "like that’ (without a list
of things to put in), remembering phone numbers (without an address
book), learning lessons without copying them ("1 prefer learning it like
that, in the head’), doing accounts "like that’ (without a notebook,

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paper or pencil), doing things "like that’ (without noting in a diary or

on a list of things to do), doing shopping "like that’ (without a shop­
ping list), cooking "like that’ (without using a written recipe), and so
on.
In the same way, the "like that’ mode may indicate a situation in
which the degree of formality of writing is slight. For instance, to say
that one writes letters "like that’ means "without making a draft’, or
else one makes personal notes, but "like that’ - i.e. without specially
using a diary for that purpose ("It wasn’t any kind of diary, just jot­
tings like that on a loose piece of paper. It wasn’t a diary I used . . .’;
a woman bookkeeper). Finally, the expression may define situations
in which the order was not chosen with particular care - i.e. where
the actor did not particularly have in mind a particular order when
they performed their action: making a shopping list "like that’, "as
it comes’, "not in a particular order’ ("I write things down like that,
okay, not organized’), put away administrative papers "like that’ (not
with a particular order of filing in mind), "sort’ or "put away’ post "like
that’ (putting it together without classifying it), keep one’s recipes
"like that’ ("I put them more or less like that, okay. As it comes’), etc.

Memory for the unusual

It is notable that these respondents - whatever their social milieu -
make more use of a diary when they have to buy a bottle of gas or
dishwasher tablets, as this happens less often, than for their appoint­
ment at the hairdresser’s, which is a regular ritual for Wednesday
afternoon, or the birthday of a loved one, which is unforgettable.
Sometimes the only things written on a shopping list are those which
are not generally bought ("I do that [write down] so as not to forget
things that I don’t get all the time, for example the cereal that my
daughter likes or things like that, I write them down, but otherwise
I know what I have to get. I don’t always write it down’; primary
school assistant, former bookkeeper), things that are "special’ - for a
special meal, for example - "which aren’t systematic’ or which "you
don’t necessarily think of’, as one subject (a doctor) said. You note in
the diary "things out of the usual’, but no one would think of writing
on a memo pad, a diary or a calendar "Thursday 2 July: eat lunch’.
The opposite of "dates’ so embodied that they are not even thought of
as such (e.g. the birthday of a loved one7 or, better still, the everyday
acts of eating lunch or taking a shower) are dates that demand to be
noted on a memo, a list of things to do, a calendar or a personal diary

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(e.g. a hospital appointment); as against regular everyday purchases

that require no more than the application of (good) practical sense
(flour, oil, sugar, butter, milk, etc*), there are more occasional pur­
chases for a special meal that require a precise shopping list; and as
against the usual things that one thinks quite naturally of taking on
a journey (e.g. clothes), there are things less frequently used but still
necessary (e*g. medicines)*
What is written down, therefore, what requires inscription, is the
unusual, the extraordinary, the exceptional (as against the usual,
ordinary, everyday)* In fact, the unusual or exceptional character
does not have to be so great that the "event*, "information* or "action*
would be singled out and memorized more readily in future. Between
the ordinary and the routine, which are performed without even a
thought, and the exceptional and the singular are many little events
that are neither regular and embodied nor sufficiently exceptional
and singular, and these are sometimes more particularly the object of
inscription.
The ordinary writing of the extraordinary, moreover, is the only
example of writing to be found in Xenophon*s Economist:
Whatever we use for festivals or entertaining guests or at rare intervals
we handed over to the housekeeper; and when we had shown her where
they belong, and had counted and made an inventory of each thing, we
told her to give every member of the household what he or she required,
but to remember what she had given to each of them and when she got
it back, to return it to the place from which she takes things of that
kind. (Xenophon, 1994, p. 157)

The relationship between shopping list and embodied memory is

particularly clear in the case where women reply that they do not
make out shopping lists for themselves, but only for their husband or
children - i*e* for those without a sufficient practical knowledge of the
world of domestic products and the state of supplies to enable them
to make purchases "like that*, without a list* Here writing evidently
compensates for a deficient embodied programme* Lists can some­
times even be very complex - e*g* when mothers seek to transmit their
know-how in such matters. Thus when one mother (salesperson in the
family cake-shop) asks her daughter (aged ten) to do the shopping,
she draws up lists so that nothing gets forgotten, and even draws a
plan of the market so that she can get her bearings: "1 made her a plan
of the market and said to her: “This is where to get such and such**’ *
Concerned for the quality of the products, she sends her daughter
to shops that she knows and objectifies on the list the choices that

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she herself makes implicitly (e.g. this product is to be bought from

that stall, or, if they don't have it, look for it at this other place, and,
finally, if it's not available there, don't buy it anywhere else).
In the same way, travel itineraries are not drawn up when the
routes to be followed are embodied, ordinary and routine. These
customary routes call only for the mobilization of embodied habits.
Reasoning ad absurdum> no one would imagine that you would write
out an itinerary every morning before leaving for work, to show the
different streets, avenues and squares to be crossed to reach there.
And it is ultimately for analogous reasons that certain subjects find it
quite useless, or even absurd, to write on the back of family photo­
graphs or in albums the names of the individuals pictured; they are
immediately recognizable in the family circle.

The longer term and preparing the future

Similarly, writing intervenes when it is a question of dealing with
relatively longer timeframes and when there is a task of preparing
the future, situations that contrast with the immediacy of everyday
practices and the immediate relationship to the world. The diary, the
calendar and the planner, for example, make possible a division of
activities (individual or collective) in objectified time and, at the same
time, a planning of (or look back at) what has been done, implying
a more reflexive relationship to time (past, present or future). All
evidence suggests that domestic use of the diary or calendar is bound
up with the extension of timeframes and the increasing complexity of
activities to be managed in societies where the bureaucratization and
rational organization of activities requires increasing management of
meetings, appointment, events, etc., planned in a longer timeframe.
This is why it is more distant appointments or events that are written
down ('1 have a diary, but it’s mainly for things that are a long way
off', says a home help, with a qualification in bookkeeping) in differ­
ent ways, from the most basic (memos written on the back of enve­
lopes) to the more elaborate (diary, calendar, or electronic organizer).
Practices of writing for household management thus make it pos­
sible to calculate, plan, programme and foresee activity, and to organ­
ize it over a longer or less long period. They prepare or delay direct
action and to a certain extent suspend practical urgency. Preparing the
future may concern the family or personal budget. Subjects sometimes
speak of a "system’ in connection with their methods of managing the
family budget, the importance of 'knowing where you are', 'knowing

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what you’ve spent’, and contrast themselves with those who deny
the possibility of foreseeing, calculating, planning and methodically
managing their life {‘living from day to day*, ‘not being methodical*,
‘being chaotic’, ‘taking things as they come*, ‘taking advantage of
life’ . . .).HThe questions that certain subjects ask themselves in doing
their accounts, in ‘putting aside’, in forecasting their expenses - How
much should 1 put aside if I want to buy new furniture this year? If I
do buy it, how much will I have left to go away on holiday? If I take a
subscription to this magazine, will I still be able to go to the cinema so
often? - are well inscribed in the register of the project, ‘which posits
the future as future, i.e. as possible (as being able to happen or not to
happen), the possible that is posited as such* (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 19).
As techniques of self-control, practices of writing imply a greater
control of one’s desires and impulses. The account book or the cal­
culation of the family budget, for example, specifically concern the
means of delaying until later purchases that the logic of immediate
satisfaction of needs tends to want realized this instant. In this way,
a whole capacity to defer (desires, impulses) and plan is constructed,
something that is never acquired in advance:

How dreadful! [she laughs] Oh I make a budget, but no matter how

many times I do it, I never manage to keep to it. Yes, at the beginning
of the month I set to, I tell myself: ‘This month I’ll stick to it, I’ll note
down all my expenses’, and then by the fifth or sixth of the month it’s
finished, the pages are blank. But I don’t give up, I do the same every
month. Last month I think I stuck to it until the sixth. (Housewife,
married to a shopkeeper)

In the same way, memos and planners that make it possible to

remind oneself of things that have to be done, and to organize oneself
to do them, function as a recall to order addressed to oneself. They
amount to genuine techniques of self-constraint, self-discipline: ‘And
then to make myself see, because it’s good, sometimes it’s things
that I didn’t want to do like that, it was to show myself that I had
to, and that if I didn’t do it no one else would, to force myself a bit.’
When the list is addressed to someone else (a servant, for example),
its coercive character is readily apparent. Addressed to oneself, the
work programme acts as an order to oneself (some people speak of
‘policing’ themselves). It is understandable, then, what the object is of
those people, especially in working-class milieus, who say that they
don’t want to ‘be the slave’ of a list of things to do or a planner: they
perceive very well the potential power relationship inscribed in these
instruction lists and restraining planners.

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Managing complex practices

Writing thus sometimes becomes necessary - in the eyes of some
people - when one has to deal with the complexity (multiplicity and
arrangement of this multiplicity) of practices "demanding* to be organ­
ized, or that can be organized more easily by resort to writing (lists
of various kinds, diary, calendar, account book). Certain practices
of writing seem bound up with the increasing complexity of family
activities; you have to be able to manage and coordinate timetables
for work and other activities of both adults and children, as well as
the inevitable imponderables of existence: There are so many things
to think of that 1 write them down*; "Sometimes, yes, when 1 really do
have too many things to do, 1 make lists. On Sunday 1 do my planning
for the week. But the list, 1 don’t mean “ buy bread, butter”, all that,
not at all. 1 put down “ do shopping, go to the bank, visit the doctor,
the dentist”, that’s what 1 write down, not details, but I do make a
plan’ (woman, company doctor). When activities multiply ("too many
things to do’), when the time for them is "counted’ and yet you have
to do everything as best you can, then planning in diaries, calendars
or lists of things to do can gradually impose itself as a practice that is
necessary to avoid losing "precious time’:

And then I know that there are so many things to take care of, you
always forget - there’s something still at the cleaner’s after three weeks
that l have to pick up, forms to fill in, or go to the bank and l don’t
know what. Because I’m forced to be organized, otherwise I wouldn’t
manage. The day before yesterday l had to go out at seven in the evening
to buy nappies for my little girl, because they’d run out. That messes
up my whole time budget. (Woman, advertising agency sales executive)

Written planners that avoid vagueness and confusion often become

ways of acquiring a mastery of sometimes complex situations that is
indissociably both psychological (or symbolic) and practical.
It is often when appointments, meetings, movements, etc., prolifer­
ate at conflicting times that the diary, for example, is used. This little
objectified memory enables some people to free their living memory
and manage the complexity of timetables and family activities (the
family diary), but especially those of work. And it is clear that the diary
is all the more necessary when work and/or lifestyles have a welter of
activities, meetings and appointments. Informal sociability, impro­
vised among friends or in the family, in a life whose work rhythms are
governed by the routine of a timetable fixed by the employer does not
demand the use of this instrument to the same extent.
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In the same way, lists (of things to do or say, things to take on

a journey, shopping lists . . .) are often means of firming up future
actions, programmes, plans. Shopping lists, for example, sometimes
establish very precise programmes of movement in the big supermar­
kets (shelf by shelf) and in this way amount to "plans in which the
externalization of the organizing mechanism makes it more deter­
minative, more enduring, more inclusive and more formal* (Goody,
1977, p. 136). "For example, I classify all the dairy products, all the
toiletries, and it*s the same in my shopping cart, to save time. So
when Pm at the toiletries section, 1 have my whole list drawn up for
the toiletries, the dairy section, if 1 need milk, butter, yoghurt, I don’t
mix milk with sponges and then coffee* (woman teacher specializing
in deaf mutes). "1 start off with all the cleaning products on one side,
I do the rounds of the flat with my list and 1 take a look at my stocks:
bathroom, toilet paper, then I look under the sink. It*s a good list, all
in order, yes because 1 know that 1 get to each section* (housewife,
married to a shopkeeper). In this way they make it possible "to save
time*, "not to forget anything* ("Otherwise you run through all the
sections*; home help, married to a factory worker).
Not every consumer, female or male, proceeds in this way, but
it would be a misinterpretation of a good part of social reality if
we viewed them all just as buyers who automatically and natu­
rally browse the different products that catch their eyes in a simple
pre-reflexive adjustment to the situation.9

The official, the formal and tense situations

Writing is also particularly bound up with official events, appoint­
ments and dates, which people are afraid to forget (since this can have
serious consequences), or with formal and tense situations that have
to be dealt with. In cases of this kind, writing exercises an undeniable
function of reassurance in a state of relative tension.
The most official appointments are therefore noted in writing;
many people prefer to write a letter to an administrative department,
to explain correctly and calmly a delicate or complex situation, rather
than make a phone call (where you can "lose the thread*). If you do
telephone, this is after preparing approximately or precisely what
you mean to say to the other party, so as not to forget anything and
to be precise in your requests. When the phone call is tense, you may
resort to writing in order to avoid any shortfall of memory that would
lead to having to phone again in order to complete the information.

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A housewife, with a vocational qualification, explained about the

notes she made before a phone call: ‘Yes, that’s happened to me. But
really, for very important things, for phone calls where you have to
hang on for an hour, for example the social security or things like
that. But that’s quite unusual, I write down everything I have to say
so as not to forget, not to tell myself: “ Oh, now I’ve hung up and
forgotten to ask the most important thing”.’ It’s when the conversa­
tion is tense because of being official that written notes are used to
manage discourse. The linguistic habitus, linguistic practical sense, is
no longer enough in the face of the tension of the speech situation.
Besides, the respondents themselves contrast the spontaneity of infor­
mal phone calls between friends or family members with the tensions
of discussions with administrative departments, which may require
preparation: ‘With the administration always, but not with friends,
no,’ explains a housewife with a skilled qualification; another, with a
vocational diploma, says: ‘No, not me. Oh yes, sometimes 1 get every­
thing mixed up, sometimes I’m speaking to my daughter’s godmother
and we mix up everything, both of us in our own way. You’re talking
about one thing and then you’re talking about something else. And
then at the end you remember what you have to say.’
Writing thus makes it possible to manage one’s discourse in a more
precise and orderly fashion in a composed letter or the everyday act
of taking notes before a phone call, when what one wants to say
does not suffer improvisation and demands both a precise argument
and a certain completeness. Writings of this kind imply a particular
relationship to language: concern for form, for verbal and discursive
precision, for the order of presentation and for exhaustiveness.10
Subjects who detest such practices speak the language of ‘practical
sense’: preference for ‘improvisation’, ‘spontaneity’, natural speech
(as opposed to prepared and artificial speech). Men from working-
class milieus are the first to assert their preference for direct contact
or confrontation with administrative departments, open and face-to-
face, viva voce and thus ‘virile’, as opposed to prepared oral discourse
or the relation at a distance that the writing of letters involves {‘I let
them know all my states of mind directly’) (Lahire, 1997b).11
In the same fashion, making notes before a phone call is common­
est in the most official and/or tense situations; the use of ‘drafts’ in
composing letters, or re-reading them to look for spelling mistakes,
is observed in the most formal situations of writing. Exchange of
informal letters between friends or family members is thus often
distinguished from letters addressed to administrative departments
or unknown individuals. This logic of open versus tense exchange
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- ‘among ourselves’, where norms of legitimacy are not applicable,

against spaces of exchange, where these norms assert their presence
- imposes itself whatever the social milieu. Tense situations impose
formality, preparation, attention, care, concern. Everything happens
as if the cultural fault was all the more serious for being public - i.e.
under a gaze external to the ‘among ourselves’. Thus when mothers
spur their children to pay attention to spelling when they write letters,
the children particularly resist when it’s a question of letters between
friends, making the argument of open exchange between children
where everyone makes so many mistakes. The difference between
social milieus here is that both adults and children from the higher
social classes are more often in contact with formal situations, includ­
ing family ones. Certain children from these milieus internalize early
on the use of drafts when writing to a supercilious aunt, grandmother
or great-aunt. The ‘spontaneous’ decision to make a draft seems to
constitute an anticipatory practice in relation to the demanding pro­
spective reader. If you know that your linguistic production is under
the correcting gaze of another person, then you end up internalizing a
corrective gaze on your own production.
In the end, these minuscule practices of writing (notes made before
a phone call, successive drafts of a letter), which break with the spon­
taneity of language produced in a face-to-face situation, are genuine
rhetorical techniques. Breaking the logic of direct expression, they
liberate those who employ them from the limitation of any spontane­
ous and direct performance, which can never authorize a backward
move. Writing, and written preparation, makes it possible to distance
oneself from the immediate situation of utterance and to improve lin­
guistic performance by successive correction, until poor expressions,
mistakes in presentation, clumsiness, semantic muddle, etc., are elimi­
nated. Reading, re-reading, replacing one word by another, correct­
ing syntax, shifting arguments or facts around to be more persuasive
or pertinent, checking that one has not forgotten anything of what
one wanted to say, and so on. Writing makes it possible to select, as
with a film, the best takes, with the additional advantage of being able
to improve the quality from one take to the next. As a cumulative
work in the same space, written discourse is thus distinguished from
a high-wire performance without a net, which demands flexibility,
adaptation, a sense of the occasion (the kairos) and presence of mind.
As Charles Bally quite correctly wrote: ‘As soon as you take up the
pen, you have time on your side; you can reflect, choose, combine, as
you see fit’ (Bally, 1926, p. 128).
Sometimes the use of notes before making a phone call, or in

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the course of the cal) itself, is a matter not just of mastering one’s
own arguments, but also of a rhetorical technique of resistance to
administrative discourse:
I do it, it depends who I’m phoning. If it’s something very important I
do it. Because generally people always try to twist your words around,
at least that’s what I always think. In any case that’s how it is for me.
And I write things down so as not to get confused. Because they confuse
you very quickly. I mean for some things, especially to do with the
administration, it’s horrific. So I write it down. And if they change the
subject, I go back and I’ve got my note and that’s what I do. So that you
don’t say after you hang up: ‘Oh god, I meant to say that and I didn’t
say it.’ (Woman maintenance agent)

Knowing exactly what you want to say, not losing the thread of
your request, resisting the tortuous administrative rhetoric, being
able to go back and not let yourself be swept away unresisting in the
flood of the Other’s speech, the administrative speech - that is what
writing can also help with. It then becomes a technique of resistance
or self-defence. During the whole phone conversation, she "follows
the paper’ with her eyes, and doesn’t let herself be taken where she
doesn’t want to go. In the same way, another respondent (woman
shopkeeper) said that she writes down during the discussion the infor­
mation she is given, and if she doesn’t understand completely what
she’s told, these written traces allow her to ask for an explanation
immediately after. Writing makes it possible to look back on what
was said previously, and helps in not losing the thread of conversa­
tion. It makes it possible to check it, to go back to a "point’ that a
written trace has isolated with a view to just such a possible return: "If
there are points that don’t seem very clear to me, 1 note them and 1 let
the person speak, and then 1 ask for clarification, but the important
thing is that 1 write it down.’

The presence of the absent

As against what we are led to believe by those interactionist theories
that study only social encounters or meetings that require the joint
and immediate presence of individuals who "are mutually within
sight and sound of each other’, in relatively restricted physical limits
(Goffman), the co-presence of bodies is not always required in social
life: phone conversations or written messages on computer networks,
answerphones, faxes and, more traditionally, written correspond­
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ence. Of course you must have a body in order to act, but the action
does not always necessitate the immediate presence of this body in
situ.12
From this point of view, resort to writing makes it possible to over­
come the absence of a 'gift of ubiquity’ specific to the human condi­
tion: writing continues to mark our presence even when our body is
absent. It makes up for the bodily absence in order to continue to
perform an action. Here practical sense cannot function, since the
body and its embodied habits are not in a situation to act. In the
case of a will, for example, the 'desires’ of a person continue to act
even after they are dead. More generally, institutions - and especially
institutions of learning - are like sanctuaries haunted by the absent
or dead: texts constrain the action of the living, while those who
produced them have long since departed.
Writing makes it possible to act at a distance, or at all events
without the immediate presence of the person who wants to act. We
can evoke here the hypomnemata, those written instructions men­
tioned by Plato (Politics, 295b-d) which doctors or gymnasiarchs left
before setting out on a journey, so that their patients or pupils would
remember their prescriptions. We can also think of the written cor­
respondence by which lovers make themselves present to those from
whom they are temporarily parted, or the letters by which French
emigrants in the nineteenth century were able to continue managing
their property, and keep ultimate economic direction of their domain
or business.13 What we should have in mind, though, more broadly,
is the written exchange made necessary by the effect of the extension
of distance in economic life and social relations.
In the same way, little notes exchanged between members of a
family make it possible to mark one’s affective presence symbolically
{'Have a nice good day. Kisses. Till this evening.’), to remind children
or spouse of things to do {'Remember to pick up the things from the
cleaner’s’; 'Put the chicken in the oven at seven p.m., gas mark 7 ’).
They thus play an undeniable organizational and affective role within
the family circle. In fact, when a family is scattered and dispersed by
different timetables {school, work, etc.), these little written notes left
in a recognized place {on the kitchen table, by the door, near the phone
. . .) help to maintain family ties despite everything. These words
that contribute to maintaining materia) and symbolic ties between
family members are largely bound up with women’s work outside
the home: to maintain the role that the sexual division of domestic
labour confers on them, this is a means that women can use to mark
their presence despite their absence, to organize family activities even

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if they are not - at the moment - physically present. ('Yes, I do that,

but only a couple of words. For example, if my husband is out, as 1
work as a household help, sometimes people phone me about repairs.
In principle 1 stop at four o’clock, but sometimes people say to me:
“Can you help me out?” Then I leave a little note: “This evening Pm
off at six. Have to take . . . to such a place” or “Don’t forget to do
this or that.” Or a phone call: “ You have to call back at this time
. . .” ’). As mothers are tacitly or explicitly charged by the family
group with maintaining and recomposing forces of fusion (against
forces of fission and break-up; Bourdieu, 1994, p. 11), it is they who
produce the great majority of these little notes. The exchange is thus
very unequal: if mothers give, they don’t always get something in
return. A housewife (married to a lawyer) speaks of these little notes
as a way of 'emphasizing the tie between family members’, preserving
family ties despite the different activities and rhythms of activity of
the various individuals.
When at least one adult is constantly present at home (and when,
on top of this, children are not allowed out without permission from
their parents), these little notes become useless and hardly find a
pertinent context. The physical presence of the adult implies that
all information can be transmitted directly and orally. But the use
of notes to struggle against physical absence can also be a voluntary
use of writing in order intentionally to avoid the co-presence of the
sender and the receiver. Thus when a child (ten years old, father
an industrial designer, mother an administrative assistant with the
SNCF) composes surprise messages that the addressees find only in
his absence, he is playing with the possibility offered by writing to
mark his presence in the absence of his body. In the same way, when
a girl (ten years old, both parents teachers at a grande ecole) leaves
written notes for her father to ask permission to visit friends, this is
to avoid a face-to-face with the father who might not give his consent
('In writing it’s sometimes easier to say certain things, when you don’t
have the person in front of you, well she’s understood that and that’s
what she’s doing’).

Temporary disturbances of practical sense

Borderline cases, but particular interesting ones, are where writing
comes to the aid of actors who experience disturbances of practical
sense. Practical sense and embodied memory are upset by such things
as panic fears (e.g. with the birth of the first child), depression in the

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wake of serious family worries {e.g. death or illness), or problems of

work (e.g. serious interpersonal conflicts) that monopolize the whole
of someone’s attention, their whole field of consciousness. A mother,
for example (doctor, married to a business director), explains: ‘The
most lists I made I think was when I had one or two bouts of depres­
sion after the birth of my kids. I remember then I made lists for the
next day, but almost of the kind [she laughs] “Do the vacuuming” ,
“ Buy this or that”, etc. It wasn’t so as not to forget, it was to organize
my day, to make the most of it.’ In another case, a woman worker
explains that, in the grip of family problems and troubles at work,
she wrote down in the evening: ‘Wash. Go to work’, etc. Writing
here reinforces the operation of a deficient habitus. What normally
functions on the basis of pre-reflexive adaptation of an embodied pro­
gramme to practical situations may be blocked in certain exceptional
situations of disturbance.
In this borderline case, as in all those previously mentioned,
writing does indeed stand in a negative relationship to embodied
memory. When practical sense (habitus) is no longer enough to
‘remind oneself’ or act, in view of the unusual nature of things, the
extension of timeframe to be mastered and the need to prepare the
future, because of the complexity of activities to be managed,
the tension due to an official situation, the absence of the body, or
temporary mental disturbances and disorganizations, then appeal is
made to writing. Objectified memory makes up for the deficiencies of
embodied memory. On the one hand, writing is co-substantial with
forms of social life that require objectification in writing in order to
relieve memory and organize and plan activities. It makes it possible
to shape, organize, foresee and plan a practice outside the practice
itself, before carrying it out, and at the same time to defy or undo
the urgency of practice that weighs on an action. By objectifying the
future action, practices of writing effect a distancing of the prac­
tice. They enable not only a reflexive look back on action but also
its reflexive preparation.14 If, as Bourdieu writes, lthe social world
treats the body as a memo pad’, since ‘it inscribes there, particularly
in the form of social principles of division that ordinary language
condenses in its pairs of oppositions, the fundamental categories of
a view of the world’ (1990c, p. 11), it is when the body comes up
against its limits that the memo written outside the body begins to
find its relevance. Actors are often caught up in the ‘heat of action’,
but they are also sometimes outside of it (in order to prepare it or
rememorize it, evaluate it, rediscuss it, narrate it, comment on it,
theorize it .. .).
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The use of plans: lists of all kinds

Rather than postulating before any empirical investigation the sov­
ereign power of the plan and planning in action, or on the other
hand its total ineffectiveness, rather than making the notions of
'plan* and "planning* into general concepts of a universal theory of
action, researchers in psychology, the cognitive sciences and sociol­
ogy would benefit by studying the actual plans (particularly written
ones) that actors make use of from time to time in order to organize
their action.15
The shopping list, for example, is aw ay of fixing and guiding future
actions, an action programme, a "plan*. Some lists of this kind even
establish genuine programmes of movement within the supermarket,
where the products classified by section follow one another in order
as do the different moments of the itinerary followed in the store. A
planning micro-mechanism of this kind very concretely allows those
who make use of it (generally women) to "save walking and time*,
to limit possible forgetting in cases where action has not been pre­
pared. It is only by considering practices of this kind, everyday but
observable, that progress can be made in the resolution of theoretical
problems.
In order to determine the role or roles of the plan in action, accord­
ing to the context studied, the first thing is to note that there is
"action* and "action*. The example of descending the rapids that Lucy
Suchman takes to show the practical ineffectiveness of the plan16 is
very different from that of shopping in a supermarket. The specific
temporal conditions of the two situations mean that, in the first case,
the tempo is such that it is impossible to imagine oneself being able to
consult a plan while the action is under way, whereas, in the second
case, the list is read in the longer time of the action of making pur­
chases. As against what Suchman believes,17 it is possible to consult
the plan in the course of the action when this is not a short-term
action urgently performed. What can be shown by the typical cases
presented by these respondents is the fact that planning and routine,
reflection and pre-reflexive adjustment, etc., are not incompatible but
constantly interwoven, succeeding one another in everyday life.
Let us take the case of a travel itinerary. One respondent (a woman
hotelier) explained that making an itinerary brought a saving in time
in relation to simply improvising visits to sites: when you know where
you are going, you necessarily waste less time. The itinerary remains
a flexible plan to the extent that it is adapted to local circumstances,
to improvisation as a function of the specific constraints of the situa­

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tions encountered, rather than constituting an inflexible programme

composed of rigid and imperative instructions. The respondent thus
explained how her husband and she had to modify their programme
at one point because of a miscalculation of distances. All the same,
we see in the respondents’ assertions that preparing the trip in the
form of a plan (each day set aside for a particular visit) does indeed
induce the notion of ‘keeping to the plan’. When nothing is envisaged
and fixed in advance, no one can think that they have accomplished a
‘programme’, either well or poorly.
Moreover, the most rigid and systematically followed itineraries are
those drawn up on the basis of past practical experience. Thus when a
couple of shopkeepers (bakers) left for a holiday in Brittany, they fol­
lowed an itinerary that they had fixed in writing on a card. The plan
became all the more rigid in as much as the actors kept to it as closely
as possible and proceeded each year to the same operations (‘With
a place where we always stopped for breakfast, the same place we
always stopped for lunch, it was always systematic’). Systematicness
and regularity characterized the application of their envisaged plan.
As the husband was himself Breton he knew the routes very well, and
it was always he who drew up the final itinerary. In this case, the plan
thus depended on an earlier experience and a precise acquaintance
with possibilities. The husband selected from the possible itineraries
the one that practice had led him to view as the most ‘convenient’.
Lists of things to do that are drawn up in order to know where to
go, to keep things organized, not to forget something, as well as in
order to have a sense of moving forward, are also plans susceptible
to modification. One respondent (a woman shopkeeper) made herself
lists of this kind that combined all the work and household tasks that
she had to do. She tried to list things to do in order of importance and
degree of urgency. When the tasks on a list could not all be realized,
the list was carried forward to the next day. Domestic planning never
reaches the rigidity of imperative rules of obligatory instructions, and
leaves room for improvisation:18 ‘But 1 don’t mean that 1 follow this
to the letter, because sometimes it may be time to make lunch and I’ve
not done what was on my list - okay, then it has to be done the next
day or in the afternoon. But yes, I really do make lists, enormously,
to be sure of not forgetting anything.’ Embodied non-reflexive habits
(practical sense) are thus not incompatible with a planning of action
that sets the course, sketches overall strategies, fixes major frame­
works or general orientations without ever being in a position to
programme the smaller details (e.g. the shopping list enables prod­
ucts to be classified according to their section in the supermarket, to

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know where you are, to make sure that the task is complete and that
nothing has been forgotten, etc.), as in the case of the checklists of
airline pilots.19
The same respondent gives the example of lists of things to take
on a journey, which shows how a practical sense of anticipation
is combined with a rationalization of this practical sense. Lists for
holidays or weekends away are made in the form of card files and
correspond to master lists whose content varies according to whether
it is a longer stay or just a weekend, for example, but also according
to the season in which the trip is taken: winter or summer. These lists
thus permit her to pack her cases quickly without having to reflect
on what she needs to take (reflection can be done "once and for all’,
subsequent occasions only requiring the product of previous reflec­
tions to be re-read, which means both a saving in time and a release of
intellectual capacities in relation to reflexive work). Certain theorists
of action might think that the plan is of little use in the face of the
uncertainties of action and the situations that may be encountered.
This respondent, however, already takes into account, in drawing up
her lists, singular facts drawn from past experience, such as how dirty
her children are in the habit of getting. Lists are already the product
of practical anticipations made in the light of what is imagined as
likely to happen. Exactly the same kind of situation is also found with
another respondent (woman, no occupation, married to a secondary-
school teacher), who draws up a list of things to take on a journey
in the light of her whole previous knowledge of the situation - i.e. of
what she envisages as likely to happen, such as cold days, rainy days,
etc. The very writing down of the list thus presupposes the applica­
tion of a whole practical sense of situations, but this practical sense
is triggered more systematically and explicitly than when it is used in
'the heat of action*.
We could show similar situations in the use of account books, cal­
endars and shopping lists. All these analyses bring out an important
point: "planning* is not the opposite of "improvisation* or "practical
sense*, and even rests to a large extent on embodied practical knowl­
edge. "Good* planning is realistic planning, which already takes into
account the specific constraints of real situations. But we cannot rule
out the specific rule played by planning by maintaining that, whatever
the projected plans, the logic of the situation and the embodied skills
applied in the course of action are thesole determinants of action. The
plan makes it possible to organize and specify what has been done
and what remains to be done, to have a sense of moving forward, to
know where one is going and how (in what order) to proceed, etc.

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As a consequence, even when lists or plans are not followed to the

letter, they introduce a different relationship to everyday activities,
and particularly to the future. If 'big projects’ that are written down
cannot always stay on course in view of the facts of actual situations
and their specific uncertainties, the very fact of formulating a project
is conducive to organizing action and living it in a quite particular
fashion. And so, rather than seeking at all cost to reduce the effects
(cognitive, emotional, social . . .) of using plans in action by postulat­
ing their uselessness as soon as action is (really) engaged,20 we should
seek to describe the circumstantial effects which vary according to the
different types of action under consideration.

The relative pertinence of practical sense

Setting himself against the intellectualist conceptions of his time,
Pierre Bourdieu wrote in the fashion of the phenomenologists that
Time is engendered in the actualization of the act, or the thought,
which is by definition presentification and de-presentification, that
is, the “ passing” of time according to common sense. We have seen
how practice need not - except by way of exception - explicitly con­
stitute the future as such, as in a project or a plan posited through a
conscious and deliberate act of will* (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992,
p. 138). But it is this 'exceptionally* that allows us to put these state­
ments about time into perspective. If the plan is an intention for the
future in which actors conceive themselves as positing a future and
organizing all available means by reference to this future posited as
such, as a goal that must be explicitly attained, then the everyday
practices of writing that I have studied correspond very well to the
case in point. The diary, the list of things to do, the calendar, the
shopping list, etc., are indeed instruments for shaping our temporal­
ity, the social construction of time, that constitute repeated daily
exceptions in relation to the pre-reflexive adjustment of a habitus to
a situation. They are everyday practices for constituting the future as
such, in a project or a plan, and very often also practices of ration­
alization21 (of time, activity, money . ..). Sociological incursion into
the practices of writing opens a breach in the unity of the theory of
practice or of practical sense.
When Bourdieu - in the wake here of Jack Goody’s teaching -
emphasizes the importance of written and visual practices as knowl­
edge instruments for escaping the purely practical relationship to
practice and the conquest of a theoretical relationship, a logical logic

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from a more distanced perspective (Bourdieu, 1990a), he forgets a

crucial point - but how can one forget this in the case of social forma­
tions with formal schooling and a long tradition of literacy? (Furet
and Ozouf, 1977). The techniques of objectification that are writings,
diagrams, synoptic tables, lists, plans, maps, models, diagrams, cal­
endars, etc., are not instruments reserved for scholars. To be sure, the
latter use them more regularly than other actors, and over a far longer
time, but it is easy to show that all the techniques of objectification
of time, of language and of space to which he refers, and which are
deemed to destroy the practical relationship to the world, have on
the one hand been inculcated (more or less successfully) by the school
institution, while on the other hand they are used daily by actors in
their family, personal, work and play activities. How can you speak
about the calendar, the list or the plan as used in the scholarly regis­
ter without immediately thinking of the calendars and plans that are
used every day by non-scientific actors? By being most often bound
up with educational training, these techniques are unevenly divided
socially, but they are present to a certain degree in almost all house­
holds as soon as their occupants have acquired the basics of reading
and writing.
It is clearly not a question here of projecting scientific reasoning
into lay minds, but rather of maintaining that emergence from prac­
tical sense is common in everyday life. Besides, what are the social
foundations of rational action theories if not the historical invention
and deployment of the economic market, mercantile calculation,
techniques and strategies of commercialization, methods of account­
ing,22 economic or bureaucratic planning, rationalization of the
measurement of time, legally attested business contracts, etc.? These
theories, like those opposed to them (e.g. a part of phenomenology,
the theory of practice, etc.), do not rest on thin air, but systematize
different aspects of our forms of social life, different dimensions of
our relationship to the social world.23 Perhaps the effort of theoretical
clarification that these theories represent is incompatible with empiri­
cal nuance and complexity, but we have to maintain that it frequently
leads to excessive generalizations, visible as soon as we observe the
social world a little systematically and seriously, instead of remaining
caught by the engulfing charm of philosophical theories. An intellec­
tually easy (but socially difficult) polemic against theories of rational,
planning and calculating action, which generally are theoretically
very weak (but socially very strong), finally ends up no longer being
prepared to see what there is of the rational, the planned, the cal­
culated, etc., in the social world. It is impossible to act as if all the

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inventions mentioned (and many others besides) and their diffusion

in many forms on a large scale had left the world in the same state as
previously.
Analysis of the everyday practices of writing thus leads to putting
in question the universality of the theory of practice. To maintain
from the start that all action is the product of the application of
a pre-reflexive practical sense, non-intentional, subconscious, etc.,
that everyday actions imbricate one another in a kind of permanent
improvisation (a movement that is unforeseen and completely imma­
nent in the state of things), is to universalize one possible case and
remain blind to a large part of social practices. The calendar, the list
of things to do, the diary, the shopping list, the account book, the
letter, the personal diary and the travel itinerary amount to so many
everyday exceptions to the pre-reflexive adjustment of a habitus to a
social situation. To make the theory of habitus a theory that "better
accounts] for the actual logic of actual practices’ (Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 1992, p. 131) is to have a limited view of reality.
For all these reasons, it seems to me that the theory of practice finds
its field of relevance or validity24 in the study of social worlds with
a low degree of objectification, societies that are "without writing’
(Lahire, 1993a). Looking back on the origin of the construction of the
concept of habitus, Bourdieu was himself led to relativize the scope
of its application:

Some notions that I developed gradually, like the notion of habitus,

were born from the desire to recall that as well as the express and
explicit norm and the rational calculation there are other principles that
generate practices. This is especially the case in societies were very few
things are codified; with the result that, in order to account for what
people do, we have to assume that they are obeying a kind of ‘sense of
the game’ as one says in sport. ( 1986b, p. 40)

In these very weakly codified worlds, lacking a number of tech­

niques of objectification of culture, "the essential things are left to
a feel for the game and to improvisation’ (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 80).
Practical sense, practical mastery, the practical relationship to prac­
tice, improvisation, pre-reflexive adjustment to situations - all these
are terms or expressions that perfectly describe the logic of social
worlds with a low degree of objectification, and that proved their
validity in Bourdieu’s studies of Kabyl society.
Even if he maintains that "analysis of practical sense is valid well
beyond societies without writing’ (Bourdieu, 1986b, p. 41), the
empirical limit of the validity of the theory of practice is now clearly

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marked, and its author can even invite the reader to 'reflect on the dif­
ferent modes of existence of the principles of regulation and regular­
ity of different forms of practice’ (1990b, p. 65) within social worlds
that are more or less codified, functioning more or less by explicit and
formal transmission of skills ('In societies where the work of codifica­
tion is not very advanced, the habitus is the principle of most modes
of practices’; ibid., p. 82). It is this kind of reflection that I applied
in my own research on practices of writing (domestic, educational
or work-related). Asking what are the social conditions for habitus
(practical sense, practical mastery) to be the generating principle of
practices, raising the question of the forms of social life that allow a
symbolic mastery to exist, makes it possible to go beyond the concept
thanks to empirical research.

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 Scene 3

THE PLURAL LOGICS OF ACTION

The ambiguity of a singular practice

Given the multiple uses that are made of it in the social sciences, the
word ‘practice* is not without a certain ambiguity. It is contrasted,
on the one hand, with what pertains to ‘discourse*1 {‘practices* and
‘discourse’) and distinguished, on the other hand, from everything
‘theoretical* (practice and theory), sometimes again denoting rather
generically the most varied social activities (cultural practices, sport­
ing practices, economic practices, etc*). When Bourdieu speaks of
‘the logic of practice’ (in the singular - la pratique; 2000, p. 50) or
‘the universal pre-logical logic of practice’ (1990a, p* 19), he thus
locates ‘practice’ in the singular in relation to theory, ‘logical logic’.
The practical relationship to practice is profoundly different from
the theoretical relationship to practice that sociologists apply in their
quest to understand specific practices. It is especially in order to mark
this essential difference between the scientist and the practitioner, the
one in a position to analyse and the other in a position to act, that
Bourdieu developed his ‘theory of practice’: ‘One must thus draw up
a theory of this non-theoretical, partial, somewhat down-to-earth
relationship with the social world that is the relation of ordinary
experience* (1990b, p. 20).
But, to be completely acceptable, the epistemological and social
break between theory and practice should not be conceived right
away as a firm separation between groups of actors (theorist-actors
and practitioner-actors). Sociologists who marry, play sport, support
a political party, buy furniture or go to the cinema do not generally
maintain a theoretical relationship to their own practice. Just like any
other practitioner, sociologists are moved by the schemes of action
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 R E F L E X IV IT IE S AND L O G IC S OF ACTIO N

they have embodied in the course of their previous social experiences.

They are sometimes theorists and often practitioners. We can there­
fore distinguish in the scientist two major types of case: that in which
they are in the situation of the theorist and that in which they are in
the situation of the practitioner.
Things necessarily become a bit more complicated, however, when
we consider these same sociologists at work. From a certain point
of view, in writing their analyses they are once again in a practical
relationship to practice. What they write may well be an atemporal
(or de-temporalizing) theoretical vision (tbeona), at a distance from
what others (sometimes sociologists themselves) have in the practical
mode, but they are none the less oriented during the time of writing
by a practical sense of the sociological trade. What they call upon
in their practice of writing are professional habits (conceptual, edi­
torial, stylistic, technical, etc.), and this is not a practice detached
from temporal constraints. Difficult here, therefore, to distinguish
the theorist from the practitioner, as these are present in the same
person and at the same time, the two notions being fundamentally
relational: the same person is a practitioner in relation to her act of
writing (or already at the stage of research), but a theorist in relation
to the practices she is writing about. The break between the theoreti­
cal and the practical, the theoretical relationship to the world and the
practical relationship to the world, logical logic and practical logic, is
thus not simply and solely between two clearly distinguishable reali­
ties (two groups of actors - theorists and practitioners) or two types
of situation (the theoretical actor - the same actor practising); it also
makes a formal distinction that may be applied to the same situation,
according to the point of view from which it is regarded.
As 1 have said about the notion of habit, sociology too often con­
fuses habit as a modality of action (involuntary, unintentional) with
the particular kind of habit (whether a habit of reflexivity or not). For
example, the footballer has the habit of striking a ball (in different
ways), and this gesture does not require of him any reflection or prior
planning. But in the same way a grammarian has the habit of casting
a grammatical look at sentences (a habit that is triggered without any
particular reflexive effort whenever she is in the situation of being a
grammarian or philologist). This habit, however, is indeed a habit of
reflexivity, of taking a distance from language. Both the grammarian
and the footballer are moved by habits that gradually build up in
them a "second nature*. They put these to work without even having
to think about it, without being aware or having the impression of
committing an unusual act. The grammarian is not absolutely differ -

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ent in this respect from the footballer, who moves easily about the
field and strikes the ball into the back of the net. Both have installed
in them this Second nature* of habit, as they have spent years ‘doing
their scales’, repeating thousands of times movements of the body or
grammatical operations that are both similar and different. The foot­
baller can also acquire (in his trade or outside of it) habits of reflex-
ivity, while the grammarian has necessarily acquired (in her trade
or outside of it) non-reflexive habits; but what separates them is the
share of time that they respectively spend on embodying reflexive or
non-reflexive habits and, accordingly, the share that reflexive habits
(planning, conceptualization, theorization) make up in their respec­
tive stock of embodied habits. If this means that the pre-reflexive kind
of habit is not the only possible kind, we are forced to maintain that
the theory of habitus reduces habit as a modality of action to one
particular kind of habit - i.e. the non-reflexive kind.
Pierre Bourdieu, in effect, largely constructed his theory of practice
and his concept of habitus against intellectualist theories of practice
- i.e. against the idea of a practice oriented rationally, intentionally
and voluntarily towards explicit ends, against the idea of reflexivity
as a consciousness that was conscious, systematic and calculating.
The practical relationship to practice is thus defined as an immedi­
ate understanding that is blind to itself (a learned ignorance), a con­
sciousness that is non-conscious, conceptually wanting, pre-reflexive,
partial (as against exhaustive and systematic), vague, unintentional,
and engaged in the urgency of action. On the other hand, this author
has long used a theoretical couple - practical mastery as against
symbolic mastery - which initially served to account for differences
between dominant and dominated cultural arbitraries. And it is the
parasitizing of the general theoretical question about the theory of
practice (practical sense, the practical relationship to the world) by
the question of cultural differences between groups or classes (prac­
tical mastery versus symbolic mastery) that has ended up posing a
problem.
If material conditions of existence subject people more or less
closely to the ‘imperatives of practice’ and thus tend to prevent
some of them from ‘the formation and development of the aptitude
for symbolic mastery of practice’ (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977, p.
48), this then means that the members of different social groups are
driven by practical sense to a greater or lesser extent, and that some
of them have the means, by their material conditions of existence,
but also and above all by dint of the instruments of reflexivity that
they have acquired, particularly at school, for emerging from the

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logic of practical sense and mastering the world symbolically, putting

a distance between themselves and the world, themselves and their
practices.
The concept of habitus seems on the one hand to subsume the
opposition between practical and symbolic mastery (Bourdieu and
Passeron, 1977, pp. 45-6), while on the other hand falling back on
the first term of the opposition (habitus or practical sense is practical
mastery).2 All evidence then suggests that a formidable contradic­
tion is immediately established. In the second figure, the concept
of habitus is defined exclusively as "practical mastery* (or practical
sense) - i.e. as knowledge without awareness, pre-reflexive mastery
- and for this reason habitus cannot be invoked to account for those
social practices - such as educational ones - that function by way
of symbolic, conscious, rational mastery. Bourdieu makes it clearly
understood that this is indeed how he defines habitus, admitting that
this cannot be "at the origin* of certain practices. He thus proposes,
as 1 have already recalled, that we "reflect on the different modes
of existence of the principles of regulation and regularity of differ­
ent forms of practice* (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 65) within more or less
codified social worlds, functioning more or less by explicit and formal
transmission of skills, and makes clear that, "in societies where the
work of codification is not very advanced, the habitus is the principle
of most modes of practice* (ibid.). He writes in the same vein that "[it]
is, of course, never ruled out that the responses of the habitus may be
accompanied by a strategic calculation tending to perform in a con­
scious mode the operation that the habitus performs quite differently’
(1990a, p. 53). There is thus a conscious mode that is distinct from
the practical mode constituted by habitus:
The immediate fit between habitus and field is only one modality of
action, if the most prevalent one {‘We are empirical,’ said Leibniz, by
which he meant practical, ‘in three quarters of our actions’). The lines
of action suggested by habitus may very well be accompanied by a
strategic calculation of costs and benefits, which tends to carry out at a
conscious level the operations that habitus carries out in its own way.
Times of crises, in which the routine adjustment of subjective and objec­
tive structures is brutally disrupted, constitute a class of circumstances
when indeed ‘rational choice’ may take over, at least among those
agents who are in a position to be rational. {Bourdieu and Wacquant,
1992, p. 131)
In effect, if habitus is this pre-reflexive, non-theoretical, etc*, experi­
ence, it is clear that not all practices have habitus as their generating
principle.

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 THE P L U R A L L O G IC S O F A C TIO N

In the first case, the intention is rather to subsume under the concept
of habitus both 'practical habitus’ {'functioning more generally by
way of practical mastery’) and 'reflexive habitus’ (functioning more
generally by way of symbolic mastery’), and the idea that habitus
could not be at the origin of certain kinds of conduct does not strictly
have any meaning. The theory of habitus rather assumes major social
variations from the standpoint of the relative importance of habits of
reflexivity and symbolic mastery in the socialization programmes of
different actors in a society. It is this interpretation that I would see
as most coherent, removing the multiple contradictions generated by
the first option. If, like Bourdieu himself, you opt for the first solu­
tion, you are then faced with a pleonasm (practical habitus = practical
'practical sense’) and a contradiction (reflexive habitus = pre-reflexive
reflexivity). And it is no doubt from trying to tackle different prob­
lems at the same time and with the same theoretical tool (response to
the epistemological problem about the relationship of social scientists
to their objects; response to rational action theories; response to intel­
lectual ism; response to those who cannot see the unequal distribution
of the instruments of reflexivity) that the tool ends up breaking.

The sporting model of practical sense and its limitations

Merleau-Ponty sometimes used the example of the physical relation­
ship that the footballer has to the playing field to make clear to the
reader how the field is not an 'object’ to which the player relates, but
'the immanent term of his practical intentions; the player becomes
one with it* (1965, p. 168). The theory of practical sense makes gener­
ous use of sporting examples to explain the practical relationship to
practice, practical mastery, appealing variously to the tennis player,
the footballer or the boxer.3
The tennis player who takes up the right position to hit the ball,
by pre-reflexive anticipation and not in the mode of a reflexive rela­
tionship to the future (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 162), is thus brought in to
illustrate the practical or everyday relationship to time:
Everything that I want to say is summed up in the contrast between a
project or plan (the plan is an aim for the future in which the subject
views himself as positing a future and organizing all means available
with reference to this future posited as such, as an end that has to be
explicitly attained), and a preoccupation. The preoccupation or antici­
pation of the player is immediately present in something that is not
immediately perceived and immediately available, but that is however

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 R E F L E X IV IT IE S AND L O G IC S OF ACTIO N

as if it was already there. If you take the example of wrong-footing,

the player who sends a ball to the wrong foot acts in the present in
relationship to a ‘coming1 (I say ‘coming’ here rather than ‘future’) that
is quasi-present, inscribed in the very physiognomy of the present, of
the opponent in the process o f moving to the right. He does not posit
this future as in a project: he can move to the right or not to the right
. . . So I send the ball to the left because he is going to the right, etc. It
is determined as a function of a quasi-present inscribed in the present.
(Bourdieu, 1989, pp. 21-2)
Or again:
If you want to carry out the experiment, try and do interviews with an
excellent player in any sport you like and ask them: ‘You did this at
such and such time, how did you do it?’ You will see how there is an
immense gap between this kind of practical mastery, expressed in the
immediate relationship to a game by which one is possessed, and which
one possesses to the extent that one is possessed by its regularities, its
tendencies, and the knowledge of the knowing subject who posits the
game as a game, posits the game to himself in a representation of the
game, who makes a plan of it .. . There is an abyss between the two
things. (Ibid., pp. 44-5)
In the conditions of a tennis player in action, you can well under­
stand how this person does not have the possibility - given the
urgency of the action - to elaborate decisions, make plans, think of
the future as such and envisage rationally and consciously the acts
that she might perform, contrary to the conception of a project. The
example of the sports player caught up in the heat of the action is a
perfect illustration of what practical sense, practical logic, is - i.e. of
practice (as opposed to theory): T h e conditions of rational calcula­
tion are practically never given in practice: time is limited, informa­
tion is restricted, etc.’ (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 11). Other writers, more
inspired by North American ethnomethodology but sharing the same
conception of practice, also draw their examples from the world of
sports. One of those most commented on is that of descending the
rapids in canoe, as developed by Lucy Suchman (1990).
These examples illustrate "perfectly* the theory of practice held by
their authors, but their very "perfection1 immediately renders them
suspect. The authors never inquire into the limitations of the sporting
comparison and the specificity of the examples given. However, start­
ing from these examples of action and raising the question of their
specific social property, one can only be amazed by the reduction of
the social world that is ultimately effected by the corresponding theo­
ries. Everything happens as if this world were (1) a world of constant

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urgency; (2) a world of live performance (as on a theatre stage in front

of an audience) in which one can never repeat what one has done and
has no right to make a mistake; (3) a world of permanent confronta­
tion with situations that impose themselves and require improvisa­
tion (the musical metaphor is sometimes added to the sporting one).
Taking these 'made-to-order* examples, you end up with one of the
most common epistemological errors in the social sciences - that of
generalizing from particular cases, or, more precisely, generalizing
from a particular variety of case or a particular class of contexts
(Lahire, 1996b).

1 In all these cases, the examples describe actors veritably trapped

by action, caught in the 'heat of the action*, the urgency of things
to be done. Urgency is thus a major characteristic of the actions
described; it constitutes, we are told, 'one of the essential proper­
ties of practice* (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 82; also 2000, p. 56). There is
no time to deliberate carefully when faced with a ball travelling at
100 or 200 kilometres per hour, no rational choice or calculation
possible when it is a matter of shooting between two players while
being chased by a third, no conceivable plan or project when you find
yourself facing your opponent in the ring or descending the rapids. As
against the science of practices constructed 'after the battle* (1990a,
p. 81) and enjoying far more time, as well as the means - written and
graphic - for de-temporalizing action, 'practice* in the singular is nec­
essarily bound up with the obligation to act "'on the spot” , “in the
twinkling of an eye” , “ in the heat of the moment” , that is, in condi­
tions which exclude distance, perspective, detachment and reflection*
(ibid., p. 82). But why should urgency be an essential property of all
practices? Not all actions correspond to this model. Action is not
always reducible to the gesture performed, the word uttered or the
decision urgently taken. It may take a few seconds or be extended
over several months, even years. You don’t do shopping in the same
way as you descend the rapids, you don’t build a house like you hit a
football, you don’t prepare an international scientific conference4 like
you box in a ring.
Of course, everything depends on the manner in which the action
in question is divided up, but certain actions are organized over a far
longer time than those offered in the examples of sporting gestures.
Even in different sports, urgency can be greater or lesser. According to
whether an action is longer or shorter, it will allow more or less time
for reflection, evaluation, calculation, deliberation, soliciting advice,
negotiation and discussion. Longer actions, which extend over time,
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 R E F L E X IV IT IE S AND L O G IC S OF A C TIO N

sometimes require the establishing of programmes, planning, calen­

dars, projects, and - a posteriori - balance sheets or evaluations. As
Anselm L. Strauss remarks, sending the first man to the moon was
from this point of view one of the most planned, calculated and care­
fully prepared actions ever (1993, p. 53). It goes without saying that,
whatever its duration, not everything in an action can be intentional,
and it would make no sense to assume this. An actor may have the
intention of attaining an objective (e.g. travelling to a certain place)
without a deliberate programme that precisely mentions all the acts
that have to be performed in order to get there. Thus we are always
dealing with a subtle mixture of sensory-motor habits and planned or
reflexive ones, and it is just as absurd to presuppose that actors are
never strategic, intentional, etc., as to postulate that they always all
are.
But as in parapraxes, these texts often supply flagrant counter­
examples that make the specificity of the sporting examples they
give readily apparent: "You need only think of the impulsive decision
made by the tennis player who runs up to the net, to understand
that it has nothing in common with the learned construction that the
coach, after analysis, draws up in order to explain it and deduce com­
municable lessons from it* (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 11). It is impossible
then to avoid the question: Why does the trainer’s practice not consti­
tute an example of a completely different theory of practice? A theory
that asserts the reflexive, deliberate - individually or collectively - and
less pressing character of action? Why should one real example be less
pertinent than another real example? It is completely possible, in the
case of certain actions, to 'overcome the effects of time* (Bourdieu,
1990a, p. 81) by utilizing means that are not reserved just for scien­
tists - plans, maps, diagrams, video recordings, diagrams, etc. Not
all actions thus correspond - in all evidence - to the model of urgent
action.

2 The model examples all appeal to 'live* actions, in a temporal­

ity where time is often scarce and counted, in conditions identical
to those experienced by actors on stage in front of an audience. No
mistake is permitted, nothing that one has just done can be undone
or repeated. Everything happens as if the cineaste-sociologist who
films the action privileged those particular scenes: the public football,
tennis or boxing match, the real (and not simulated) canoe descent
through the rapids, etc. Once again, these examples are perfect to
make the reader understand how: 'Caught up in “the matter in
hand” , totally present in the present and in the practical functions
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that it finds there in the form of objective potentialities, practice

excludes attention to itself (that is, to the past)* (Bourdieu, 1990a, p.
92). There is no question of a dancer at the Paris Opera recommenc­
ing on stage a gesture he has performed badly. He has to pursue his
action and catch up with its rhythm. Similarly it is impossible for the
player who has wrongly anticipated the ball to say to the umpire, as
in a film: "Cut! Well replay that.*5 But the sports player in the course
of the match is not the same as the player in training. Why then not
also base the theory of practice on the model of the player in train­
ing? Here she can replay the same gesture as many times as she wants,
stop for breath, reflect on what she’s just done, change her grip on the
racket or the style of her service, receive advice from her trainer and
discuss with him a possible strategy, or envisage with his help differ­
ent possibilities, and so on. A less compressed timeframe, a perform­
ance that is not broadcast live this very day, this minute, when it is
important not to go wrong. By focusing our gaze exclusively on the
performance, we come to forget the times of preparation and training
that are propitious for reflection.6
If, at the moment when the player is caught up in the match,
she can count only on embodied habitual skills, these may still be
the product of a whole work of reflection, correction, calculation,
strategy, etc., accumulated through hours of training. The trainer
may rationalize the practice of the player, make her conscious of
her hits, faults, gaps, ‘correct her aim* by orienting her habits in the
game. The action performed in a state of urgency, on the day of the
match, benefits from all this preparation that is done ‘with time*,
taking one’s time, gradually correcting, by repeated rehearsals, the
player’s gestures, positions and movements (with the aid of video,
for instance), her successions of ‘strokes’ or gestures, in sum by con­
stantly effecting this looking back on oneself and on the past that the
theory of practice considers as being by nature impossible in its one
and only ‘practice*:

This practical sense, which does not burden itself with rules or prin­
ciples (except in cases of misfiring or failure), still less with calcula­
tions or deductions, which are in any case excluded by the urgency of
action which ‘brooks no delay’, is what makes it possible to appreci­
ate the meaning of the situation instantly, at a glance, in the heat of
the action, and to produce at once the opportune response. Only this
kind of acquired mastery, functioning with the automatic reliability of
an instinct, can make it possible to respond instantaneously to all the
uncertain and ambiguous situations of practice. (Bourdieu, 1990a, pp.
103-4)

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When it is accepted, looking back on past action (but not on

oneself)7 is conceived only in the mode of a crisis of automatisms,
habits or routine. It is only when the actor encounters difficulties that
put her in crisis that she begins to ask herself questions. But we see
very well in the example of the sports player that (corrective) looking
back on oneself and one’s past action is an everyday and normal con­
dition of advance and improvement in the habits of the g ame. Besides,
sometimes actors also look back on their past action so as to memo­
rize it or rework it in daydreams, to narrate it, laugh at it, "transmit* it
to the next generation, get the impression of mastering it better (e.g.
personal diaries), and so on.
The model of "live* action, however, is not the only existing
model. It corresponds to periods of public performance executed in
a relatively limited time (exams, certain kinds of match, theatrical
and dance performances, musical concerts . . .) but neglects situations
in which rehearsal, correction and reflection are possible and even
sought after (periods of sports, musical, dance and educational train­
ing, simulation of a real situation in the context of a training course,
making a film in which scenes are replayed as many times as desired,
writing a book with re-reading, correction, deleting, etc., and a mul­
titude of situations of everyday life in which one can repeat what has
not been done well). The actor is not always placed in the situation
of the tennis player who must take care to succeed with each "stroke*
- which by this fact acquires an absolute and unique value, either
leading to victory or steadily condemning her to defeat - with no
possibility of error, or of going back and trying again. It is impossible
therefore to make this particular moment of the course of action, this
type of action, into action par excellence. Social life does not unfold
at all times in the condition of a public "live* match.

3 If we are to believe certain examples offered, we might imagine

that the social world is made up of permanent confrontations with
situations that are not chosen, that impose themselves on actors and
in which they have to improvise as best they can. Actors would always
be improvising their actions on the spur of the moment, finding their
bearings in a course of action that is never foreseen in advance. They
would be comparable with the jazz pianist - solo or in a band - who
improvises without ever being able to consider, represent and plan his
future actions (Sudnow, 1978). Because the time of action is counted,
because the actor lives all his actions in a state of urgency, he "lives in
the present, acting continually on immediate circumstances* (Conein
and Jacopin, 1993, p. 79; Agre and Chapman, 1987) rather like

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the Pengi character in the computer game. A life exclusively in the

present, oriented towards action, caught up in the continuous flux of
the world’s events, the solicitations of the environment that are never
mastered but to which one tries constantly to adapt.8 Practical antici­
pations are possible, but no project or plan, no objective envisaged.
Donald Norman, in The Psychology o f Everyday Things, writes
as follows against theories of planned action: 'Rather than engage
in detailed planning, people embark on their everyday activity when
the occasion arises. Thus we do not modify the course of our actions
to go into a shop, a library or to chat with a friend. We attend to
our activities and if we find ourselves in the vicinity of the shop or
the library, or on the point of meeting a friend, we let the opportu­
nity trigger the appropriate activity* (Norman, cited in Conein and
Jacopin, 1993, pp. 69-70). This typically aprioristic quotation, by its
very naivety, shows very clearly the fact that not all actors are cast
on the model of the one described by this author: a bit 'bohemian*
and with no particular project, who lets herself be led by the uninter­
rupted course of things, improvising according to the opportunity of
the situation, and who might very well - for better or worse - never
reach her place of work, let alone anywhere else . . .
No social life of any kind is simply a constant and uninterrupted
flow that carries actors in an endless succession of 'strokes’, pragmati­
cally and contextually (in the sense of the immediate context) given
or received. Actors do not live in a state of constant improvisation.
The same tennis player who has to improvise her gestures on the
court as a function of her opponent’s style of play, in the practical
urgency of the public match, also possesses a planner that foresaw
several months in advance the tennis tournament in which she is now
executing her performance. Actors often have to juggle between short
and long timeframes, immediate tactics and long-term strategies.
For example, Anne-Marie Chartier and Florence Janssens show very
well how teachers in primary school constantly take into account
several timeframes at once in their pedagogic practice ('the strategic
timeframe of the school year* with 'mobilizing events’; 'ritualized
times* and 'tactical times’) and explain why the outside observer does
not understand the meaning of the actions, gestures and educational
arrangements inscribed in the various different temporal frameworks
and perspectives: she observes practices over a given period, but is
unaware of the distribution in different temporal frameworks of
action that gives them their meaning (Chartier and Janssens, 1996).
According to the framework in which the action is seen, whether the
focus is the long shot that shows a sports player planning her season,

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 R E F L E X IV IT IE S AND L O G IC S OF A C T IO N

training for a long period then playing her matches, or rather the
close-up on a phase of the game during a match (e.g. wrong-footing
or anticipating being wrong-footed), then either planning, foresight,
reflection, deliberation, representation, strategy, etc., are highlighted,
or else these elements are totally ignored and all that emerges is the
pre-reflexive (quasi-instinctive) adjustment to a situation under way.

Intentionality and the levels of context

The question of intentionality in action or the lack of it, consciousness
or the absence of consciousness, does not arise in a general or abso­
lute sense, but always depends on the sequence of actions under con­
sideration: a short or a lengthy action, a simple action or a complex
one, ordinary or unusual. The dialogue of the deaf between theories
of action that reserve a larger or smaller place for intentionality,
conscious strategy and aim, etc., is bound up with the fact that very
often they are not speaking of the same kinds of action at all. Their
champions have in mind such heterogeneous and contrasting exam­
ples of action that most commonly their theoretical confrontation is
vain and sterile.
Pierre Bourdieu, describing intellectual trajectories, wrote as
follows:
There is therefore an initial reduction that the reduction to utilitarian­
ism enforces: a rational and calculating consciousness, positing ends as
being possible as such, is substituted as a relationship to the future for
the end as preoccupation, as immediate presence to objectives inscribed
in the present. It is by effecting this slippage that one is condemned to
cynicism. Cynicism is the act of positing inadmissable ends as such.
If my analysis is true, it is possible for example to be adjusted to the
necessities of a game, or have a magnificent academic career, without
ever needing to calculate to this intention. This would perhaps appear
less speculative if we were in a situation of a research seminar, if we
were analysing, for example, the biography of an academic or one of
the great French linguists of the nineteenth century. A very common
theoretical error, committed by many researchers who are carried away
(often by a desire for demystification), consists in positing the end-point
of a trajectory as if this had already been the end of the agent from
the start (Meillet, for example). They transform the trajectory into a
project. They act as if, from the moment where Meillet chose a supervi­
sor for his doctoral thesis, a subject, a discipline, he had in mind the
ambition of becoming the greatest linguist of his time. They make out
that the principle of conduct of agents in a field (two priors struggling

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 TH E P L U R A L L O G IC S OF A C TIO N

for the staff, or two academics struggling over whether the theory of
action should be this or th a t.. .) is always a kind of cynical calculating
consciousness. (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 23)

In this case, the sequence of action represents the whole of a personal

trajectory. Paradoxically, the different moments in the trajectory
could sometimes be interpreted on the basis of examples of short
and quasi-instinctive actions. One would then say, for example, that,
just as the tennis player does not "decide’ to hit the ball approaching
her at high speed, so an actor does not construct conscious strategies
to reach a certain position of power (economic, cultural, political).
And, indeed, both very short-term and very long-term actions often
share this property of making intentionality or conscious strategy
unlikely. But the apparent similarity of the two extremes may lead
one to believe that the whole spectrum of actions (from the simplest
to the most complex, the shortest to the longest, the most to the least
probable, etc.) could be viewed in the same fashion. Things are not so
simple, however.
Let us take some different examples. Clearly you do not decide to
"go shopping* in the same way as you decide to "go to the College de
France’. The former is a simple everyday action, open to anyone able
to enter a shop with money to spend; the second is quite extraordi­
nary and certainly not open to all comers. In the same way, to decide
on the route I will take to get by car from Lyon to Bordeaux is not
the same thing as "deciding*, when I’m in secondary school, to study
medicine at university. In the first case, the situation is again rather
ordinary and relatively commonplace (car journeys do not present
particularly formidable social and political stakes). In the second
case, not everything depends on my good intention or good planning:
a series of good reports have to be obtained, particularly in mathe­
matics, to get into the top science class, etc., and the social conditions
that may enable me to reach my goal may change in the course of time
(e.g. I may lose my parents and no longer have either the motivation
or the material means to continue my studies, etc.).
If it is hard to imagine, on the scale of social games that Bourdieu
takes as the pertinent social context, that actors can set their sights
explicitly on goals long in advance (to believe that Meillet got good
grades in primary school with a view of being able one day to go to
the College de France ...), it is very easy to see, on the other hand,
that, on different occasions in everyday life, actors can indeed "posit
ends as possible as such’ (e.g. to go on holiday to Brittany or Spain, to
do shopping or housework first, etc.). These are simply not at all the

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same kinds of action. And to demonstrate this, it is enough to imagine

an actor who shows great foresight in her domestic organization,
rationally managing the family organization, accounts and timetables,
making shopping lists and lists of things to do, etc. Who would want to
qualify her behaviour as "cynical and calculating utilitarianism*? Just
as it is hard to argue that Meillet was already preparing his 'stroke* at
primary school, because this involves a very complex series of actions,
extending over a very long period of time (almost a whole life), so it is
not at all awkward to maintain that someone foresaw, calculated and
planned - with all possible cynicism! - to go to the bank at such and
such a time, then go to the chemist, etc. If Bourdieu raises the question
of cynicism, and if "calculation* is equivalent to cynicism for him, this
is because he places us in the order of positions and practices bound
up with high social stakes. Saying that someone getting married does
not consciously calculate, as they would in a real marriage market,
that taking up this or that prestigious position does not necessarily
mean it has been aimed at intentionally, etc. - these are all actions
that touch on the social order and its reproduction. But not all actions
are quite so 'historic*; they are not all situated at the level of major
social stakes, strategies of reproduction of resources, capitals, strate­
gies of subversion or preservation of existing hierarchies. In short, it is
because the situations described are considered exclusively at the level
of trajectories and fields, with their logic of struggle, balance of forces,
reproduction, etc., that the non-intentional aspect of practices can be
emphasized - most often quite correctly. One can certainly conduct
one*s whole life in the mode of rational calculation or intentional aim,
but, in a life (or the context of an individual trajectory) that is never
entirely controllable, foreseeable, plannable, etc., actors can sometimes
develop intentions, plans, projects, strategies, calculations that are
more or less rational, in this or that domain, in connection with this
or that practice.9 Critical remarks about intentionality and conscious
calculation are thus valid for a particular type of action, at a particular
scale of construction of contexts of action, but not universally.

Plurality of times and logics of action

Theories of action and the actor plunge us either into the realm of
conscious strategy, calculation, rational decision, reflexivity or con­
scious intention or else into the world of pre-reflexive, subconscious
adjustment to practical situations, the world of practical sense and
the logic of improvisation.

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As with the tension between plurality and singleness of the actor, it

is neither possible nor desirable to settle this question once and for all
by theoretical debate;10 this can only be done by empirical research
and inquiring as to the socio-historical conditions that make rational
action possible, in which socio-historical conditions actors can apply
completely conscious strategies and act in an intentional or calculated
fashion. There is nothing in the coherence and internal construc­
tion of theories that can decide on the pertinence of one pole or the
other in this tension. And it is not unprofitable here to look back to
Durkheim. In fact, when Durkheim criticized the recourse that some
of his contemporaries had to the notion of "interest* or "maximization
of profit*, he did so not on the basis of a rival conception of human
motivation, but rather by criticizing the apriorism involved. Speaking
of "political economy*, he wrote that "this placed at the root of all its
deductions an abstraction that it did not have the right to utilize, that
is, the notion of a man guided in his actions exclusively by personal
interest. Now, this hypothesis cannot be posited immediately at the
start of research; only repeated observation and methodical compari­
son can allow us to evaluate the impulsive force that this motive may
exercise on us* (1975, p. 16). Durkheim could have criticized this
theory of "personal interest* from an alternative conception of the
social, a different theory of practice, but in actual fact he took a far
more distanced (and pertinent) position in not rejecting completely
the notion of "personal interest’, but rather the idea that you could
stick to this notion as an a prion of all research. His target was the
a prion as such: "We do not begin*, he explained, "by postulating a
certain conception of human nature, and deducing a sociology from
this’ (ibid., p. 184).
Calculation, reason, rationality, interest or strategy do not lie at
the origin of all possible actions. On the other hand, however, it is
possible to inquire, for example, what social forms enable certain
actors, in certain of their practices, to act by determining "costs* and
"benefits*. The critique, then, does not depend on an alternative a
priori conception of the principle of all human action. It is a critique
of the mutation of a category of human action that is historically
situated into a general concept.11 But absolutely to insist, conversely,
on preserving and defending a "practico-practical* conception of
action (pre-reflexive, subconscious, etc.) is to ignore a large part of
what civilizations have built up: calculation, strategy (commercial
or military), foresight, programming, planning, borrowing on credit,
savings, theoretical speculation, meta-linguistic or meta-discursive
reflection, and so on.
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 R E FL E X 1V IT IE S AND L O G IC S OF ACTIO N

A (bad) intellectual habit very often leads to making ‘action* and

‘reflection* two necessarily distinct realities, whose contact would
trigger an explosion. Even to ask whether there is not reflection in
action is tacitly to admit, on the one hand, that action (but what
kind of action?)12 is conceivable without any reflection and, on the
other hand, that reflection is not in itself an action. ‘Reflect or act,
you have to choose* would seem to be the generally accepted motto
on this question. One thing (reflection) is supposed to prevent the
other (action), paralyse it (thinking about what one is doing would
block action), so that the two things each live their separate lives.
Reflection could intervene before or after action (reflection on past
or future action) but never during action (reflection at the same time
as action). One of the reasons for this rather simplistic dualism lies
in the fact that reflection is immediately understood (in a logocentric
fashion) as theoretical, scholarly, rational reflection. It is implicitly
considered that only these scholarly practices merit the name of
‘reflection*. Once this equivalence is posited - in the same way, we
shall see, as the equivalence between language and theoretical lan­
guage - it is then easy to show that actors are not little calculating
scholars, theorizing each one of their acts, rationally evaluating the
pros and cons, the costs and benefits, etc. (‘The actor, as [this theory]
construes him or her, is nothing other than the imaginary projection
of the knowing subject [sujet connaissant] into the acting subject
[sujet agissant\y a sort of monster with the head of a thinker thinking
his practice in reflexive and logical fashion mounted on the body of a
man of action engaged in action*; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p.
123). It is easy enough to refute such a caricature of an opponent as
the rational action theory. But, in passing, the critique shares with the
criticized theory the idea that reflection is by nature ‘scholarly*. An
incompatibility between reflection and action, a logocentric reduc­
tion of reflection to scholarly reflection, as summed up in the fol­
lowing quotation: ‘Indeed, simply because we pause in thought over
our practice, because we turn back to it to consider it, describe it,
analyse it, we become in a sense absent from it; we tend to substitute
for the active agent the reflecting “subject” , for practical knowledge
the theoretical knowledge which selects significant features, pertinent
indices* (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 51).
Yet if action is not reduced to short-term action, realized in a situ­
ation of urgency and with no possibility of rehearsal or replay, it is
readily understandable that reflection, including the most rational
kind, can intervene in the very course of an action and even constitute
the timeframes and stages necessary for it (e.g. organize a cultural

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event or prepare a long journey, play chess or develop a marketing

strategy). But even when an action corresponds to what the theory
of practical sense describes, there is always a pragmatically anchored
reflection indissociable from the action under way and from the ele­
ments of the immediate context, which does not necessarily involve
a ‘pause* in the action.13 A theory of action must therefore integrate
into its scientific programme the study of different forms of reflection
at work in different types of action.
Theories of action have nothing to gain from adopting a strategy of
juxtaposing opposites and supposedly overcoming them in theory. In
fact, by sparing themselves the theoretical and semantic clarifications
required for any construction of a theoretical object (immediately
perceived as theoreticist), sociologists sometimes prefer to adopt
a rhetorical strategy that is both the most rewarding and the least
costly. They believe it possible to ‘overcome* the classical philosophi­
cal antinomies by contenting themselves with verbally juxtaposing
opposing terms, saying both one thing and (what is generally consid­
ered) its contrary, rather than seeking ways of saying and describing
that avoid the use of these mortal dichotomies. We are thus told that
boxing effects the fusion ‘of body and mind, instinct and strategy,
emotion and rationality* (Wacquant, 1995b, p. 506); that ‘corporeal
mechanisms* and ‘mental dispositions* are so closely intertwined
here that they ‘obliterate the distinction between the physical and the
mental, between what derives from athletic ability and what pertains
to the moral faculties and the will* (Wacquant, 1989, p. 36). Indeed,
sometimes it is not just the sociologist whose theory overcomes these
oppositions, but the actor or his practice itself: ‘The boxer is a living
mesh of body and mind, defying the border between rationality and
habit, bursting the opposition between action and representation,
overcoming in practice the opposition between the individual and
the collective* (ibid., pp. 36-7). We discover a whole series of pairs
of opposites that structure the social sciences as well as a good part
of philosophy, and are in this way joined together, aligned and juxta­
posed. The culmination of this strategy - in the image of the perverse
ingenue - is the use of oxymorons that make it possible to say both
one thing and its opposite, putting oneself, if need be, in a position
of being able to reply to all theoretical camps at once without having
asserted anything more than each one of these taken separately
(boxing, for example, is designated as a ‘deliberately wild* practice;
ibid., p. 47.)14 The discursive or rhetorical gain is large, but the gain
in knowledge of empirical reality is particularly small. If we can agree
on a scientific strategy of ‘neither . . . nor*, which seeks to overcome

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the classical theoretical oppositions {never mind that this is a philo­

sophical commonplace par excellence), this should not lead to the
semantic facility of "both this and that*, "one thing and its opposite’,
"A and not-A’, which confuses theoretical supersession and semantic
collage, if not logical contradiction. At the end of the day, the seman­
tic clarity of Wittgenstein is preferable to the desire of rhetorical jux­
taposition of pairs of opposites and the purely rhetorical victory that
obscures social realities and sociological interpretation more than it
clarifies them.
What is most important, on the other hand, to grasp as accurately
as possible is both the reflexive, calculating, planning part of action
(moments in which action is prepared, calculated and planned, but
also in which it is reflected on, either while under way or after the
event) and the part of action that is pre-reflexive, unplanned and not
calculated, according to the type of action and the category of actor
in question.15 Rather than postulate a priori, and once and for all,
the existence of a singular theory of practice (rational actor theory,
planned behaviour theory, decision theory, game theory, practical
sense theory, situated action theory . . .), it is far better to reconstitute
- according to their social world and social milieu, different types
of actor and different types of action - the different timeframes and
different logics of action: timeframes of consultation, of deliberation
(Aune, 1977, esp. ch. 3, ‘Deliberation’, pp. 112—43; Melden, 1968),
of preparation and planning, timeframe of application of embodied
schemes of action in a situation of relative urgency - according to the
nature of the action - sometimes accompanied by a time of pause,
reflection and correction, time to look back on the action, on oneself,
etc. It is also useful to investigate those types of action in which actors
calculate consciously, those in which they have scrupulously to follow
written and explicit rules that are known by all, and again those in
which rules (or codes) exist but are less constraining, recalling or
marking their presence only in cases of serious fault, those in which
there is neither rule nor calculation, etc. To sum up, the point is to
develop a sociology of effective logics of action and of the plurality of
forms of relationship to action.

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 A ct III
Forms of Embodiment
 Scene 1

THE PLACE OF LANGUAGE

The world of silence

With its roots deep in phenomenology, a certain sociological school
offers the metaphor of silence and silent bodily negotiation when it
has to describe the social processes of embodiment.1 Running against
all those philosophical ideas that see reflexive consciousness and the
sign on all sides, these conceptions fall in their turn into the opposite
excess and end up in a cascade of elementary confusions: between
consciousness and theoretical consciousness, between the verbal and
the conscious, between language and reflexivity, language and theory
- so much so that any study that discusses language is systematically
suspected of connivance with the linguistic turn (Lahire, 1994b). The
scientific, serious, anti-intellectualist and anti-structuralist camp then
proceeds to a wholesale adoption of the language of the body, of pre-
reflexivity and silence. As if man was an animal without language, as
if language was necessarily a sign of reflexivity and reflective distance,
as if language was always something apart from action, as if it was
not itself at times action, as if the 'study of language* systematically
meant structuralism or semiology, as if 'thought* necessarily meant
theoretical thought, formal, systematic and reflexive - as if L. S.
Vygotsky, M. Bakhtin, J. Goody, J. S. Bruner and B. Bernstein had
never existed. The logic of 'bending the stick the other way* is some­
times understandable, but by bending it too far you end up breaking
it.
To restore to language - its different forms and its different social
and mental functions - its proper place in analysing the phenomena of
embodiment of habits and schemes of action thus supposes defining
it both against approaches that ignore or neglect it and against those

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that take it into account but abstract from its role and functions in
action and the processes of embodiment. Considering language does
not automatically mean adhering to the image of society as a great
market of semiotic exchange or a communicational space in which
information circulates, placing intentionality at the heart of action
or adopting a micro-sociological procedure. Nor is it a question of
autonomizing language or conferring on it some kind of primacy,
still less of proposing a sociological hermeneutics that would make
the social world into a text or a book to decipher. Social practices
and courses of action are carried out through linguistic practices, but
they do not necessarily have the production of these as their goal. Yet
nor is it possible to make practices or the embodiment of habits into
processes taking place outside of language in an obscure and silent
relationship to the world.
Language should therefore be analysed in all its subtle problematic
linkages, which delete the traces of language in practices and make it
into an equivalent of "reflexivity’ or "reflexive distance’ by reducing it
to just one of its social functions. Sociological expressions such as "the
pre-verbal taking-for-granted of the world that flows from practical
sense’ (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 68), schemes that go "from practice to
practice without moving through discourse or consciousness’ (ibid.,
p. 74), "symbolic mastery’ as "consciousness and verbal expression’
(ibid.), "the continuous chain of unconscious apprenticeships that are
accomplished body-to-body, by hints, in the relationship between suc­
cessive generations that is often obscure to itself’ (Bourdieu, 1990c,
p. 30); "the social sciences endeavour to theorize the behaviour that
occurs, in the greatest degree, outside the field of conscious awareness,
that is learnt by a silent and practical communication, from body to
body onemightsay’ (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 166). Philosophical expres­
sions: "silent relationship with the other’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1973, p.
133), "the feeling one feels, the seeing one sees, is not a thought of
seeing or feeling, but vision, feeling, the silent experience of a silent
sense’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 249); "the silent experienced’,2 and
so on. In the struggle against intellectualism, intentional ism, etc., in
the end one finally concedes to the opponent his own definitions of
"thought’ and "language’, thus casting away the wheat with the chaff
(language or thought along with reflexivity, the theoretical, inten­
tionality, etc.), instead of criticizing such reductions themselves. But
even Merleau-Ponty, the inspirer of many sociological formulations
on this question, accepted the fact that there was nothing to be felt
or perceived outside of language, and that the latter was not simply a
synonym for reflexive activity. He thus freed the question of language
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from the intellectualist conceptions that he opposed. In a lecture on

Husserl he said that 'language is “ interwoven” [verflockten] with our
horizon upon the world and humanity*, that it 'is borne by our rela­
tion to the world and to others’, but also that 'it supports and creates
it’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1970, pp. 117-18).
As evidence of the empirical and interpretative blindness to which
the model of silent embodiment leads, we can take the example of the
sociological commentaries on the embodiment of the boxing trade
that rest on this conception which misses and ignores the language of
its object of study. Or rather, having dismissed language once and for
all (along with intellectual ism), the sociologist no longer sees that a
good part of the data on which his sociological interpretation is based
is constituted of language data produced by respondents either in a
situation (when they train, fight in public, discuss among themselves
before matches, during breaks or in informal moments in the life of
the club, etc.) or outside of a situation (in the context of conversa­
tion), and that such 'data’ are equally indispensable (which does not
mean 'in the same fashion’) for the reader seeking to understand
pugilistic practice as for the boxer embodying his trade. Without
making language the first element of internalization, as Berger and
Luckmann do,3 we can note that the social world of boxing can only
be integrated through a series of practices that are indissociably both
corporeal and linguistic.4 It is possible in this way to reconstitute the
different types of language to which the author constantly refers,
almost without being aware.
The approach criticized here always starts by distinguishing itself
fromsemiological or linguistic analyses, those that dwell on the study
of the body as object of discourse, etc., and insisting that the acquisi­
tion of a 'specific bodily sensitivity’ in pugilistic practice cannot be
realized simply by an 'act of will’ or a 'conscious transfer of infor­
mation’ (who would imagine that?), but rather by an 'imperceptible
embodiment of the mental and physical schemata immanent in pugil­
istic practice’, which does not admit any 'discursive mediation or sys­
tematization’.5 But it is only by an abuse of language that expressions
such as 'discursive mediation’ and 'systematization’ can be presented
as semantic equivalents. This is to ignore completely the various types
of use of language, from the mere punctuation of practice through to
the most complex formalization, via all those forms of discourse that
organize, describe, analyse and comment on practice. Elsewhere we
read that it is not possible to box 'on paper’ (Wacquant, 1989, p. 56).
And yet if boxing, a bodily activity par excellence, is not learned
verbally or in books, this does not mean that it is learned without

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the mediation of language. Everything indicates that the embodiment

of the habits of the boxer’s trade is not effected in a kind of silent
body-to-body negotiation.
First of all, there is no embodiment of the habits of the 'trade*
without learning its words. In the boxing world, as elsewhere, the
meaning (and use) of a series of words of action is learned bit by bit,
along with the nouns that denote the essential gestures (e.g. 'sparring’,
'jab’, 'hook’, 'shadow boxing’, 'upper cut’, 'feint’, 'guard’, 'find your
distance’, etc.) and the names of objects (e.g. gloves, medicine bag,
punchball, wristband, tooth guard), roles ('sparring partner’), times
('round’) and places ('gym’, 'ring’) that are a regular part of practice.
Though the fight is a situation of practical urgency, it is not
wanting in language - quite the contrary. This is not polite conversa­
tion between the opponents, of course, but the language of the train­
ers that punctuates the fight, tries to correct the boxer’s gestures and
positions while the fight is under way, encourages the boxer, reminds
him of essential things that he might forget in the heat of the action,
comments on punches, demands certain ones, etc. It is also a way of
bringing the boxer back to a lucidity that he might have lost in the
fight: 'Turn this shoulder, come on, keep the chin in, step in with the
jab, chin’s too high, gimme a good slot, come on, keep them hands
up, keep them hands up’ (Wacquant, 1995a, p. 72): "'Hands in the
air, Louie, hands in the air” , Smithie shouts’ (Wacquant, 1991, p. 29).
Commentaries that rub things in and advice coming from immediate
expertise are delivered in each pause between rounds. These are
also the occasion for encouragement and motivation: "'You’re too
far away, you need to go two steps forward. Block his right and get
in closer. Tighten your wrist and don’t tense up, you’re doing fine
. . .” “ Breathe deep, one more time. Go for it, Louie, we’ll win this
round’” (ibid., p. 30). And then there are words of commentary when
the fight is over, in preparation for future matches: "'Remember to
keep your left hand higher, Keith, when you get out of infighting.
You’re still taking too many hits.” After an injury to his hand inter­
rupted a promising career, Butch stood in as a spontaneous technical
adviser: “A hitter who charges at you like Torres, you let him come
and counter him with dry jabs. Aim at the neck and hit as if you were
trying to get past him’” (ibid., p. 18).
During training as well as during the fight, language helps to embody
(give meaning to, improve . . .) the experiences one has. Analogy is
used to denote the classic linkages of gestures: “ 'The left hook and
the straight right go together like husband and wife” , explains Eddie,
the second trainer in the hall’ (Wacquant, 1991, p. 17); positions, ges­
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tures, rhythms are a)) roughly corrected ([the boxer working on the
medicine ball] “ Hit it to me! And give me a right behind” . . . “ Move
your head, for chrissake! It’s not a bag you’ve got there, Louie, it’s
a man!” growls DeeDee. “How many times have I got to tell you
you’ve gotta think. Think! Ifs your head you box with!'” (ibid.)).
More generally, only discourse can order experiences, place them in
a hierarchy, ascribe them their respective values: ‘Forget the ring; it’s
in the anonymous and everyday penumbra of the training hall, both
refuge and workshops, that the fighter is forged . . . “You win your
fight in the gym,” the veterans keep repeating’ (ibid., p. 16). And it
is impossible to deduce, from a reminder of the kind: Y o u ’re not
in a social club, here, you’re at work’ (ibid., p. 18) the idea that the
boxer’s trade functions without discursive mediation.
[f the infighting during the match is not itself lacking in linguistic
mediations, it is preceded and followed by times that are less ‘pressing’,
when commentaries circulate, typical stories and anecdotes that recall
the values of the trade, its rules, the discipline it imposes, etc. Words
then also frame the experience of the boxer that continues outside
the ‘gym’: “ ‘Being a boxer is a trade that keeps you at it twenty-four
hours of the day. You have to have it always in your head. You can’t
do anything else if you want to do it well” ’ (Wacquant, 1991, p. 15),
recalling the diet the boxer has to keep to, relate the difficulty expe­
rienced in relation to the sexual abstinence required for three weeks
before the match, and repeat this demand or advise respect for hours
of sleep: ‘But the sacrifice does not begin or end at the doors of the hall.
“ Work at the gym is only half the story. The other half is discipline:
eat properly, go to bed early, get up the morning for your job, leave
women alone, and all the rest - take care of your body, ok.” Food,
sleep, sex: the holy trinity of the pugilistic order’ (ibid., p. 21), ‘[The
club trainer] storms: “ Being hungry is nothing! It’s in your head, it
doesn’t exist - once and for all.” . . . Shanti reminds me: “ Leave your
woman alone now, Louie, you’re only three weeks from the match” *
(ibid.). Discourse also comments on the - unfortunate - cases when
certain boxers break the rules: “ ‘That sex, it’s a monster, man. It kills
you, I tell you because I’ve tried.” . . , “ It’s a crying shame. Fred, he
was a bloody good boxer. He’s tough, he punches, and he knows
how to take it. But he’s too fond of girls” ’ (ibid.). Mythical discourses
abound about sexual abstinence and the connection between sexual
relations and loss of strength and energy: “ ‘When you come, you lose
blood from the vertebral column*” (ibid.). It’s also in informal con­
versation in the gym that more general knowledge is embodied about
the morphology of boxers (type of musculature, height, weight, etc.):
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'The fit between bodily capital and style is suggested in this excerpt
from a gym conversation in which a noted manager talks about a tall
and filiform fighter known for his quickness and reach but lacking in
bodily strength’ (Wacquant, 1995a, p. 69).
Words give meaning to the corporeal experiences and sufferings
experienced or expected: 'Becoming a boxer, preparing for a fight, is
like going into a monastery. Sacrifice! The word constantly recurs in
the mouth of the old coach DeeDee, who is well acquainted with the
subject’ (Wacquant, 1991, p. 14). The same goes for the first fight,
which is surrounded by discourse aiming to prepare and give meaning
to the event: “ 'Your first fight, you’ve got two opponents, the guy
opposite and then the crowd. Sometimes you’re so impressed that
you don’t know any more what to do. That’s how 1 lost my first two
amateur matches. 1 was so depressed afterwards that 1wanted to give
it up” ’ (ibid., p. 23).
Like the embodying of habits bound up with the practice of boxing,
studies of other corporeal practices establish the polymorphic and
multifunctional presence of language. On close examination, there­
fore, language (the great variety of language games) is just as omni­
present in the apprenticeship of dance (Faure, 1994): the naming of
steps, positions and gestures, the use of metaphors and analogies,
pedagogic and/or scholarly explanations (anatomical and physiologi­
cal, in particular), various kinds of verbal remonstration, congratula­
tion and correction, video recordings with commentary, counting to
make sure of rhythm, etc. The body of the dancer is itself constantly
objectified in the work of embodying sensory-motor habits. Use of
video or the mirror to objectify one’s body in movement and note
'faults’ or clumsy gestures, looking at others as doubles of oneself in
order to correct oneself, explicit verbal or corporeal correction on the
part of teachers, the use of dance manuals in which 'good’ and 'bad’
bodily positions are shown, or again the regular objectification of the
body and control of its movement by frequent weighings - this all
contributes to taking the body as the specific object of attention and
concern, and to objectify it in the very process of embodiment.
We can then note that researchers often crudely confuse 'discursive
mediation’ or 'language’ with 'verbal’ , 'formal’ or 'rational’ explana­
tion, 'commentary on practice’, 'theory or reflection on practice’, etc.,
broadly sharing here the common sense of the actors themselves, who
often see 'talking’ or 'conversing’ as 'doing nothing’. Speech or lan­
guage, when referred to by certain actors, are immediately conceived
as autonomous periods of time opposed to practice ('When you talk,
you’re doing nothing’, said a skilled worker that we interviewed:
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 THE PLA CE O F LAN GU A GE

‘Enough chatting! Down to work!*, you can hear in a workshop

where two workers are having a discussion by the coffee machine),
and never as elements totally embodied in the action, work, activity
itself (Sharrock and Watson, 1990).
Researchers who do not question this conception of common sense
reformulate in more scholarly language, but without questioning
them, the same erroneous conceptions {‘without discursive media­
tion’). The same goes for the salt-cutters studied by Genevieve Del bos
and Paul Jorion, who claim that their fathers ‘never spoke’ to them: ‘I
sometimes asked him: “Why do you cut here rather than there? And
why now?” Things like that. My father never spoke . . . ” But he cer­
tainly did, no doubt to explain, but certainly to reproach and forbid’
(1984, p. 126). There is again here a confusion between ‘speech’
and ‘explanation’, while the latter can include orders, prohibition,
reproach or commentary outside the practice of the trade: ‘The trade
is not learned only in the practical conditions of its exercise, it is also
learned from everything that happens in daily life, a chance conver­
sation discussing it or something quite different, for example’ (ibid.,
p. 140). There is also a question of focusing or dividing up. One can
always focus on a silent moment of activity, a wordless scene, with no
verbal intervention of any kind. But it is necessary to widen the frame
slightly, or relocate the scene in a longer timeframe, to establish that,
if people don’t speak in the throes of action (which is not always the
case), they often speak before or after.

The punctuation of action and its theorization

Far from being the first form of linguistic exchange, conversation
as an autonomous and specific activity, detached from other social
activities, is only a very particular mode of use of language. Language
is very often inserted and embedded in the course of action, helping
to advance it, modify it, etc., but not extricated (or extricable) from
gestures, motions, movements, and the like. It can be ‘an auxiliary
and a marker of action’ - in other words, ‘a means of attracting atten­
tion to the relevant features of what is happening’ (Bruner, 1991,
p. 72). And the question is never raised as to what the most practical
actions (those of the boxer, the factory worker, the salt-cutter) would
be without this linguistic punctuation. In this sense, language is very
often a constitutive element of practices, or of an action that would
not exist without it. It is not opposed to action, but is in fact one of its
motors. To take an example from Basil Bernstein, ‘the speech used by

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members of an army combat unit on manoeuvres*, characterized by

'syntactic and lexica) options* (1974, p. 124), is indissociable from the
manoeuvre itself, which cannot take place and be organized except by
this kind of language. The social practice known as a 'manoeuvre* is
woven out of specific language practices made up of gestures, shouts,
syntactic utterances and a particular vocabulary (you can*t carry out
a manoeuvre using the specific forms of poetic language). By reducing
language to its function as 'commentary* on action, or an 'account* of
action, you end up no longer seeing that language is as much 'inside*
as 'outside*.
The work of Erving Goffman displays two contradictory tenden­
cies. One of these presses him to absolutize one mode of utilization of
language ('In sum, talking is likely to involve the reporting of an event
- past, current, future or conditional*; 'All in all . . . 1 am suggesting
that often what talkers undertake to do is not to provide informa­
tion to a recipient but to present dramas to an audience*; Goffman,
1974, pp. 506, 508). The other leads him to recall that the contexts of
activity in which language is inserted are not always conversational:

Observe, too, that something more than thrusts from the physical
world into the spoken one are possible. For quite routinely the very
structure of a social contact can involve physical, as opposed to verbal
(or gestural) moves. Here such words as do get spoken are fitted into
a sequence that follows a non-talk design. A good example is perfunc­
tory service contacts. A customer who comes before a checkout clerk
and places goods on the counter has made what can be glossed as a
first checkout move, for this positioning itself elicits a second phase of
action, the server’s obligation to weigh, ring up, and bag. (Goffman,
1981, p. 38)

As against the conversational model that envisages only linguistic

exchange, verbal intervention may follow a gesture or an action; it
may also trigger non-verbal responses.
Psychologists studying the entry into language have shown well the
major role of language as a direct handle on action in the develop­
ment of the child, including the embodying of sensory-motor skills.
Mothers, for example, in the course of their play activities with the
child, use language to 'restore joint attention* ( Bruner, 1991, p. 179).
The same mothers symbolically mark the different stages of action
under way and in this manner contribute to shaping the action mate­
rially and symbolically. If an action is named by the adult, or the 'end*
of an action (the child pulling, pushing, catching . . .) is punctuated
by an onomatopoeia indicating to the child the end (and success) of
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 TH E PLA CE OF LA N G U A G E

the action {'And then!* 'Ye-es!' 'That's it!' 'Well done!'), it is divided
up by the adult, creating discontinuity in the continuous chain of
gestures and movements. And it is clear that, in a case such as this,
language is not necessarily directly present in the situation, but marks
its presence in the implicit categorizations that the adult, providing a
framework, indicates to the child by defining the action's beginnings
and ends (start to pull/finish pulling; start to push/finish pushing;
start to climb/finish climbing, etc.). In a general sense, even before
being able to speak, the child is placed in schemes of interaction with
the adult, guided by her, and these are indissociable from classical
verbal interactions (question/answer; proposition/counter-proposi­
tion: proposition/confirmation . . .). There is thus an analogy between
types of interaction that are non-verbal ('formats' of exchange, as
they are sometimes called in psychology; Garvey, 1974), but struc­
tured by adult mediators who are already speaking subjects and who
perceive the world - objects, actions, etc. - through the categories
of their language, and types of verbal interaction that the child will
gradually integrate with the help of these adults. These tutors punctu­
ate the actions of and with the child by linguistic interventions, and in
this way give it the means to grasp these (Bruner, 1991).
Moreover, it seems indeed that, by naming actions, series of ges­
tures or 'formats' of activity, and having the child who is able to talk
name them ('this is the game of ...') , their memorizing and future
repetition is facilitated (1 can do 'this' and 'that', 1 recognize and know
howto reproduce a ‘loop', a ‘round', a 'square', etc.). The capacities
of designation thus make it possible, in certain cases, to contribute
to the fixing of habits. In fact, by providing children with a language
adapted to activity, adults provide practical means (stenographic and
portable, embodiable) that help in organizing and structuring such
activity in the future.6
But language can also intervene in the mode of recapitulation, com­
mentary or recording/authentification,7 in the wake of an event or an
action, or in the mode of deliberation or planning with the view of an
action to accomplish. We have seen this in relation to school, and it
can sometimes go as far as formalizing or theorizing practices. How
can we imagine that rational thinking could take shape, and establish
itself, without the instruments of language (oral, written or graphic)?
Without writing, without listing and tabulation, without graphic
procedures of counting, algebraic symbols, diagrams, maps or plans
of all kinds, rational thinking - whether philosophical, grammatical,
logical or scientific - would not exist (Goody, 1977, 1987; Lahire,
1993a).
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 F O R M S O F E M B O D IM E N T

Language and the forms of social life

Musical language is not some instrument invented after the fact to fix
and communicate to musicians what certain among them have sponta­
neously imagined. On the contrary, it is this language that has created
music. Without it there would be no society of musicians, not even
musicians, just as without laws there would be no city and no citizens.
(Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory)

Men already living in a certain social interdependence (as a result of

language, an indispensable precondition).
(Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 2)

Since language is present at the heart of every practice, every form of

social life (in economic practices, as much as in educational, religious
or sporting ones), it makes no sense in the end to take it as the par­
ticular object of sociological investigation (Lahire, 1990). Those who
try to do so fall either into a theoretical trap or into a reduction of the
question. The trap consists in autonomizing language (or discourse),
seeing it as no more than signs, signifying exchanges - languages of
fashion, space, architecture, consumption, etc. - in the context of
a generalized semiology.B The reduction is that made by those who
challenge semiology and structuralism - for their failure to take into
account the social conditions of use of language - while tacitly accept­
ing the opposition between language and society, the discursive and
the social. This is the sociolinguistic or variationist approach, which
studies language as a relatively autonomous (sub-)system (from a pho­
netic, lexical, syntactic, stylistic, etc.) point of view, in which social
differences and social interests, etc., are retranslated. It is this posi­
tion that was formulated very precisely by Pierre Bourdieu and theo­
rized into sociology: "a structural sociology of language, inspired by
Saussure but constructed in opposition to the abstraction he imposes,
must take as its object the relationship between the structured systems
of sociologically pertinent linguistic systems and the equally struc­
tured systems o f social differences' (1991, p. 54).9 Whether conceived
as orders to be studied separately (the Saussurian conception of lan­
guage) or as separate orders whose relationship can be studied (the
sociolinguistic conception), the social order and the linguistic order
are viewed as two distinct and relatively autonomous realities.
Practices of language are not surpluses, add-ons, reflections, super­
structures, marginal illustrations, secondary practices in relation to
the "really objective* realities. They do not just complete the material­
ity of an infrastructure or cement the foundations, the in-itself, of the

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Objective, the material, the real that is already there, and we should
seek to avoid any metaphor that uses this conception of a Volatile’
symbolism added on to the 'solid*. Language is not merely a veil
placed over the 'real’ world and determined by it.
Rather, therefore, than making a firm partition between the dis­
cursive and the non-discursive, the linguistic and the social, and so
on, it is preferable to maintain that no practice, no action, no form
of social life exists outside of linguistic practices (discursive practices,
if you prefer), which take varying forms (from the interjection to the
scientific treatise, by way of more or less informal conversation, news
reports, contracts, legal texts, certificates, account books, literary
genres, mathematical formulae, lectures, dissertations, trade-union
leaflets, exchanges of letters, school exercises) and whose social func­
tions are many. We could say the other way round - i.e. addressing
linguists rather than sociologists - that no linguistic or discursive prac­
tice is detachable from the forms of social life from which it stems.
Certain formulas of Foucault have helped to obscure this question.
By speaking of 'a field of non-discursive practices’ (Foucault, 1972,
p. 75) to designate variously institutions, economic and pedagogic
practices and processes, educational practices or political events
(ibid., p. 179), he suggested that these 'realities’ were outside of any
kind of language. It seems evident, however, that neither economic
processes, nor pedagogic practices, nor political events happen
outside of linguistic practices (in the first case, practices of account­
ing, contracts, negotiations, commercial exchanges, bank records,
etc.; in the second, exercises, lessons, school textbooks, etc.; in the
third, oral or written political speeches, discussions among activists,
public debates, posters, etc.). Foucault spoke of particular linguistic
practices: discursive practices (major scientific, philosophical, moral,
political, discourses) that were based and articulated on fields of
practices that were themselves already woven out of linguistic prac­
tices, discourses about practices that were not themselves outside of
linguistic practices (a sort of meta-discourse).

The mysterious inside

Certainly, language is not simply a means or an instrument analogous
to a hammer or a file. Its use is not simply to help communication
between minds which to begin with were separately constituted. It is
itself constituent.
(Henri Lefebvre, Critique o f Everyday Life, Vol. 2: Foundations
o f a Sociology o f the Everyday)

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[ would like to suggest that language is not an ordinary tool, but a tool
that enters into the very constitution of thinking and social relations.
We can see how this point of view is opposed to the Piagetian image of
language as an ‘idle’ system that only relates thought and is just a kind
of ‘symptomatology’.
(Jerome S. Bruner, Le Developpement del'enfant)
Except at the cost of abandoning any intention to explain human
practices scientifically, it is essential to abandon the idea that
"thought*, "psyche*, "mental activity* or "consciousness* possess some
kind of existence anterior to their "expressions* or "manifestations’.
To say that linguistic activity (in all its forms) is simply the "expres­
sion* of something already formed in consciousness outside of any
linguistic instrument, an "expression* "making public’ in some way
an "internal’, "private* or "intimate* activity, would be equivalent to
maintaining that the tail wags the dog. In fact, internal consciousness
only takes shape because it is the consciousness of one individual in
relation to others and, as a result, one with the experience of multiple
linguistic activities. The linguistic and social character of thought
does not appear at a subsequent time:
The ‘Cartesian* (in the Chomskyan sense of the term) conception
readily gives the impression that we think in a certain manner outside o f
language, and that we use language as a kind of more or less arbitrary
code to externalize what we think. This is to forget that the language in
which we communicate is also the language within which we think, that
we think to a certain extent in words, and often in the same words that
we use to communicate our thoughts. (Bouveresse, 1987, p. 68)
The embodying of habits (or schemes of action) that enable us to
act in various social contexts is not effected without a "psychological
instrument* (Vygotsky). Spoken or gestural language, writing, math­
ematical symbols, various graphic procedures (lists, tables, diagrams,
maps, plans) - it is by way of these tools, that are appropriated,
utilized, manipulated, that we construct our "intellectual faculties*.
The link that £mile Benveniste established between "linguistic form*
and "thought* (the former being "not only the condition for transmis-
sibility, but first of all the condition for the realization’ of the second;
1971, p. 56) must be conceived more generally as existing between all
linguistic processes (oral, gestural, written, graphic, iconic) and the
activity of thought. We can thus posit in a radical fashion, following
Mikhail Bakhtin, that outside of its construction in a linguistic mate­
rial (whether this is shout, gesture, speech, writing, graphic represen­
tation, etc.), "consciousness is a fiction’ (Bakhtin, 1973, p. 90).

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 Scene 2

W HAT EXA CTLY IS EMBODIED?

Processes of embodiment-internalization
A theory of action would remain incomplete if it were not accom­
panied by an analysis of the formation and constitution of schemes
of action. Yet researchers who speak the language of 'internalization
of externality* (or 'the embodying of objective structures*) and the
'externalization of internality*1 have not really given flesh to this dia­
lectic (by ethnographic description and theoretical analysis), so that
today it plays more of a rhetorical role in the conceptual economy
of theories of the social and a strategic role in opposition to other
theories, rather than a genuinely theoretical role aiming at the con­
struction of scientific objects.2 If sociologists should prove incapa­
ble of grasping particularly how the various types of ‘disposition*,
‘scheme’, etc. (types of ‘habitus*), are constructed by social experi­
ence, these terms would lose any heuristic interest and constitute
simply one more asylum ignorantiae in the history of sociological
concepts.
The sociology of education and culture - at least that which is not
enclosed in the limits of the school institution or of so-called cultural
projects - interested as it is in the different modes of socialization
and the different modes of transmission or construction of culture,
should be able to contribute to illuminating these processes of social
construction of the structures of behaviour and thought. And yet it
has for a long time been content to see education (family and school)
as simply a means of social reproduction, without describing its
specific order and processes. We know that, through socialization in
the family, school, etc., the (unequal) order of things is reproduced,
but there are few descriptions of the socializing practices themselves,

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the effective modalities of the various forms of socialization.3 As

Bernstein writes:

From a certain point of view, ‘habitus’ is more of a concept that requires

a language for its own description and construction, rather than a struc­
tural model. It is defined more by its operation and functions than by
the specificities that make this or that habitus possible; we are given no
rule as to its formation in particular cases, but left with a mere retracing
of the realizations of class habitus - which are historically contingent.
Everything relating to the processes underlying the different modali­
ties of transmission of habitus is in some sense passed over in silence.
Habitus is thus a theory of the specialized subject that lacks a theory
able to specify its own construction. (Bernstein, 1992, p. 23)

Bernstein concludes that, if theories of reproduction and resistance do

not supply descriptions of the processes by which habitus is consti­
tuted, 'this is quite simply because these theories and approaches are
not really interested in this kind of description. They simply propose
to understand how external relations of power are conveyed by the
system; they are not interested in describing the support, but simply
in diagnosing its pathology* (ibid.).
Before embarking on the necessary task of describing the modali­
ties of socialization in its very varied forms, however, we can begin by
asking how a 'social structure* can be internalized or embodied in the
form of 'mental structures*. Saying that 'social structures are embod­
ied* is a metaphor that can rapidly prove an encumbrance when
we study the construction processes of schemes of action (sensory-
motor, perception, evaluation, appreciation, etc.) (Lahire, 1995a, pp.
285-9). What the child, adolescent and eventual adult embody are
not, properly speaking, 'social structures*, but rather corporeal, cog­
nitive, evaluative, appreciative, etc., habits - i.e. schemes of action,
ways of doing, thinking, feeling and saying that are adapted (and
sometimes limited) to specific social contexts. They internalize modes
of action, interaction, reaction, appreciation, orientation, perception,
categorization, etc., by entering step by step into social relations of
interdependence with other actors, or by maintaining, through the
mediation of other actors, relationships with multiple objects whose
mode or modes of use and appreciation they learn.
James Wertsch (1979), for example, shows how children between
two and five learn, in their interaction with their mother, to form,
control and consolidate their habits in the example of construct­
ing a jigsaw puzzle. First of all the child has to understand that the
information provided by his mother relates to the images represented

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on the pieces of the puzzle and not to the external environment (for
example, at the start the child believes that his mother is referring
to the window of the room in which they are sitting, whereas she is
speaking of the one represented in the puzzle). The child must in some
way recognize the right 'language game* (in Wittgensteins sense) or
the right context of activity: 'doing a puzzle*. He then shows himself
capable of realizing the action demands explicitly formulated by his
mother, but not yet those that are implicit, which would assume he is
able to interpret beyond the words, by mastering the overall strategy
of completing the puzzle. Finally, the child gradually takes in hand
'the strategic responsibility for the task* and moves on to an egocen­
tric language (addressing to himself the questions that his mother had
asked him to help her with in doing the puzzle), while the mother now
only has to intervene verbally to confirm the relevance of the choice,
support the effort undertaken, etc., and thus definitively consolidate
the habits now incorporated.
Here, then, we have an example of internalization or embodiment
that makes clear the transition from the inter-psychic to the intra­
psychic, as the child*s internalization of a definition of the context
of action ('doing a jigsaw puzzle*), of ways of proceeding in order
to reach the desired result, of the (right) questions to ask himself in
order to succeed with the task, etc. Helped by the adult, the child
internalizes the questions, gestures and strategic procedures that he
uses so as eventually to manage to do by himself (autonomously)
what he had previously done under tutelage. The adult frames and
channels the task, indicates and attracts the child*s attention, then
asks questions, reduces his field of freedom, explains or defines the
task step by step, point after point, supports and comforts him when
he fails, guides him when he takes a wrong turning, encourages and
rewards him when he succeeds (see also Bruner, 1991). The child,
for his part, sustains his effort with the perspective of gratifications
- positive sanctions - that he may obtain from those around him.
The desire soon to be able to do it himself, 'like a grown-up*, which
remains for the time being inaccessible, and the identification with a
(positive) future image of himself (to 'see himself there*) are also far
from negligible as motives in the work of constructing habits (Delbos
and Jorion, 1984, p. 129). What is embodied or internalized does
not exist as such in the 'external* social world, but is reconstructed
bit by bit, for each individual, in the repeated interactions that he
has with other actors, by way of particular objects or in particular
social situations. The child internalizes not the 'social world* or the
'objective structures of the social world*, but rather schemes of action

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(schemes of perception or categorization, sensory-motor skills, strate­

gic schemes . . .) which enable him to 'use* a jigsaw puzzle or resolve
a problem (such as how to put it together).
The same holds for the child’s construction of tastes in reading.
What the child likes to do alone, what she is able to do alone, is simply
the internalization of activities that were previously guided or done
by others. For example, since Marion, aged eight, was very young,
her parents (computer programmer and social security employee) had
read her stories not just in the evenings but also at breakfast, which
is rather uncommon. In fact, as Marion was reluctant to eat in the
morning, the habit caught on of reading her stories to encourage her.
After internalizing these moments of reading done by her parents,
Marion now reads every evening by herself (20 to 25 minutes) and in
the mornings over breakfast (Lahire, 1995d, pp. 72-89).
Besides, the idea of an 'inscription of social structures in the brain*
masks the processes by which not 'social structures* but relations to
the social world and to others, ways of acting in particular situations,
with others and with objects, are gradually embodied. This impres­
sion is strengthened by the metaphors of cultural 'transmission* (the
'transmission of cultural capital*) or cultural 'inheritance* (the 'inher­
itance of cultural capital*), which are in themselves powerful obsta­
cles in the way of apprehending these phenomena of embodiment.
To be aware of this, one need only compare systematically 'mate­
rial transmission* (material inheritance) with 'cultural transmission*
(non-material inheritance).

1 T o 'transmit* a material inheritance to someone is to give them

a thing that the giver possessed until then and that passes in this way
from one owner to another. What magical quality does 'transmis­
sion* then have when it is cultural, so that, when the 'transmission*
is accomplished, the initial owner remains in possession of what was
'transmitted*? As against all forms of material inheritance, where
finite stocks of material units are divided between different owners
and can never belong to everyone at once, cultural inheritance in
its embodied form has the original feature that it can be 'transmit­
ted* from one owner to another without the former being obliged to
diminish their share of the stock of embodied schemes. To give to
someone else in this case means enriching them without impoverish­
ing oneself. If there are culturally 'rich* and 'poor* (not everyone
'knows* everything or how to do everything), the economy of 'cul­
tural transmission* is unfamiliar with either impoverishment, loss or
dilapidation.

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 W HAT EXA CTLY IS E M B O D IE D ?

2 In the transmission of a material inheritance, the latter remains

unchanged during the process of transmission, as well as when the
transmission has been completed (e.g. a painting by Degas or a piece
of furniture remains, apart from the material wear and tear that may
be occasioned, identical to itself at whatever the moment in the process
it is considered). Once again, a strangeness of 'cultural transmission’
is that culture is never 'transmitted’ identically, but rather distorted
as a function of the conditions of its transmission and the social rela­
tionship established between the person who already 'knows’ and
the one who does not. The embodied culture is not 'poured out’ but
rather appropriated and transformed (cf. in particular Singly, 1996).
The person who embodies social dispositions, habits, ways of seeing,
feeling and acting, appropriates gestures, practical or theoretical
reasonings, ways of saying or feeling, etc., according to what they
are already - i.e. according to their existing stock of habits embodied
in the course of their previous social experiences. The metaphor of
'cultural inheritance’ (or 'cultural transmission’) elides the inescap­
able distortions, adaptations and reinterpretations that the 'cultural
capital’ experiences in the course of its reconstruction from one gen­
eration to the next, from one adult to another, etc., under the effect,
on the one hand, of the gaps between the supposed 'transmitters’ and
'receivers’ and, on the other hand, of the (contextual) conditions of
this reconstruction.
Sometimes, indeed, the processes of 'transmission’ may get
muddled for various reasons, and its success prevented. The bearers
of the embodied culture may not be in a position to assist others to
construct certain elements of this culture in their turn. They do not
have the dispositions available. This is the case, for example, with
a number of embodied cultural dispositions which cannot always
find conditions for their actualization in the family world, given its
absorption (in terms of time and mental investment) by the world of
work. It is also the case with family situations which render the child
unavailable or indisposed to enter into the process of construction
(e.g. difficulty with the exercise of parental authority, 'psychological’
blockage bound up with repeated traumatizing experience or with
the internalization of an unhappy relationship to this or that kind of
situation, practice or knowledge).

3 A material inheritance can be 'transmitted’ in a relatively short

space of time (the time of transfer from the giver to the beneficiary,
which is sometimes even immaterial). Cultural 'transmission’, for
its part, is most often a matter of time, repetition and exercise, as

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it involves the gradual establishment of habits in the body, whether

these are mental or gestural, sensory or intellectual. According to the
habits in question, this time may be longer or shorter: short - but
not without the need for repetition on the part of the child - in the
case of the simple gestures of everyday life (pull, push, swing, take,
grasp . . .), but sometimes very long for complex habits of reasoning
(mathematical or philosophical), the specialized habits of trades (such
as those of watchmakers or carpenters) or moral habits (modesty,
asceticism or loyalty are not improvised from one day to the next).

4 A notable difference bound up with the former one is that the

transmission of a material inheritance may be effected independently
of the feeling that the beneficiary has towards it, whereas cultural
transmission has to rely on the desire to construct habits, a desire
that is particularly required to support and encourage effort when the
transmission is a matter of several months or years. As a stockman
cited by Denis Chevallier and Isaac Chiva says about learning the
trade of shepherd: T he desire for the mountains comes if the child
has been nourished with it at home; they have to hear them spoken
about, they have to see how it is done; then they look forward to
having fine cows and sheep. And you say to them: “ Up in the moun­
tains they grow well, and it’s you who will look after them.” That is
how you make shepherds’ (Chevallier and Chiva, 1991, p. 1).
But we could also mention here the musical-affective programme
that Leopold Mozart, joint head of the Salzburg orchestra, set up
for his son Wolfgang. From his third year of age, the child was sub­
jected to a rigorous work regime, an implacable discipline based on
the regular exercises composed by his father. Very soon, his life was
essentially reduced just to music. But if Wolfgang continued to keep to
the severe programme imposed on him, it was because his father was
also able to weave ties of affection with him which constantly passed
through music. As Norbert Elias writes, Wolfgang "was rewarded for
each musical achievement with a big prize in terms of affection. This
undoubtedly favoured the child’s development in the direction desired
by his father’ (Elias, 1993, p. 57). If "each sign of musical talent in his
son delighted the father’ (ibid., p. 75), we can understand how, for
Mozart at an early age, attracting the admiration, love and joy of his
father presupposed playing music and progressing musically.

5 The transmission of a material inheritance is always conscious,

and the person transmitting or bequeathing it knows what the content
of the legacy or inheritance transmitted is. A large part of culture,

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on the other hand, is 'transmitted* unknowingly both to the 'trans­

mitters* ('donors*) and to the 'receivers’ ('heirs*)* Although formal
situations of teaching themselves involve an 'underground transmis­
sion’, they privilege the explicit pedagogic transmission of objectified
knowledge contents* But not all situations of 'cultural transmission*
follow this model of formal and explicit transmission, of knowledge
that is itself explicit. In certain cases, the child (or adult) is led to
construct habits, dispositions, knowledge and know-how in socially
organized contexts, without there being a really 'express’ (voluntary,
intentional) 'transmission*.
Thus in many informal situations of learning a trade, what is
'transmitted’ is not 'knowledge* but rather 'work* or 'experience*, as
Genevieve Del bos and Paul Jorion showed in the case of the salt-cut­
ters: 'But what does the child see? His father and mother at work in
the marsh* He sees people working, he does not see any “ knowledge”
or “skills” ; these are either communicated or abstract, in the latter
case by a specific work* (Delbos and Jorion, 1984, p. 128). There is the
same invisibility of 'knowledge’ in the appropriation of jobs by semi­
skilled workers in a firm manufacturing and assembling refrigerators
(Lahire, 1993e; 1993b, pp* 33-56). To listen to these workers talk of
the way that they 'suddenly* entered their job, without any prepara­
tion whatsoever, one might believe that no technical competence was
required, that it was chiefly a question of having (or not having) a
pragmatic disposition ('being able to work things out* or 'muddling
through*). When knowledge and know-how are not objectified, but
on the contrary indissociable from the people (the bodies) who apply
them, learning can only be conducted in a mimetic fashion (watch­
ing and copying) and in an interpersonal relationship. The important
thing is concentrating on what you are doing and not 'having your
head somewhere else’ . Knowledge is not apparent as such, and the
workers themselves consider their work as 'not complicated**
Analysis of these work situations can be repeated in connection
with a large number of situations of socialization (families in par­
ticular), where what children encounter is not contents of knowledge
to be appropriated but rather forms of activity, gestural or linguistic
habits, etc. Of course, the child constructs her 'cognitive structures’
by way of her insertion in these multiple forms of social life (and
language games), but she does not engage in these practices in
order to 'learn’ , 'build up knowledge’ or 'construct knowledge and
know-how**
Children, moreover, can always constitute 'undesirable’ disposi­
tions (moral or cultural), given the place that they occupy in the

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configuration of family relations of interdependence, without anyone

having wanted or desired this. Anxieties, complexes, discouragement
or inhibition in the face of certain situations, low self-esteem, mental
and sensory-motor blockages, anxious relations towards certain
tasks, etc. - all this can also be ‘transmitted’ and disturb or make dif­
ficult other mental and physical constructions.
The metaphor of ‘internalization-incorporation of social struc­
tures’4 is as little relevant as that of saying that the child learns her
‘native tongue’: except when she is well disposed towards language in
a school situation, as we have seen, with lexical, orthographic, gram­
matical, stylistic, etc., rules, the child who learns to speak embodies
not a ‘language’, a ‘code’ or a ‘linguistic structure’, but schemes of
verbal interaction, types of verbal exchange and modes of use of lan­
guage.5 To use Wittgenstein’s terminology, we could say that this is a
typical situation of linguistic pathology.
If what are called ‘objective structures’ or ‘social structures’ are
in this case rather scientific constructions of reality based in most
cases on statistical data {‘scientifically apprehended as possibilities’
[Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 90] and constructed by the social sciences
‘through statistical regularities such as the probabilities objectively
attached to a group or class’ [Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 54]), it is hard
to see how actors could embody these ‘objective structures’ and
how they could then be reproduced, converted and transfigured
into ‘mental’ or ‘cognitive’ structures (reconstructed on the basis of
direct or indirect observation of practices). ‘Objective structures’ and
‘mental structures’ are not two different realities, one (mental struc­
tures) being the product of the internalization of the other (objec­
tive structures), but rather two apprehensions of one and the same
social reality. Descartes already warned against the error of taking a
formal distinction between two attributes of the same substance, or
between a substance and its attributes, as a real distinction between
two substances, and Nietzsche recalled that, while lightning is simply
a manifestation of thunder, we customarily think that thunder and
lightning are two different phenomena and that the first is the cause
of the second.6 A tendency is thus often observable in sociology ‘not
to make two things into one, but rather one thing into two’ (Rosser,
1995, pp. 37-8).

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The polymorphic embodiment of written culture in the

world of the family
I began my life as I shall no doubt end it: among books. In my grand­
father’s study, they were everywhere; it was forbidden to dust them
except once a year, before the October term. Even before I could read, I
already revered these raised stones; upright or leaning, wedged together
like bricks on library shelves or nobly spaced like avenues of dolmens, I
felt that our family prosperity depended on them.
(Jean-Paul Sartre, Words)

No, I had no headache, but until the age of six, I was no longer allowed
to enter a classroom or open a book, for fear of a cerebral explosion.
(Marcel Pagnol, My Father's Glory}

Study was a penance forced on me to obtain a good position and not

marry a worker. But the fact that I liked to rack my brains struck him
as suspicious. A lack of life at this tender age. He sometimes seemed
to believe I was unhappy.. . . He said that I learned well, never that I
worked well. Working could only mean working with your hands.
(Annie Ernaux, La Place)

Certain particular features of 'cultural transmission* can be observed

in the case of the various forms of appropriation by the child, within
the world of the family, of a multiform culture of writing (read or
produced). In connection with two studies of primary-school children
from socially differentiated families (differentiated economically and
culturally), one of fifteen children aged from eight to ten (Lahire,
1995d) and the other of fifteen children of ten and eleven (Lahire,
1995e), I sought to grasp the modalities of inter generational relation­
ship that the written text (writing and reading) solicited.
The object was to reconstitute the contexts of usage, the functions
and representations of writing, within a range of socially different
families. The children’s mental and bodily constructions relative to
writing within the family world involved both tastes and distastes,
social roles, social functions linked with the various practices of
writing and reading (e.g. aesthetic, documentary, practical, etc., func­
tions of the activity of reading, or mnemonic, calculatory, planning,
checking, identity, play, etc., functions of practices of writing), as well
as diverse contextual norms (e.g. learning to first make a draft or to
correct spelling mistakes, in letters destined for a linguistic market
that was particularly fraught . ..).
Concerning the social functions and representations bound up
with the various practices of writing, it emerged that children can

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internalize very early on - before and even outside of any act of

writing or reading - the "reasons’ for or "context* of resort to the
written word To take one example, Audrey (eleven years old, father
a fork-lift truck operator, mother a teaching assistant) shows by
what she says that she has understood well the checking function of
the list of things to take away on holiday. In a similar vein, Salima
(eleven years old, father a building worker, mother a housewife)
is particularly able to explain the different reasons for resort to
domestic writing: she remarks that written memos are useful when
you leave the area of regular things and remembering is no longer
automatic; she contrasts dates that are remembered without special
effort, thanks to regular, embodied memory, with those that demand
recourse to an objectified support; she also explains very clearly how
the list of things to do for school enables her to know where she’s
got to, to organize her time, to check things have been done, to have
the sense of going forward (by noting what has been done), and pos­
sibly postponing what she has to do. Pierre-£tienne (eight years old,
father an anaesthetist and mother an ophthalmologist) kept a diary
for two weeks in order to note in a very detailed manner everything
he had done each day; Akim (ten years old, father a truck-driver and
mother a housewife) learned to note the dates of his football matches
in a diary. In terms of reading, Marion (eight years old, father a com­
puter programmer and mother employed by the Social Security) or
Clementine (eight years old, father an engineer and mother a teacher
of classics), among others, hear their parents talk about their books
and discover in this way the particular modality of relationship to
books that is commented reading, hermeneutic reading that leads to
discussion and invites the sharing of opinions.
It emerges from the two studies that children in the family enter the
world of writing in different ways, which produce their socializing
effect only in their particular combination. There may be first of all
explicit and quasi-pedagogic parental incentives and solicitations: an
almost school-like teaching of reading and writing (sometimes with
the help of school textbooks), explicit learning of intellectual tech­
niques and strategies (e.g. making a draft when you have to write a
letter, re-reading it to correct spelling mistakes, copying a lesson in
order to learn it, using the dictionary . ..), invitations to write texts
during the school holidays to get into the habit of relating one’s own
experience, express requests for the child to take down written mes­
sages when she picks up the phone, verbal explanations to make the
child understand the advantage of resort to memos or the calendar
to prepare her activities and not to forget important things to be

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 W HAT E X A C TLY IS E M B O D IE D ?

done, or constant solicitations to reading (giving books as presents, a

subscription to a magazine, taking the child regularly to the library,
reading her stories, asking questions on what she is reading, asking
her to read aloud, etc.).
Entry into the written word is also carried out by various kinds
of direct collaboration and participation in practices of writing
and reading to which children are invited (and sometimes forced).
Children may contribute to drawing up shopping lists or lists of
things to take on holiday, by noting things down themselves, by
asking adults to do this for them, or by writing under the parents’
dictation; they may be able to take charge of the list in the supermar­
ket, to check what still has to be bought (sometimes crossing off items
that are already in the cart), gradually enter a culture of exchange of
letters (from the minimum mark of entry into this culture constituted
by their signature, to a few words added at the end of their parents’
letters), take part in drawing up a holiday itinerary, help their parents
to organize and comment on family photographs, make their contri­
bution in labelling video cassettes, and so on. As far as practices of
reading are concerned, children can help their mother in cooking by
reading the instructions from a written recipe, read comic strips or
stories with their parents, hunt out with them elements for a school
project to be done, consult magazines with them on a subject bound
up with holidays of cultural outings, etc. In many cases, they par­
ticipate in this way in their parents’ activities of writing and reading,
joining these in the mode of ‘help’ or ‘equal’ participation, but
undoubtedly learning about the activity, its functions and its context
in general, as well as the role that is given to them. Before being able
to do these things ‘by themselves’, children thus learn about activities
and contexts that imply the use of the written word; they close in on
these. Thanks to these various kinds of collaboration, they are able to
master their functions and contexts of use long before taking charge
of them personally.7
Children may also try to ‘see themselves doing it* - i.e. see them­
selves already ‘grown-up’ - by imitating roles, attitudes and practices
that are characteristic of their parents. And as family practices of
reading and writing are very clearly articulated to the sexual divi­
sion of tastes, habits, roles and tasks, associating women particu­
larly strongly with the written word (Lahire, 1993b, 1993d, 1995b,
1997b), these imitations of regular parental behaviour are indissoci-
able from the identification with gendered adult roles (to do what
mummy or daddy do - which can also mean not doing certain things).
Parents thus describe the various regular situations of imitation of

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their own gestures, mannerisms or manias as readers or writers.

Children may also amuse themselves with role games that imply
writing: playing 'schoolteacher* (a woman, rarely a man), 'shop­
keeper* (likewise, generally a woman), 'doctor* (a man, not a woman)
or 'librarian* (again, a woman).
Finally, children embody functions, representations, and certain
specific cognitive and organizational effects of the written word by
indirect and diffuse impregnation - i.e. by a whole family atmos­
phere rather than by specific acts of writing or reading (solicited
or explained, undertaken as collaborator, observed and imitated).
Whether it is explicit styles of speech that are lexically and syntacti­
cally articulated to habits of written discourse, semantic discussion
(about the meaning of words), grammatical (or syntactic) correction,
literary or philosophical (which gives those hearing them evidence
of the hermeneutic modes of reading), logical or mathematical styles
of reasoning (everyday mention of notions of proportion, contradic­
tion, etc.) or styles of domestic organization, relations to time or to
order (bound up with the use of writing for organizing and planning
.. .), the written word quite indirectly imposes its subliminal presence
through various attitudes and practices on the part of adults.
When the world of the family offers a pedagogic stimulus, letting
the child participate in activities that require reading and writing,
providing convenient practical models of identification to give the
child the desire to imitate, to 'do like*, and generally 'diffusing*
cognitive or organizational effects bound up with the parents* own
embodiment of a culture of the written word, then children are in
ideal conditions for building up skills, representations and tastes for
writing and reading. The combination of these different ingredients
is encountered only in families with a particularly well-established
access to school and writing. In fact, children whose grandparents
and/or parents are more or less illiterate or have difficulties with
the written word stand in great contrast with those whose parents,
grandparents and, sometimes, several earlier generations not only are
or were literate, but underwent an extensive educational trajectory.
Children who discover the world of school as a relatively new and
foreign world depend most completely on the school to appropriate
the elements of a written culture. When they manage to do so, they
often succeed by dint of the written culture of the school rather than a
written culture of the family, which may be completely non-existent.
In all these cases, mothers who take responsibility for integrating the
written culture of the school into the family world are like missionar­
ies or combatants of the school culture of the written word. When the

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family world is not 'naturally lettered’ - i.e. has not already been 'let­
tered9for a long time - children always resist parental injunctions to a
greater or lesser degree,8 It is sometimes hard for children deprived of
a lettered9family environment to conceive reading as an extra-curric­
ular activity, something not associated with work. When her contact
with the written word (writing or reading) is almost exclusively in the
context of school (to be specific, when the only books in the home are
school books), it is really difficult for the child to envisage reading or
writing other than in the form of school work. Despite all the efforts
that her parents may make to 'make her like it9, to 'push her to like9
what they do not like themselves,9 love of reading always remains a
rather forced love, a marriage of reason rather than a marriage of the
heart (the child prefers, for example, to receive something other than
books as presents).
When the parents do not offer practices of reading and writing that
could play the role of examples for the child, the only solution for
them thus lies in focusing their attention and educational energy on
school activities. Unable to rely on the force of family habit in terms
of written culture (sometimes almost non-existent) or on transfers
that would lead from family practices towards the world of school,
they therefore directly follow the practices of the school world in a
kind of primitive accumulation of educational capital. When the edu­
cational energy of the family focuses on school practices, educational
behaviour is never the behaviour of capitalists confident in them­
selves, but rather that of adventurers building up what they do not yet
have. Sometimes, when those in this process of constituting an edu­
cational capital obtain good results, there is no longer even any sense
of limits to the work of accumulation, the point at which it comes to
an end. One never knows whether calling a halt, relaxing tension and
attention, might not be fatal for the educational trajectory. Children
from this kind of family configuration who succeed at school are
with equal fatality pure products of the educational system, since
they depend on it more completely in order to succeed than does any
child whose family culture of the written word, on account of its
long-established character, is wider than the written culture of school.
If this school culture has precociously penetrated the world of the
family, educational success even becomes a major precondition for the
emotional economy of both individual and family. One can thus sense
with the mothers of Julien (eight years old, father a skilled worker
and mother a nurse) or Nadege (eight years old, father a delivery man
and mother a hospital orderly) a kind of identification with the school
that leads them, on the one hand, to bring the school home (taste for

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reading books, help with homework, additional school exercises,

holiday tasks, correctional habits in matters of language, etc.) and,
on the other hand, to besiege the school itself (treating the teacher as
a member of the family, often going to talk with her at the end of the
school day, offering to help with school projects and events . . .).
At the opposite extreme from those families focused on educational
practices, who can conceive their children’s practices of reading and
writing only in a school context, we have those families where several
generations have completed secondary school or university, who
have totally embodied the school culture, appropriated it in their
own fashion, and can thus allow themselves to live a more relaxed
relationship with the world of primary school: families in which
parental reading is diverse and varied (from newspapers to books,
via magazines and comics),10 where more legitimate readings have
been selected and others rejected, where the parents talk about their
books and sometimes even take part in book-related social activi­
ties (reading groups, library exchanges) and where, finally, reading
goes beyond the context of school and is integrated into the most
everyday moments of family life to become a fundamental family
value, a central cultural option. These same families offer their chil­
dren frequent practices of writing, from the most pragmatic to the
most formal, the most utilitarian to the most aesthetic. A mother (a
housewife whose husband, a lawyer, heads a law firm of ten persons)
even says that she feels more at ease with writing than speech to
express her thoughts, thus reversing the customary order of facili­
ties.11 For children living in family environments such as this, writing
and reading are family realities before being experienced as school
ones. They may have internalized the desire to correspond in writing,
taking the initiative in writing their first letter where other children
do this only at school, writing stories and poems, keeping notebooks
during the summer holidays, etc. Sometimes they have internalized
the pleasure of receiving books as presents or consulting dictionaries
and encyclopedias.
Fathers and mothers thus act both as intermediaries and as models
of identification in the matter of written culture. Everything that
underlies the world of school is already broadly embodied in the
world of the family in the form of habits of life, taste, style of conver­
sation, relationship to language (orthographic control and vigilance
are integrated into the practices of correspondence, meta-linguistic
reflexivity on vocabulary is exercised not only in moments of reading
but also in the course of everyday conversation, etc.), cultural options,
asceticism and rigour.

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 W HAT E X A C TLY IS E M B O D IE D ?

But the world of the family may be wanting in all such features
favourable to the child’s construction of a culture of the written
word. This is the case with Damien’s family (see note 11, p. 249),
where the almost total absence of parental examples (in terms of
reading and writing), combined with poor educational capital and a
weak belief in the value of educational practices, leads to incentives
that are objectively negative (not deliberately or intentional). Thus
we observe in this family the effect of negative parental attitudes and
dispositions towards reading and writing. Damien’s parents have
neither the disposition (formed more in the perspective of increasing
economic capital: they refer to themselves as ‘manual’ rather than
‘intellectual’ and implicitly criticize the ephemeral character and futil­
ity of cultural production as against economic advantage) nor the
time needed for this kind of missionary educational energy.

Negative identifications and the force of implicit

injunctions
Far from simply being the product of very explicit parental inventive
and solicitation, and more generally of the educational intentions
of adults, children often construct themselves between formulated
injunctions and the wider contexts in which these injunctions are
uttered Such contexts themselves constitute a kind of implicit injunc­
tion, unspoken but readily apparent. When the explicit injunction is
(too greatly and/or too often) contradicted by the implicit injunctions
of everyday practice and counter-example, it has very often lost its
traction. In such conditions, explicit parental injunction has to be
particularly strong in order for children to be able to respond to it
positively.
I noted the opposition that parents in a working-class situation
encounter when they press their children to read without themselves
having the taste for or practice of reading. This opposition and resist­
ance is recorded by statistical investigations: ‘By comparing young
people whose parents read only a little or not at all, but who have
encouraged them to read, with young people whose parents read a lot
while abstaining from asking them to do the same, it is clear that it is
parental example that carries the day’ (Singly, 1993c, p. 57). There
are little gestures that say more about this - and more effectively -
than do words.
There is no need here to mention unconscious forces supposed to
circulate mysteriously between parents and children. There is the said
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 FO R M S OF E M B O D IM E N T

and the unsaid, what is said and what is done ('Do as 1 say, not as 1
do*), the conscious and the unconscious: parents who incite - some­
times even with heavy sanctions - without being in a position to give
an example, who make demands without always being able to check
that these are satisfied, who occasionally assert principles without
deploying the whole series of little everyday tactics that would force
or lead children to apply them spontaneously, or who wage a daily
battle to try and impose on children habits that are constantly put
in question by the weight of things, by the counter-examples of the
material and social context (e.g. keep the environment clean and
don’t damage the urban space, when this is constantly dirty and in
bad condition).12
The male relationship to the written word, which 1 have steadily
brought to light in the course of a series of studies, is equally reveal­
ing about these gaps between explicit and implicit injunctions. As 1
have already recalled, practices of writing are very strongly feminized
within the domestic space. Incentives to read and write thus come
most frequently from mothers. But this situation proves problematic
for boys, who do indeed have to respond (as children) to repeated
maternal incentive (take the time to read, practise your writing, get
used to writing letters . . .) but also have to construct their mascu­
line identity, even when their fathers may be absent - totally or in
part, according to the social milieu in question - from the terrain of
domestic, personal or family writing. Everything happens as if the
boy listens to his mother or looks at what she is doing with the subtle
distance appropriate to someone learning, as Berger and Luckmann
put it, to recognize the 'feminine version* of reality without identify­
ing with it. He then enters into a process of (more or less) negative
identification: if (domestic) writing is feminine, since borne essentially
by the mother (and when the boy has a sister, the energy that she puts
into writing secretly in a personal diary, or writing letters, only rein­
forces his implicit convictions) and not very popular with the father,
then too deep a commitment, too enthusiastic an investment in such
practices, will have something suspicious about it. Boys then resist,
shirk, sulk, practise a policy of last-minute concession (after repeated
reminders or endless insistence from the mother, she succeeds in
extracting a signature or a nice word at the bottom of a letter), and at
all events only very rarely launch themselves spontaneously into such
ambiguous activities (activities of adults, but women’s activities).
Where a girl can identify fully and gradually make her own, with
pleasure, practices that have initially to be solicited - evidence of a
complete and successful internalization of habit or disposition - boys

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 W H AT EXACTLY IS E M B O D IE D ?

may, in the wake of a kind of practical deduction, express their disin­

terest or insensitivity towards the writing (whether intimate, domestic
or familial). They construct their own gendered identity by way of
a more or less firm resistance (particularly depending on the degree
of domestic desertion by the father) to these types of written word.
This means that, as against what is generally believed, disinterest or
indifference precedes (and ends up generating) inability or effective
incompetence. The case of the relationship of boys to writing has the
virtue of recalling how, to take up the words of Max Weber, the child
only embodies habits, knowledge, know-how, etc., when its ‘interest*
in learning is greater than its ‘interest* in not learning. This inter­
est (or desire) is constructed in the always complex, and sometimes
contradictory, space between explicit and implicit injunctions.

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 Act IV
Workshops and Debates
 Scene 1

PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIOLOGY

All sociology is a psychology, but a psychology suigeneris. I would add

that in my belief this psychology is destined to give new life to many of
the problems posed at the present time by purely individual psychology
and even have repercussions on the theory of knowledge.
(Emile Durkheim, Rules o f Sociological Method)
Gradually, without even recognizing it or being in a position to assess
its consequences, sociology has come to interest itself in socialized
individuals as such, as well as in social groups, structures, contexts
and interactions. When the notions (and the realities to which they
refer) of "cognitive* or "mental* structures, "schemes’, "dispositions’
(or "habitus’), "embodiment* and "internalization* were not themselves
the focus of study, but served only, in the accounts of investigations,
as transition points needed to account for practices by introducing
embodied past socialization, these theoretical models could appear
satisfactory. Terms borrowed from psychology (that of Piaget, in
particular) made it possible to denote a void or an absence between
the objective structures of the social world (grasped statistically) and
the (observed) practices of actors.1Habitus could then be a feature of
a group or a class, as much as of an individual. That did not pose any
particular problem, since no specific attention was devoted to it, and
the theory did not really propose to study these realities (cognitive,
mental, etc.) empirically. This was broadly sufficient for the craft of
the sociologist, and no doubt still is so for a large number of research­
ers. In fact, many sociologists continue to practise sociology without
even having any need to give a name to these matrices (cognitive,
emotional, corporeal, ideological, cultural, mental, rational, etc.) of
behaviours, actions and reactions.
But it was not possible to speak with impunity - without drawing

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 W O R K SH O P S AND D E B A T E S

conclusions, and especially without attracting critical attention and

questioning from more recent researchers - about ‘mental struc­
tures*, ‘cognition’, etc. Everything that was accepted at face value
and went without saying is now open to reconsideration and ques­
tioning: Transposability? Transferability? Dispositional explanation?
Cultural inheritance? Transmission of cultural capital? Schemes? A
system of dispositions? A generating formula of practices or a unify­
ing principle? Internalization of objective structures? Embodiment
of social structures? Rather than presupposing the existence of such
socio-cognitive processes (the construction of schemes, systematic
analogical transfers and transpositions, the general character of
dispositions, their systematic and universal application, the internali­
zation of externality, etc.), rashly short-circuiting the long and labori­
ous series of research activities that it would be useful to undertake,
we have to start out again on the paths of contextualized questioning
with our sole companions a Cartesian doubt and some results of
empirical studies. By universalizing the findings of a certain state of
contemporary (Piagetian) psychology (not completely outdated, that
goes without saying), we have imported into sociology, in a petrified
form and unchanged for two decades, psychological concepts that -
like all scientific concepts - were no more than a kind of resume of
the state of some of the most advanced psychological work on the
question of childhood development at that time.
The field of a psychological sociology (rather than a social psychol­
ogy) is thus opened up, something that no one intended but which
everyone has gradually contributed to create. To study the individual
who crosses different scenes, contexts, fields of force and struggle,
etc., is to study social reality in its individualized, embodied, internal­
ized form. How is external diversity made flesh? How can it inhabit a
single body? When sociology was content to introduce the individual,
actor or agent simply in relation to a singular activity or field of prac­
tice (a worker, a father, a spouse, a friend, a reader, a user of this or
that cultural institution, a speaking subject, etc.), it could spare itself
the study of these individualized social logics. But once the focus is
on the individual (not as the atom or basis of all sociological analysis,
but as the complex product of multiple socialization processes), it is
no longer possible to rest content with the cognitive models used up
until now.
The slippage has been gradual and imperceptible: an insensible
shift of focus, of scale of contextualization, and everything becomes
different (Lahire, 1996a). The entire landscape has altered. Matters
would no doubt have been more clear if those who did not privilege

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the study of ‘dispositions’ and ‘schemes’ (mental, cognitive, appre­

ciative, emotional, etc.), their construction and their activation, had
not claimed a relevance for their assertions whatever the scale of
contextualization (from the largest social group to the most singular
individual). We would then have perceived the specific contributions
of various people, the relative relevance of different analyses. But the
desire for a powerful theory can lead researchers both to reinforce
their theories (like besieged fortresses) and to inflect and nuance them
with a view to ‘keeping control’, ready sometimes to say the opposite
of what they had previously maintained loud and clear. That is the
way of science, its models and its researchers.

An exit from sociology?

Contemporary sociological work often uses expressions such as
‘dispositions’, ‘cognitive’ or ‘mental’ structures, ‘interpretative proce­
dures’, ‘categories of perception’ or ‘representation’, ‘ethnomethods’,
‘stock of knowledge’, ‘reserve of previous experiences’, ‘relations to
the world’ or ‘views of the world’. But the authors in question are
most often satisfied with presupposing the existence of these ‘disposi­
tions’ or ‘structures’ within the actor, rather than actually taking up
as a research programme the study of their construction and their
possible (but not necessarily systematic) reinvestment in new social
contexts. It is not possible without impunity, however, to employ a
vocabulary close to that of psychology without at some point trigger­
ing the desire, a genuinely sociological one, to subject this to a critical
questioning and empirical evaluation - in brief, to examine it more
closely. If we bear in mind that sociology, and not just psychology, is
concerned to analyse the functioning of these ‘little machines’ produc­
ing behaviours, actions, evaluations, appreciations, choices, etc., that
are actors, it is important to equip oneself with adequate conceptual
tools for making headway in this domain. One aspect of future sociol­
ogy, it seems to me, will have to be a concern with the ability to rise
to this theoretical and methodological challenge in empirical work.
One might nevertheless believe that ‘individual mentality’ is not a
sociological object but a strictly psychological one (in the broad sense
of the term), so that sociologists could draw on the work of psy­
chologists without having to study this question for themselves. This
conviction - supported by the common image of sociology as a ‘gen­
eralist’ science of the collective, of social groups or, in the worst case
of ‘averages’, ‘average behaviours’, etc., and by the same token as a
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science, incapable of seeking to account for individual singularities2

- sometimes has its roots deep in the Durkheimian conception of
a strict division between collective consciousness and individual
consciousness:

In each of us, it may be said, there exist two beings which, while insepa­
rable except by abstraction, remain distinct. One is made up of all the
mental states that apply only to ourselves and to the event of our per­
sonal lives: this is what might be called the individual being. The other
is a system of ideas, sentiments and practices which express in us, not
our personality, but the group or different group of which we are part;
these are religious beliefs, moral beliefs and practices, national or pro­
fessional traditions, collective opinions of all kinds. (Durkheim, 1956,
pp. 71-2)

This division between two 'individuals’ or two 'groups of states of

consciousness* (Durkheim, 1987, p. 330) was undoubtedly made
originally with the strategic intent of demarcating sociology from psy­
chology (as 'science of the individual mind* [Durkheim, 1982, p. 40]),
and to block any attempt to reduce sociology to psychology, to the
individual (the social should be explained by the social). There thus
remained, according to Durkheim, a psychological or mental 'residue*
after the interpretative procedure of the sociologist, a 'residue’ that
provided the legitimate object of psychology.3
Contemporary sociologists, however, so chary sometimes towards
the idea of upsetting disciplinary conventions in the way that objects
and fields of research are divided up (sometimes based on nothing
more than realities of an institutional order), forget the moments at
which Durkheim wrote, with greater sociological boldness and less
concern not to tread on the discipline of psychology, that 'psychology
is also destined to partly renew itself* under the influence of sociologi­
cal research, 'since if social phenomena penetrate the individual from
outside, there is a whole domain of individual consciousness that
depends in part on social causes which psychology cannot abstract
from without becoming unintelligible’ (Durkheim, 1975, p. 35, n. 5),
or again that 'the whole of sociology is a psychology, but a psychol­
ogy sui generis. 1 would add that this psychology is destined, I believe,
to refresh many problems that a purely individual psychology, and
indirectly even the theory of knowledge, currently presents* (ibid.,
p. 61). Sociology, in the end, 'leads of itself to a psychology*, but a
psychology that Durkheim deemed 'more concrete and complex than
that practised by the pure psychologists* (ibid., p. 185) of his time.
If I could claim just one theoretical legacy, therefore, it would be

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that of Durkheim - at a)) events, the Durkheim who did not concede
any particular ground to the other human sciences, and who indi­
cated the way in which sociology could tackle - from its particular
perspective - all domains imaginable. By not ruling out any object a
priori, sociology could take a further step on the path towards sci­
entific autonomy. As with the most "pure* literature, which, to show
its break with external demands, maintains the primacy of form over
function, the mode of representation over the object represented,
sociology had to show that there is no empirical limitation to what
it is able to study (no objects are more sociological than others), but
that the essential thing lies in the sociological mode of treatment of
the "subject*.
Everything, therefore, contrasts my own sociological approach
with those that variously consist in adding on insights from other
disciplines (pluridisciplinarity), assembling in a theoretical bric-a-
brac concepts hailing from different disciplinary traditions, these
often themselves being attached to different theories of knowledge
(interdisciplinarity),1234 or illicitly introducing into a discipline different
principles arising in another discipline (e.g. what is today presented
as a "naturalistic programme in the social sciences’ and calls for the
development of a "natural science of society’). These various impasses
have in common that they all involve an abdication of sociological
interpretation, bound up with three illusions: the illusion that such
a dual (triple, quadruple) perspective can delivery a better vision; the
illusion that this mixture of theoretical and heteroclite principles and
orientations can give rise to an enrichment (rather than an explo­
sion or implosion); and finally the illusion that a science with high
legitimacy ("hard’ science) can provide the foundation for another
("human’) science.
Dan Sperber’s book Explaining Culture : A Naturalistic Approach
(1996) offers a fine example of the third kind of illusion just men­
tioned. The author puts forward here a series of theses, among which:

1 "Socio-cultural phenomena are . . . ecological patterns of psycho­

logical phenomena. Sociological facts are defined in terms of psy­
chological facts, but do not reduce to them’ (1996, p. 31);
2 cognitive psychology consequently offers one of the principal
sources for the explanation of cultural phenomena;
3 in order to naturalize the social domain, passageways must be
established with the cognitive sciences;
4 the human mind is a combination of several mechanisms that are
in part genetically programmed;

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5 humans have an innate disposition to develop concepts according

to certain schemes; the individual formation of concepts, just as
their cultural variability, is governed by innate schemes and mecha­
nisms (such concepts as norm, cause, substance, kind, function,
number and truth are "preformed in an innate manner’); and
6 if all representations do not have an equal chance of multiplying in
the human population, this is partly because they are "filtered’ by
universal human cognitive capacities.

The scientific programme sketched out above is manifestly anti-

Durkheimian (there is no autonomy of the social, the social is not to
be explained by the social but rather by psychology or neuropsychol­
ogy) and close at times to certain developments of methodological
individualism (to explain macro-phenomena by the cumulative effect
of micro-phenomena) or other scientific programmes, such as that
of Gabriel Tarde on phenomena of imitation.5 Moreover, defining
the cultural (or social) aspect of representations by their extent and
durability, the author totally overlooks recent developments in the
social sciences that tend to study the social tissue in its most singular
folds.
By introducing certain borrowings from the cognitive sciences
into the explanation of social (or cultural) facts, Sperber in fact pre­
maturely abandons a specifically sociological interpretation (in the
broad sense of the term). If we accept that the poor success (the low
degree of contagion) of certain mental and public representations
is explicable in terms of "the organization of human cognitive and
communicational capacities’ (1996, p. 66), what interpretative work
then remains for the social sciences? If "humans have a disposition to
develop such concepts as that of bird’ (ibid., p. 69), and the category
"black . . . is innately pre-wired, so that, when you learned the word
“ black” , you merely acquired a way to express verbally a concept
you already possessed’ (ibid., p. 94), is it really useful to describe
and analyse socio-historical facts sociologically? Too often, what
is simply the product of the social relations that human individuals
maintain with others, and with the products of their social activity,
is placed in the individual herself - as if encapsulated in the brain.
And if it is true that cognition "needs’ a brain, it is not the brain that
controls those variations in the matter of mental operations that are
so manifest both historically and sociologically.
We can find, on the other hand, solid support on the side of cul­
tural psychology and/or North American psychology (sometimes of
Vygotskyan inspiration), which fundamentally follows the trajec­

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tory we are proposing in a different direction.6 In fact, this seeks

to integrate culture or the social into its traditional objects (study
of individual cognition, perception, memorization, etc.),7 whereas
we call for the opening of the mysterious sealed boxes that sociolo­
gists have most often been satisfied to refer to in terms of 'scheme’,
'disposition’, 'cognitive transfer’, 'mental or cognitive structures’,
etc. What is involved here is not an interdisciplinary or pluridiscipli-
nary encounter, but rather an unprecedented historical convergence
between procedures that share not only the same epistemological
orientations (e.g. they seek to grasp social, historical, geographical,
cultural, etc., variations, rather than emphasize the universal charac­
ter of human behaviours, competences, characteristics, as do biology,
neuropsychology, etc.) but also related or congruent theoretical views
(cultural psychology would be hard pressed to find solid support from
the most objectivist and statistical sociologists, who can think only in
terms of groups).

The objectivity of the 'subjective'

The character is no longer a psychological abstraction as all the world
can see.. . . Our aim is the exact study of the environment, establishing
states of the external world that correspond to the internal states of the
character.
(Emile Zola, The Experimental Novel)

Norbert Elias devoted himself to exploring the transformations

of mental economy and personality structures in the course of the
constitution and consolidation of the modern state, which by the
monopolization of legitimate physical violence brought about a
pacification of social life and a civilizing of manners. He studied the
psychology of restraint, maintenance and self-control of impulses,
and the mastery of emotions (Elias, 1994). But since these are mental,
immaterial, realities that are inaccessible as such, it was by an analysis
of manners, ways of eating, talking, etc., that he sought to objectify
them.
Analysis of ways of doing and saying is thus a means of access to
the mental economy of individuals. But is there also a different way
of proceeding? Psychology - both contemporary and historical - can
only be objectivist and materialist, in the sense that it starts from the
observation of the visible and outward behaviour (often discursive,
sometimes non-discursive) of actors, and seeks from this to deduce

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and understand subjectivity, mentality, cognitive style, ideology,

representations, values, views of the world . . . In this sense, such
notions as those of "mental structures’ or "psychic structures’ should
be used with precaution, if one is not to set real theoretical traps for
oneself, and it is often preferable to speak of the objective structures
of thought, perception, evaluation, appreciation, belief, etc., as these
are expressed in actions and practices (linguistic and otherwise).
It is beneficial today, in this respect, to re-read the French psy­
chologist Pierre Janet, for whom the object of psychology was not
consciousness but rather action, and who believed that the only way
to reach a knowledge of consciousness was to study in detail its
contextualized manifestations (Janet, 1988). Likewise, if behaviour­
ism today has a bad reputation, it at least had the merit of recalling
the objectivity of the subjective within a psychological (and also
sociological) culture marked by mentalism and intros pec tionism, by
defining the domain of psychology as made up of "the objectively
observable behaviour of human beings’ (Naville, 1942, p. 13). It
appeared quite evident to Watson’s eyes that behaviour meant "what
the organism does and says’, and that "speech is an action like any
other’; "Saying is doing, i.e. behaving. Speaking aloud or to oneself
(thinking) is a type of behaviour just as objective as playing baseball’
(ibid., p. 16).
Sociologists very often distinguish two realities that are not actu­
ally different. They oppose the "objective’ to the "subjective’, refer­
ring on the one hand to everything that can be grasped outside of
the actors’ subjectivity (but not the sociologists’) and on the other
hand to the "meaning that actors give to their practices’, their "point
of view on the world’, their "representations of the world’, etc. Yet
we are not dealing here with radical differences, simply with dif­
ferences of degree in the objectification of realities. The domain of
reality denoted by the term "mental structures’ is just as objective as
that denoted by that of "material structures’ . These "mental struc­
tures’ are constantly objectified in the words of the actors’ language
and their modes of behaviour. There are thus no objective realities
distinct from subjective realities, but rather realities objectified in
objects, spaces, machines, words, ways of acting and saying, and
so on.
Those realities marked by a high level of social objectification are
often described as "objective’: economic capital, a house, a car, a plot
of land, etc., whereas an opinion, an idea, a point of view or a repre­
sentation are called "subjective’, even though in concrete terms these
subjective realities are every bit as objective: they are materialized in

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 P S Y C H O L O G IC A L SO C IO L O G Y

the sounds of an ora) discourse, in the traces of a written or printed

manuscript, in the strokes of brushes or chisels that create paintings
and sculptures, etc. The "psychology* of an author or the "mentality*
of an age are equally visible in the objects, spaces, tools and machines
they produce: we know just as well the "mentality’ of the Athenians of
the fifth century b c , in particular the dissociation they made between
what pertained to economics and what to religion or morality, from
considering the appearance and spread of coinage as by studying the
philosophical texts of the time (Vernant, 1982,1983).
It is readily apparent, then, that sociologists are far more idealist8
when they speak of "subjective*, "psychic’, "mental’ or "symbolic* reali­
ties than when they deal with so-called material realities, whilse the
language and ways of acting by which these realities make themselves
"visible* are the most material and objectifiable of realities (even if
oral language and ways of acting have a more ephemeral existence,
which lasts only for the time of their implementation).

The singular folds of the social

Even two twins, dressed and fed in the same fashion, are not treated
identically by each of their parents. Is it surprising that they diverge
so quickly? Is it surprising that two children of the same age, brought
up in different families (even if from a common background) respond
differently to similar stimuli?
(Pierre Naville, La Psychologie, science du comportement)
There is a too common tendency, among non-sociologists as well
as many sociologists, to see the social as reducible to differences
between groups or classes of individuals. As soon as social differences
are introduced, the focus is on differences between social classes,
social positions, socio-professional and socio-cultural categories, etc.
Rather more rarely, attention turns to socially constructed differences
between the sexes, or differences between generations (which are
often differences between frameworks of socialization). But almost
never without prompting is there any idea that "cognitive*, "psychi­
cal’ and "behavioural’ differences between two individuals from the
"same* social milieu (or, better, the same family) are also social dif­
ferences, in the sense that they have been socially generated in social
relations, from social (socializing) experiences, or that cases which
are atypical, exceptional in terms of probability, can also be inter­
preted sociologically (Lahire, 1995a). In the same way, it is rather
rare to view the social (social differences) from the standpoint of the

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variety of different social situations which one and the same actor
constantly deals with in everyday life (Goffman, 1991; Boltanski and
Thevenot, 2006).
It is important to emphasize, therefore, that the social cannot be
reduced to social relations between groups, and particularly to socio­
professional, socio-economic or socio-cultural differences, if we are
not to give the impression that more fine-grained differences are no
longer socially generated, so that individual cognitive structures, and
those of emotionality and sensitivity, etc., would lie outside the range
of sociology. Social means relationship. And not all social differences
are reducible to differences between social groups (whatever the
criteria used to characterize these).
Intersubjectivity or interdependence is logically prior to subjectiv­
ity, and consequently social relationships (the specific and historically
variable forms that these relationships take) come first, because they
are constitutive of each individual social being (Lahire, 1995a, pp.
283-9). Taking the individual actor as object of study thus does not
mean - against all atomistic individualism - making this into the
"ultimate unit* or "logical atom* of all analysis (Boudon, 1984, p. 26;
1981, p. 36). No more does it mean endowing all these actors with
"autonomy* and "rationality’ , by taking the same rudimentary psy­
chological feature aphoristically as the origin of all their practices.
Actors are what their multiple social experiences make of them; it is
their vocation to have varied behaviours and attitudes according to
the contexts in which they are led to develop. Far from being the most
basic unit of sociology, the actor is undoubtedly the most complex of
social realities to grasp. And we can understand how sociology could
not begin with the analysis of these complex composites of heteroge­
neous social experiences that are individual actors. In the end, and
contrary to what elementaristic and atomistic conceptions may lead
us to believe, it is less complex to study social worlds, fields, groups,
institutions or micro-situations, etc., than the individual folds of the
social. Actors have passed and continue to pass through multiple
social contexts (worlds, institutions, groups, situations, etc.); they are
the fruit (and the bearers) of all the experiences (not always compat­
ible, not always cumulatable, and sometimes highly contradictory)
that they have undergone in various contexts.
The metaphor of the fold or folding of the social has a double use.
First of all, folding denotes a particular modality of the existence of
the social world: the social (and its plural logics) in its embodied and
individualized form. If social space is represented in all its dimen­
sions (economic, political, cultural, religious, sexual, familial, moral,

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sporting, etc., these coarsely designated dimensions being themselves

in part indissociable and in part decomposable into sub-dimensions)
in the form of a sheet of paper or a piece of cloth (geometrically,
that is, a flat surface), then each individual is comparable to a crum­
pled sheet of paper or a creased piece of cloth* In other words, the
individual actor is the product of multiple operations of folding (or
internalization) and is characterized therefore by the multiplicity and
complexity of the social processes, dimensions, logics, etc., they have
internalized. These dimensions, processes or logics (these contexts)
are always folded in a unique fashion in each individual actor, and
the sociologist interested in individual actors finds the social space
creased and crumpled in each one of them. If the individual actor is
the most complex of beings, this is because a variety of dimensions,
logics and processes are folded up in each of them* For a long while
sociology was in the habit of basically studying flat structures (social
processes, social groups or social structures) - i.e. the social in its
unfolded and de-individualized form. But it has gradually turned its
interest to these multiple operations of folding that are constitutive of
the individual actor, to the always particular creasings that make each
actor both a relatively singular being and one relatively analogous to
many others.
The second interest in the metaphor of folding lies in the fact that
it leads us to realize that the 'inside* or 'interior* (the mental, the
cognitive, etc*) is simply an 'outside* or an 'exterior* (forms of social
life, institutions, social groups and processes, etc.) that is folded.9 In
this image, there is no possible exit from the social fabric (whether
unfolded or folded); the 'interior* is nothing more than the 'exterior*
creased or folded, and thus does not enjoy any primacy or anterior­
ity, or any irreducible specificity. To understand the 'inside* there
is only one solution: to study the 'outside* in its finest grain, its
greatest detail, and as systematically as possible. The economy of
the mind does not follow a different logic from that which rules the
economy of forms of social life. Its only specificity lies in the fact
that the social reality studied in its folded, crumpled, creased state
(that of the individual actor) is differently organized from how it
can be grasped in its unfolded, flattened state (transindividual reality
of groups, structures, institutions, types of interaction or systems of
action).

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Multi-determinism and the sense of freedom

As we have seen, social determinism is never as unambiguous as
physical or chemical determinism. This does not mean that an actor’s
behaviours are not completely determined socially - i.e. that they
could be explained only in terms of a kind of free will lacking attach­
ment or roots in the social world. Those anti-determinist declarations
that enjoy a certain currency in the social sciences today naively
deduce, from the constant activity of construction of the social
world (activity of perception, interpretation, representation, etc.) by
its actors, the idea that the latter have a fundamental freedom. The
critique of the present author’s views as "hyper-socialized’ (as if there
could be a question of degrees of socialization) blandly confuses
determinism and passivity, as if social determinism could act on dead
bodies, as if this does not presuppose a certain determination and
"personal’ engagement on the part of actors. To be resolutely deter­
mined to commit this or that action is a common way of feeling and
living the social determinisms of which we are the products.
But if social actors - from the most ordinary to the most scientific -
very largely resist the idea of a social determinism, this is for reasons
that bear on the nature of individual life in the social world. It is
impossible to predict the appearance of a social behaviour in the way
that the fall of a body is predicted from the universal law of gravity.
There is a considerable difference between the relative regularity of
social behaviours (relative, that is, to socio-historical contexts that
are always limited) and the absolute regularity of certain physical or
chemical facts, and an unwarranted use of the term "law’ in the social
sciences cannot change anything about this situation. There simply
are no social facts so regular and general that they would authorize
researchers to explain their existence in the language of "social laws’.
This situation is the combined result of two elements - on the
one hand the impossibility of reducing a social context to a limited
series of pertinent parameters that make it possible to predict a social
behaviour, as in the case of chemical experiments,10 and on the other
hand the internal plurality of actors whose stock of habits (schemes)
is more or less heterogeneous, made up of more or less contradictory
elements. It is impossible to predict with any certainty, for actors and
researchers alike, what in a specific context will "weigh’ on the actor
and which of the various schemes the actor has embodied will be
triggered in and by this or that context. Because the actor is plural,
and affected by different "forces’ according to the social situation in
which he or she happens to be, he or she is bound to have the feeling

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of a freedom of behaviour. We could say that we are all too multi-

socialized and too multi-determined to be able to give an account of
our determinisms. If there was only one powerful determining force
affecting us, then perhaps we would have a vague intuition of deter­
minism. There is nothing wrong if some people insist on using the
term 'freedom’ or, more precisely, 'feeling of freedom’ for the product
of this multi-determinism - i.e. the complexity of social determinisms
that are never easy to predict. But this freedom then has nothing in
common with the sovereign and conscious freedom that certain social
philosophers describe. The feeling of freedom is simply the product of
the complexity of determination.11
The only freedom the sociologists can seriously consider is a
freedom of action (political, economic, cultural, etc.) relative to
determinate socio-historical situations. Imprisonment, for example,
is a clear deprivation of freedom - i.e. of a series of possible actions.
Those individuals not incarcerated enjoy, relative to those who are,
a greater freedom of action. It would be quite absurd, however, to
view those actors outside the prison context as 'free’ in the sense of
not being caught up in social determinisms. In the same way, those
individuals, groups, categories, communities, etc., who experience
the effects of economic exploitation, political and police oppres­
sion, sexual domination, ideological or cultural censorship, or moral
repression are certainly limited in their action by other individuals,
groups, categories or communities. If 'freedom’ does have a sociologi­
cal meaning, it is indeed this freedom dearly won in the everyday or
'historic’ struggles of liberation. But both oppressors and oppressed,
dominant and dominated, exploiters and exploited, censors and cen­
sored, are equally subject to social determinisms. The actions, tastes,
representations, etc., of one set are no less determined than those of
the other.

New methodological requirements

That is why, to judge a man, we must follow his traces long and care­
fully.
(Montaigne, The Complete Essays)
With the exception of certain sociolinguistic studies,12 only a few
sociological investigations have undertaken to 'follow’ the same actor
(and not just the same group of actors) in the very different situations
of life (different domains of existence, different social worlds, dif­
ferent types of interaction). In studying actors in particular settings,
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the most common practice is to deduce general dispositions, habitus,

worldviews or general relationships to the world from the analysis of
behaviours observed in these settings. As 1 have shown, however, it is
impossible to deduce a general "habitus* from behaviour observable in
particular and limited circumstances.
The sociology of action that I propose implies, therefore, new
methodological requirements. In order to grasp the internal plurality
of actors, we have to equip ourselves with methodological procedures
that make it possible to observe directly or reconstruct indirectly
(from various sources) the variation of individual behaviours accord­
ing to social context. Only methodological procedures of this kind
will make it possible to judge the extent to which certain schemes
of action are transferable from one situation to another, and others
not, or to assess the degree of heterogeneity or homogeneity of the
stock of schemes embodied by actors in the course of their previous
socialization. If the direct observation of behaviours still remains the
most pertinent method, it is rarely completely possible, given that
"following* an actor in the different situations of life is a task both
heavy and ethically questionable. But even interviews and work on
assorted archival material - when one is as sensitive to differences as
to constancies - can reveal many little contradictions, heterogeneities
of behaviour that are unperceived by the actors themselves, who very
often seek, on the contrary, to maintain an illusion of the coherence
and unity of their self.
It is not just a question of comparing the practices, manners, behav­
iours, etc., of the same actors in such varied social worlds (which can
in certain cases, though not systematically, take the form of fields of
struggle) as the world of work, the family, school, neighbourhood,
church, political party, leisure activities, etc., but also of differentiat­
ing situations within these various broad domains of social reality
- not always so clearly separated in practice - by taking into account
"internal* differences (i.e. within the family, work, etc.). It is common
for sociologists to study the behaviours of actors in the context of a
single domain of activity (sociology of the family, of education, of
work, of religion, etc.). The actor is then always situated on just one
single social stage. He or she is, according to the particular case, a
worker, a pupil, a parent, a father or mother, a husband or wife . . .
The custom of classical sociology recording the sociological coordi­
nates of a subject in terms of "level of qualification* or "socio-profes­
sional category* always leads researchers summarily to reinject into
their analysis elements that are external to the context being studied.
Even when subjects are viewed only from the angle of their religious

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or family behaviour, they are always characterized by a rather crudely

defined socio-professional position.
If it is rather rare for sociologists to compare subjects in two dif­
ferent settings, this is, however, already the custom for those trying
to grasp phenomena of cultural contradiction or difference. The soci­
ology of education, for example, is well versed in this type of com­
parison: family educational practices versus those of school; popular
knowledge versus formal knowledge; modes of exercise of parental
authority versus educational mode of exercise of authority . . . Even
if the emphasis is often more particularly on one setting (family or
school), with the other often assumed as known or the researcher
drawing on the work of others, this kind of study marks a first step
towards developing the sociological approach that I would like to see.
It is very hard, on the other hand, to cite studies that have system­
atically 'observed* the same actors across more than two settings, or
beyond two types of social situation.
Partial responsibility for this state of affairs certainly lies with the
specialization of research, which follows the internal organization
of scientific and academic disciplines - especially as the number of
researchers in the social sciences has increased - as well as the way in
which the legitimate 'formulators* of social problems (the state above
all) divide up social reality. Research financed by national grants is
thus tacitly inscribed by ministerial divisions; the object of study is
the city, the school, the family or work, because there are ministries
of the city, national education, culture, social affairs and labour,
etc. What ministry in what government could take an interest in the
social actor across different domains of existence? And yet we should
not attribute the basic responsibility for the state of research in the
social sciences to these external conditions; they simply contribute to
maintaining the existing state of affairs. Within these broad domains
of social existence, or types of social activity, sociologists could have
tested - and can test today - hypotheses of variation in practices and
the heterogeneity of the stock of schemes embodied by actors. But,
to do so, hypotheses of this kind would have to be proposed, formu­
lated, made precise and explicit. If the sociological imagination does
not develop without empirical study, it is never the 'terrain9that itself
generates new ways of considering it. 'The perspective creates the
object*, as Ferdinand de Saussure put it, and not the other way round.
When researchers study only one setting, and there is no reason
why they should not, they should at least try not to generalize exces­
sively from their limited findings. However modest these may be, they
at least have a contextual relevance. But by blocking the view of the

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limits of the knowledge produced, and at the same time encouraging

an empirical laziness that consists here in dispensing with the long
work of comparing behaviours according to context, the demon of
generalization (well explained by the far greater symbolic profits it
procures) constitutes a genuine obstacle to scientific understanding of
the social world.

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PERTINENT FIELDS 1

On excessive generalization
It remains true that one can adopt any kind of description in practice,
as long as no more is asked of it than it can supply, and no attempt is
made to use it outside the necessarily limited domain in which it can be
applied in a satisfactory manner.
(Jacques Bouveresse, Le Mythe de Vinterior ite)
If we wanted to sum up the attitude adopted towards the various
theories of action and the actor throughout this book, we could say
that this is the opposite of the kind of polemical critique that is cus­
tomarily practised between the champions of these different theories.
This is not a matter of timidly seeking an undiscover able 'just mean’,
but rather one of a pragmatic and historicizing relationship to socio­
logical concepts and theories.2
It is because study of the social world teaches us that there is not
a single model of the actor or action, but rather very variable types
of actor and action - historically, socially, geographically - that we
cannot claim universal applicability for sociological concepts. A large
part of my own 'theoretical* contribution on this question is thus
paradoxically not theoretical, in the sense of championing a particu­
lar perspective - an original one, of course! - on action and the actor.
It constitutes, rather, a necessary epistemological framework for
guiding empirical research, but one that does not prejudge what can
be discovered only empirically, by way of original empirical research
programmes. By proceeding in this way, new concepts and new theo­
retical options can be gradually constructed, which in turn will only
have scientific relevance within certain limits of validity.
The same holds for theories of action, cognition and practice as for

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any other tool: none is adequate or applicable irrespective of the type

of action under consideration. They do not all speak of social reality
in the same fashion, and do not all speak of the same social realities.
There is no unambiguous manner of placing in hierarchical order the
scientific results of theories that privilege collective action and those
that privilege individual action, those that insist on the relationship to
action and those that prefer to grasp the various sequences or phases
of action from outside, those that study long sequences of action and
those that study actions of short duration. To claim otherwise does
offence to social reality and to the diverse well-founded scientific
perspectives that grasp it.
One of the main defects of theoretical discourses, in both philoso­
phy and the social sciences, is to generalize unwarrantedly from a par­
ticular case of the real. Like those specialists in ‘games’ who present
the ‘rules of basketball’ as ‘universal rules of the game’, valid for
every kind of game that exists (from chess to rugby, via real tennis),
theorists of action - even the most lucid of their number - quite seri­
ously defend partial theories as if they were general ones. They most
often imagine that a general theory is possible, whereas the only
theories that exist are partial ones. As Jacques Bouveresse reminds
us, Wittgenstein was close to holding that all philosophical theories
are ‘false’: ‘from excess of ambition, partiality, lack of attention or
complexity, etc.’ (Bouveresse, 1987, p. 36).
Whether the actor is viewed as rational or an automaton, conscious
or unconscious, etc., this reasoning is conducted in an aprioristic,
general and universal manner that is not appropriate for the social
sciences (Passeron, 1991).3 One could call for greater modesty on the
part of those who make such ascents into generality, since the under­
lying point at issue in these generalist theoretical positions is prestige.
If taking the most general perspective4 - i.e. the highest and most
transcendent one - were not in the end the ‘dream model’, researchers
could possibly find personal glory in demonstrating the relative and
limited applicability of their analyses. It goes without saying that the
model of the highest perspective is that of our state hierarchies, as it
previously was that of absolute monarchies, theocracies and tyran­
nies. Whether it concerns the president of a democratic republic, a
monarch, a theocrat or a tyrant, in every case absolute prestige lies
at the summit of the pyramid. Mutatis mutandis, theorists sometimes
execute the same strategies in the order of theory as those of soldiers
or politicians, deploying analogous operations. The loss of theoreti­
cal lucidity is sometimes amazing, but in no way surprising once we
understand where it comes from: a loss of lucidity is a gain in scope.

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Everything happens as if, seeking to take the hilltop and stretching

their heads towards the sun, they end up no longer seeing the details
on the ground. Too remote means too blinded. It is good then to
exclaim with Wittgenstein: ‘Back to the rough ground!' (1972, p. 46).

The varying scale of context in the social sciences

Faced with the diversity of definitions of objects in the social sciences,
whether implicit or explicit, there is a strong temptation to decide in
a summary fashion which is the right definition, the most pertinent
scale of observation, the most correct angle of view, and this is often
the way in which researchers actually proceed, aiming at a monopoly
of the legitimate definition of their objects of study. But if there is
no transcendent and integrating point of view, and this cannot in
fact exist, it should be possible for researchers to act as if they each
took into consideration, from their own particular perspective, other
constructions of the object.
It is more productive scientifically, however, to note the variation
in knowledge effects according to the way that the object is divided
up. As soon as people stop placing themselves in an adversarial rela­
tionship with other ways of constructing social facts (a position that
leads, for example, to saying that someone else’s object is ‘reduc­
tive’), the knowledge effects specific to each mode of construction are
revealed, and greater awareness is taken of the constructed character
of every scientific object. The active position of the analyst is then
made clear, and at the same time the importance of the operations
and procedures of construction in relation to the results of these
procedures.5 We thus move from ontological reality (a reality that is
unquestioned and taken as the right and proper reality, no matter the
object of study) to constructed reality.
This constructivist - in fact, Weberian - point of view makes it
possible to see that the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of a social fact (its inter­
nal and external readings) are basically a matter of the construction
of the object, and are not defined once and for all. It is possible, for
example, to constitute the immediate context of verbal interaction as
the pertinent context, so as to avoid, as Erving Goffman does, auton-
omizing the exchange of speech. He considers grammatical or linguis­
tic analysis, even the strict analysis of conversation, to be committing
‘the sin of non-contextuality’ by their study of ‘self-sufficient sample
sentences’ (Goffman, 1981, pp. 31-2), and makes a sharp demarca­
tion between what is interna) (the utterance related to its grammatical

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properties, and even verbal exchange considered as a self-sufficient

exchange) and what is external (and is to be reconstructed).
But it is possible to criticize Goff man, from the standpoint of an
alternative construction of the object and the pertinent context, for
autonomizing linguistic exchange and to maintain that the truth of
interaction is not entirely contained in the interaction itself: The
“ interact ion ist” approach, which fails to go beyond the actions and
reactions apprehended in their directly visible immediacy, is unable
to discover that the different agents’ linguistic strategies are strictly
dependent on their positions in the structure of the distribution of
linguistic capital, which can in turn be shown to depend, via the struc­
ture of chances of access to the educational system, on the structure of
class relations’ (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 64).
The pertinent context, in this view, is not the immediate context
of interaction but rather the linguistic market. The operation of
constructing the object then converts another researcher’s 'exter­
nal’ into the 'internal’. If, however, one author seems to include the
other in a broader framework, it is still not possible to deduce from
this that the former is correct while the latter - as 'reductionist’ - is
wrong. It is impossible to banish the objects of others from 'reality’
simply by claiming that they do not exist: 'What exists in the social
world are relations - not interactions between agents or intersubjec-
tive ties between individuals, but objective relations’ (Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 1992, p. 97). It is simply not the same phenomena that are
explained in the two cases, and not the same pertinent contexts that
are being applied. On the one hand, the focus is particularly on ana­
lysing the phenomena of assumptions (or grasping the interpretative
procedures applied by the members of a community);6 on the other
hand, it is on relationships of symbolic domination between inter­
locutors who are unequally endowed (particularly in cultural capital
and legitimate language).

Experimental variation and loss of illusions

Rather than deploring sociological polytheism (interpreted as a
symptom of the youth and scientific weakness of the social sciences)
- in other words, the notable variability of sociological ways of con­
structing objects - we should on the contrary see the experimental
variation of scientific constructions7 as the site of the most interesting
knowledge effects in the social sciences.
Whether the decision is made to study frameworks of interaction,

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individual experiences or fields, the structures of domination relation­

ships between classes or individual action, it is quite impossible to say
in a general fashion that one is right and another wrong, one true and
another false, one has the right definition of objects and another with
the wrong one - as impossible as saying that basketball players are
real players whereas footballers are wrong to play in the way they do.
To refine the metaphor, we could simply add that, no matter what the
game, it is on the ground that professional players distinguish them­
selves from amateurs, the more skilled from the less, and so on. To
recognize the legitimate plurality of ways of constructing the objects
of research is thus not a veiled or underhand way of maintaining that
all kinds of scientific production are equally valid (Lahire, 1996b).
The fact is that different constructions of the object do not speak of
the same things, and cannot claim - no matter what their champions
say - to explain the same realities. To each level of context there cor­
responds a specific order of complexity as well as specific pertinent
information, different from that which other researchers are working
with at other levels. No theory or construction of the object can ever
make it possible to accede to real practices, to reality as such. They
simply give us in each case a plausible Version’ .8
The experimental variation in levels of context or modes of scien­
tific construction of objects does assume, however, saying farewell to
a number of scientific illusions that are still very current today, and in
most cases interconnected. It implies breaking with a certain kind of
realistic epistemology, with the idea of a linear accumulation of scien­
tific work in history, and with the view of possibly arriving at a theory
that would integrate all existing perspectives (past and present).
Realist epistemology does not accept a distinction between scien­
tific theory and reality. By way of its concepts, the researcher believes
it possible to gain access, one way or another, to reality itself. As
Max Weber wrote, this 'confusion between theory and history’ takes
a variety of forms:
In some cases it is believed that the ‘genuine1 content or ‘essence’ of
historical reality can be fixed in these theoretical and conceptual figures,
in other cases they are used as a kind of Procrustean bed which history
is pressed into by force, in others again ‘ideas’ are hypostatized to make
them the ‘true’ reality hidden behind the flux of events or the ‘real’
forces that act themselves out in history. (Weber, 1992, p. 178)

Weber thus positioned himself in relation to Marxism more from an

epistemological perspective - criticizing it for a propensity to take
concepts or figures of thought as real acting forces - than from a

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theoretical one (he recognized, in any case, "the eminent and even
unique heuristic importance* of Marxist theory).
This realist epistemology very often leads the researcher to believe,
in an evolutionist fashion, that the history of scientific theories in the
social sciences is the history of successive advances, assuming a linear
accumulation of scientific knowledge, a progress in the complexity
of scientific theories and methods. This view of things thus implies
seeking an integrating standpoint that would make it possible to view
the object from all perspectives. In their relationship to other theories
(and other theorists), researchers aiming at the theoretical integration
of other viewpoints (past and present), or believing that they have
reached this objective, are then led to judge between scientific cor­
rectness and error, the right scale of context and the less pertinent
scale, the most complex theory and the more reductive theories, etc.,
measuring them by their own standard. If we can draw once more on
M ax Weber’s valuable words, we can say that "there are sciences that
have the gift of remaining eternally young* (1992), and that cannot
pretend either to a simple historical accumulation or to a total theo­
retical integration. This is understandable once it is accepted that the
diversity of value relationships leads researchers to investigate social
reality differently (to illuminate different aspects and dimensions),
and that the various possible types of analysis, the various possible
scales of context, do not produce knowledge effects that can be imme­
diately cumulated (there is a problem of translation of results from
one level of analysis to another, one scale of context to another, one
type of method or theoretical language to another, etc.).
The way in which Pierre Bourdieu conceives the place of his own
theory of the social in the sociological field (and in that of the social
sciences more broadly) is close to the epistemological position I am
criticizing here. In fact, his theory of fields, and particularly of fields
of cultural production, though it proposes an original and complex
research programme, is presented or defended in a manner that some­
times resorts to a realist epistemology,9 to the idea of an accumulation
of scientific knowledge,10 and to that of a theoretical integration of
existing viewpoints.11 On the basis of this kind of conception, alterna­
tive theoretical constructions are cast onto the side of scientific error,
of lesser complexity or regression. Pierre Bourdieu thus believes that
the notion of the "art world* current in the United States "marks a
regression in relation to the theory of the field* (1996b, p. 204). In
an interview with an English sociologist, he declared in similar terms,
without any ambiguity: "For example, the notion of field of power
is an immense advance. If I had to list all the articles and studies in

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which people make enormous mistakes, even empirical ones, because

they don't have this notion . * .’ (Bourdieu and Grenfell, 1995, p. 8).
In taking up such positions, this author does not seem willing to
recognize the plurality of possible scientific models (and interests)
other than in an evolutionist and hierarchical manner:12 some models
are more complex, more scientific, less reductive, than others. Even
if the theory of fields is open to modification, perfection, etc., it still
constitutes the most historically complete scientific theory.
But if we accept that sensory, phenomenal reality is unlimited and
susceptible of a multiplicity of methodological approaches, scientific
investigations and viewpoints - for reasons that our relationships to
values, as well as the diversity of forms of social life, help to explain
- then models cannot be placed in any simple hierarchical order, as
they do not all speak of the same social world. When we read sci­
entific work hailing from a diversity of theoretical traditions, we do
not learn the same ‘things' about the social world, and cannot claim
that one or other of these works makes it possible to grasp in a more
complex fashion the same realities that the others apprehend. They
present us with different versions of a social world that is still suscep­
tible, with the perpetual variations in cultural values and interests, of
a multitude of other descriptions and analyses. The diversity of theo­
retical and methodological languages current in the social sciences,
the variety of scales of contextualization of social phenomena, cannot
be read according to a unique axis measuring the degree of scientific
credentials of research works.

The historicizing of universal theories and fields of

pertinence
Since by virtue of the Inevitable variation In the guiding Ideas of value,
he could not have truly definitive historical concepts, such as could be
viewed as ultimate and general, he will accept that, precisely because
rigorous and unambiguous concepts have been constructed for the sin­
gular point of view that orients work in each case, he can each time be
clearly aware of the limits of their validity.
(M ax Weber, Essais sur la theorie de la science)
A philosopher’s job is not to produce a view X and then, if possible, to
become universally known as ‘Mr. View X ’ or ‘Ms. View X ’.
(Hilary Putnam, Representation and Reality)
By recalling the importance of contexts of ‘measurement’ or observa­
tion (and the procedures for constructing these contexts), historical

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limits of validity are inevitably attached to any sociological concept

(and any conceptual system in the social sciences). It is difficult in the
social sciences, therefore, to win on two fronts at the same time: the
extension of a concept (its ability to embrace a very large number
of social situations) and its empirical richness (meaning that it still
tells us things about relatively singular segments, sections and con­
texts within the social world) (Weber, 1992, p. 159). By wanting to
say too much, the risk is no longer to say anything. If historians are
accustomed to placing spatial and temporal limits on their objects,
even in the titles or subtitles of their publications, sociologists have
more commonly bent themselves to generalizing their theoretical con­
tributions on the basis of a relatively restrained context (a particular
geographical zone, historical period, sector of activity, etc.).
Becoming aware of the historical character of sociological con­
cepts, however, makes it possible for us to orient our relationship
to competing theories of the social differently, by historicizing the
theoretical debates that have generally taken polemical forms. Thus,
rather than joining theoretically the "theoretical* debate on relation­
ships between individuals and society, the primacy of one or the other
in analysis, etc., Norbert Elias historicized these notions by bringing
the terms of the debate back to their socio-historical conditions of
possibility. These categories, no matter how broad they might be,
are always valid only within such socio-historical limits. Elias (1991)
thus sketched the origin of the notion and experience of a subjectiv­
ity distinct from an (objective) external social reality by placing this
problem in the framework of a (long-term) history of the transforma­
tions of the mental economy (structures of the personality) bound up
with the processes of civilization. In this way he defined the historical
field of relevance of a conceptual opposition that is still sometimes
deployed with complete theoretical unawareness.
We could mention a range of examples of fruitful and illuminating
application of this historicizing of sociological concepts or theories.
There was Durkheim criticizing the apriorism of political economy,
which saw "interest* or the "maximization of profit* at the root of all
action (1975, p. 16), while being careful not to champion in his turn
any a prion principle of all human action; Marcel Mauss, who would
not definitively decide between formalism and pragmatism on the
question of studies of prayers (more or less autonomous in relation
to religious rituals and ceremonies), but adapted his method to the
nature of the object studied (1968-74, vol. 1, p. 451); Peter Berger
and Thomas Luckmann defining part of the field of relevance of the
"Goffmanian model’ (1979, p. 281); Jack Goody (1977) defining

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 P E R T IN E N T FIE L D S

that of the structural-graphic method, and showing in particular the

limits of usefulness of graphic methods and procedures for grasping
the specific logic of oral cultures; and Pierre Bourdieu (1976) defin­
ing the respective fields of relevance of interactionism (social worlds
with a low degree of objectification, which place great importance on
face-to-face contact) and structuralism (worlds in which hierarchies
are guaranteed, objective, codified and made official in and through
institutions - educational, state, legal, economic, etc.).
But this often remains an implicit and partial attitude: e.g. the
case of Mikhail Bakhtin, who showed the connections that existed
between formalist, structural theories in linguistics and educational
practices, but continued to believe that these theories were 'false* and
that those who used them never systematically drew all the necessary
conclusions, whether of an epistemological order or in terms of the
social forms of scientific debate.
It is in Ludwig Wittgenstein, however, that formulations are to be
found closest to what I myself understand by field of relevance. In his
Conversations on Freud, for example, what Wittgenstein criticizes
Freud for is not his theory of dreams, but his attempt to interpret
all dreams on the basis of this theory, and the idea that being only
partly right is tantamount to being wrong: 'It is probable*, wrote
Wittgenstein,
that there are many different sorts of dreams, and that there is no single
line of explanation for all of them. Just as there are many different sorts
of jokes. Or just as there are many different sorts of language. Freud
.. . wanted to find some one explanation which would show what
dreaming is. He wanted to find the essence of dreaming. And he would
have rejected any suggestion that he might be partly right but not alto­
gether so. If he was partly wrong, that would have meant for him that
he was wrong altogether - that he had not really found the essence of
dreaming. (1966, pp. 47-8)

In similar vein, when he was led to criticize the concept of meaning in

Saint Augustine, Wittgenstein did not confine himself to saying that
this was a 'false* theory of meaning, but tried to understand what
Augustine was talking about:
Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication;
only not everything that we call language is this system. And one has to
say this in many cases where the question arises: 'Is this an appropriate
description or not?1 The answer is: ‘Yes, it is appropriate, but only for
this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of what you were
claiming to describe.’ It is as if someone were to say: ‘A game consists

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 W O R K SH O P S AND D E B A T E S

in moving objects about on a surface according to certain rules . . .’ -

and we replied: ‘You seem to be thinking of board games, but there are
others. You can make your definition correct by expressly restricting it
to those games.1 (1972, p. 3)

Even when they are conceived by their authors as universal, theo­

ries always speak - and most commonly without their authors being
aware - of a category or class of relatively singular socio-historical
facts; they systematize different aspects of our social life. Why should
we be surprised that theoretical models which are fruitful for explain­
ing certain social phenomena suddenly prove very weak when moved
further from the centre of their field of relevance? They often then
try - desperately - to relate to these fields realities that escape them.
Once we are aware of this situation, we can advance sociological
knowledge by a movement of contextualization or historicization of
what is posited as theoretical, abstract, decontextualized, and ulti­
mately universal and transcending any particular socio-historical situ­
ation. We could even say that such advance in the social sciences is all
the greater when we know what the abstract theories that generally
present themselves as universal means for conceiving every socio-his­
torical situation are actually talking about (what social character­
istics, what forms of social life, what types of social phenomenon).
T o escape from this generalizing ascent to extremes, however, it has
to be no longer necessary to maintain the universal character of the
heuristic power of one’s method, mode of construction of the object,
scale of contextualization or mode of sociological writing in order to
guarantee these their legitimate place in scientific debate.
The first (epistemological) lesson to be drawn from these reflections
on the fields of relevance of theories may be formulated as follows:
in their theoretical oppositions, researchers in the social sciences are
always partly wrong not to see how their opponents are partly right.
This leads them to take issue with one another over results produced
on the basis of completely different scales of context, ways of con­
structing objects, etc., which because of this are not directly compa­
rable; also to develop (necessarily) partial theories of the social by
taking these for what they are not - i.e. universal and universally per­
tinent theories - and ruling out any competing theory without asking
in what way this might be partly well founded. Non-adversaria) criti­
cal work, therefore, consists in saying: This concept that you believe
general and universal is only applicable to this or that category of
facts, practices, or scale of observation . . .’ This way of conceiving
scientific debate aims neither at finding a ‘just mean’ nor at propos­

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ing an academic consensus. It is rather a way of ruling out all those

attitudes in the social sciences that are so keen on totally and abruptly
ruling out others.
The second (practical) lesson bears on the very identity of research­
ers in the social sciences. This seems to be still based largely on
the adoption or invention of a theoretical vocabulary (a theory of
the social) that can be given a clear label, the definitive and stable
choice of a particular method (so that there are specialists in statisti­
cal methods, in interviews, in life stories, in analysis of discourse,
in observation, etc.) and a scale of context (more micro or macro).
These three aspects go broadly together, even if they do not system­
atically coincide. At the conceptual level, we can observe that a rec­
ognized author in the social sciences is a researcher identified on the
basis of a recognizable grid of theoretical interpretation. This state of
affairs more often incites potential authors to seek originality in terms
of such a theoretical grid, with the concern to maintain a certain
theoretical coherence throughout their work and publications, rather
than to effect shifts or transformations in their languages of descrip­
tion and analysis.13 If this were not the case, it would be impossible to
understand the curious and exotic interest frequently aroused in the
social sciences between the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus logico-phil-
osophicus and the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations.
As for methods, the authors of The Craft of Sociology already criti­
cized strongly the "monomaniac use’ that was made of these. They
cited A. Kaplan’s humorous remark: "Give a child a hammer, and
you’ll see that everything seems suited to being hit with it’ (Bourdieu,
Chamboredon and Passeron, 1991, p. 71). We might have the feeling,
from reading contemporary sociological works, that the researchers
had learned in the past twenty years how to combine and articulate,
with greater or lesser reflectivity, data produced with the help of
different investigative methods.
Finally, as to the scale of contextualization, this still seems to
resist variation, despite the intermixing of methods. Even when they
combine different methods, researchers very often confer a particular
privilege on certain of these, and thus on a particular scale of obser­
vation. The researcher’s identity thus continues to crystallize around
the constant and non-explicit choice of a particular scale of context.
Everything happens as if, accustomed to view the world from a par­
ticular distance, researchers were unwilling to let their vision cloud,
even for a moment, in order to get closer or further away. It is even
rather surprising that simple experimental curiosity has not pushed
researchers further in the direction of observing what happens to their

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 W O R K SH O P S A N D D E B A T E S

objects, problems or objects of study, how these are transformed or

deformed, under the effect of such variation in the focus of their lens.
The constant experimental search for the pertinent context on
the part of Italian micro-historians is in this sense an undeniable
advance in sociological knowledge, which the discipline of sociology
has not itself managed to produce. And in my own transition from
the macro-sociological analysis of educational inequalities to the
analysis of 'educational failure’ that I now have under way, with the
shift of gaze this involves from the educational world to the world of
work and then the family, leaving the terrain of statistical analysis of
phenomena of cultural inheritance to reach the field of investigation
of the concrete modalities of the 'transmission* of 'culture5 and the
constitution of cultural schemes, I have tried on each occasion delib­
erately and experimentally to change the angle of scientific approach
to social realities, testing the limit of sociological concepts, schemes
of interpretation or the methods of observing reality. My purpose has
not been first to criticize statistics, for example, then to proceed to a
defence of ideographic ethnographic descriptions. It has rather been
an attempt to determine, on the basis of a particular problem, fields
of relevance for the different approaches. Instead of proceeding, as we
often do, to champion the universally fruitful character of our con­
structions of the object, I have preferred to defend the experimental
character of my procedure, which remains aware of the limits of its
validity, the field of relevance of the mode) employed.
The sketch of a theory of the plural actor that this book comprises,
its reflections and interpretations on the wellsprings of action, forms
of reflexivity and different logics of action, on how the polymorphous
processes of embodiment should be grasped and the most singular
folds of the social studied, as well as the way of debating with exist­
ing theories, the manner (neither realist nor universalist) in which we
conceive the relationship of concepts to the social world, the multi­
ple investigations on which sociological imagination and its lines of
investigation of the social are based - all this has aimed to constitute
an opening. An opening both towards more theoretical modesty and
less theoretical guilty conscience, towards more anchoring of asser­
tions in the social world and less empirical laziness, towards more
historicization and pragmatism in the use of concepts and less univer­
salization and generalization, towards more sociological passion and
less respect for academicism and institutional divisions, towards more
experimentation and less fetishizing of methodology, towards more
scientific inventiveness and less scholarly dogmatism. A wide pro­
gramme with a low probability of realization? The future will decide.

222
 NOTES

Preface

1 [ also indicate in this book the social and historical limits of validity of
the concept of 'field’, whereas a number of people who use Bourdieusian
concepts believe a priori that every context of action is necessarily a ‘field’.
This reflection is continued in ‘Champ, hors-champ, contrechamp’, in Lahire
(1999, pp, 23-57), and especially in Lahire (2006),
2 Bourdieu and his school, in fact, steadily slipped towards a contextuaiism o f
the fields omitting to study what the theory of habitus should have impelled
them to examine more closely. See Lahire (2010).
3 Luc Boltanski, a former disciple of Bourdieu, had broken several years before
with his sociology and turned towards a contextualistic view of action. He
proposed focusing interest exclusively on those 'constraints’ tied to ‘the
arrangement of the situation in which individuals are placed’ (Boltanski,
1990, p, 69) and caricatured dispositionaiist approaches by suggesting that
they ‘intend to bring to light determinations that, inscribed in actors once
and for all, guide their actions whatever the situation in which they find
themselves’ (ibid,, p, 65) or, again, ‘grasp properties that, inscribed irrevers­
ibly in actors and their physical habits, determine their conduct in every cir­
cumstance’ (ibid., p. 69), He did, however, endow actors - and how could he
have done otherwise? - with naturalized ‘competences’ whose sociogenesis
(historical and individual) remained mysterious, ('We consider that it is part
of the competence of all normal members of a particular society to be able
to grasp these and take account of them’; ibid,). [ have criticized this rather
cavalier and summary way of viewing the problems of the theory of action in
Lahire (2002).
4 [t is not by chance, as I emphasize in this book, that it was for Kabyl society,
a traditional society far less differentiated than modern societies, that
Bourdieu started to forge the concept of habitus.
5 [ insist here on the dispositional nature of this pluralism, which has some­
times been forgotten by users of and commentators on my work. It is not in
fact without a certain surprise that! have seen in the past ten years the theses
of this book summed up by authors mentioning a ‘pluralism of identity’

223
 N O TES TO PP. X II- X V III

that [ am supposed to have brought to light. Reflection on the more or less

conscious and strategic use of multiple individual identities, a reflection that
sometimes traces a portrait of actors perpetually seeking or asserting their
identity, is so far from the ideas inspiring the researcher working on the
plurality of dispositions that it should not be necessary to explain these dif­
ferences in detail. And yet, since rigour in reading texts seems to be a charac­
teristic less frequently met with in the social sciences than the ‘intoxication of
inexactness’ of which Bachelard speaks, and since the mere similarity of the
questions raised (with the use of the term ‘plurality’) triggers hasty conver­
gences in common academic classifications, it would seem far from useless to
mention this point.
6 Taking up in this way expressions used in particular by Emile Durkheim and
Marcel Mauss. See Lahire (2005).
7 By more frequently now using the expression 'sociology on the individual
scale’, [ aim to avoid all those (disappointed) expectations that the expression
‘psychological sociology’ raises in relation to certain works of social psychol­
ogy. See Lahire (2003a).
8 ‘Probable’, in our societies.
9 Lahire (2004).
10 A change to which he was not very sensitive. Cf. in particular Revel (1996)
and Lahire (1996a).
11 Cf. Lahire (1995a). Those who have situated my work on the side of micro­
sociology and qualitative analysis of cases should at least not have been
surprised by the fact that [ worked, at the same time, as a member of the sci­
entific advisory board of the Observatoire national de la vie etudiante (Paris),
on very large-scale national quantitative studies (those of 1993 and 1997,
each representing around 28,000 respondents). Cf. Lahire (1997a).
12 Lahire (2002).
13 Based on a new treatment of data from the study of the Ministry of Culture
on 'cultural practices of the French in 1997’ (n = 3,000), the analysis of more
than a hundred interviews and a more contextualized study of certain cul­
tural practices and a section of the cultural supply. Cf. Lahire (2004) and also
Lahire (2008).
14 Cf. Lahire (2006).
15 Cf. Lahire (2003b).
16 [t is by not excluding a priori any subject from its field of study that sociol­
ogy is able to advance towards greater scientific autonomy, [t has to show
that there is no empirical limit to what it is capable of studying - i.e. that
no objects are more sociological than others, that the essential thing lies
in the sociological mode of dealing with subjects. By making it possible to
embark on the analysis of the singular folds of the social, sociology on the
individual scale inscribes itself in the long sociological tradition that, from
Emile Durkheim via Maurice Halbwachs to Norbert Elias, aims to connect
the mental economy of individuals ever more finely with the frameworks of
social life.
17 Elias (1991).

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 N O TES TO P P . 4-16

Prologue

1 ‘When [ was a “scientific realist” [ felt deeply troubled by the difficulties with
scientific realism; having given up scientific realism, [ am still tremendously
aware of what is appealing about the scientific conception of philosophy. K
hope that the present book at least partly reveals this “being torn”’ (Putnam,
1988, p. xii).
2 Pierre Naville thus wrote that ‘one of the aims of a true science of behaviour
is the transformation of the personality’ (1942, p. 237).

A ct lr S cene 1r T he Plural A ctor

1 All the same, there is sometimes a transition from constructivist caution

(what is unitary is the scientific construction) to the philosophically realist
idea that this singleness lies in the social reality. The concept of habitus then
has the function of ‘accounting] for the unity of style, which unites the
practices and goods of a single agent or a class of agents’ (Bourdieu, 1998,
p. 8).
2 With an interval of almost twenty years in between, Bourdieu twice indicted
a certain psychology. His first critique was addressed above all at the ‘atomist
approach of social psychology’ (1984, p. 573n) that ‘breaks the unity of
practice’; subsequently he criticized ‘the atomistic view put forward by some
experimental psychology’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 64).
3 Lloyd more generally points out the problems involved in ‘the inference to
belief from either statements or behaviour’, as well as those arising from
‘inference from belief to what are supposed to be underlying thought proc­
esses’ (1990, p. 4).
4 ‘Our ordinary practice is to follow the inclinations of our appetite, to the
left, to the right, uphill and down, as the wind of circumstance carries us. We
think of what we want only at the moment we want it, and we change like
that animal which takes the colour of the place you set it on’ (Montaigne,
1958, p. 240).
5 Only rational change, i.e. based on reason, is generally perceived more posi­
tively than (psycho-rigid) ‘stupid stubbornness’ despite evidence of mistakes
committed: ‘It’s only imbeciles who don’t change their ideas.’ This formula is
ritually recalled in particular by the most opportunist of our political figures,
precisely to escape being trapped in the image of the ‘weathercock’ lacking
other principles of orientation than the direction of the wind.
6 This is already what Bourdieu maintains in declaring that he aims to
rediscover the kernel of truth in the approach characteristic of common-
sense knowledge, namely, the intuition of the systematic nature of life­
styles and of the whole set which they constitute. To do this, one must
return to the practice-unifying and practice-generating principle, i.e., class
habitus, the internalized form of class condition and of the conditioning it
entails. One must therefore construct the objective class, the set of agents
who are placed in homogeneous conditions of existence imposing homoge­
neous conditionings and producing homogeneous systems of dispositions
capable of generating similar practices. (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 101)

225
 N O T E S TO PP. 16-21

7 While not challenging the legitimacy of a very fine differentiation of social

reality, it seems to me that this infinite fragmentation makes it difficult to
structure the objects of study. Thus Jean-Claude Kaufmann writes:
At each point in the cycle, at each stage in the cycle of circulation, the part
of the Self deposited in the dance with the object is different, and markers
determine a chain of particular gestures. The individual leaving a pile of
dirty clothes in his room in the evening is not the individual of the morning
who puts the same pile in the washing-machine. He does not touch things
in the same way, with the same ideas in his head. He is genuinely someone
else, in a different system of thought and action, changed by the different
perception of the same objects. (1997, p. 43)
[ can understand the author’s intention here, but would not follow the same
route.
8 We should none the less emphasize the fact that in our social formations it is
generally only men who bear the same surname throughout their life, most
women still changing theirs on marriage.
9 Everyone knows that not being ‘registered’, remaining outside these official
registrations, being ‘undocumented’, means being relegated to a kind of
symbolic and social non-existence.
10 The essential problem raised by the ‘life story’ told to social scientists is that
of the variation of the totalizing syntheses according to the moment in the
trajectory (professional, family, cultural, etc.) at which these are solicited.
For example, in the case of a conjugal trajectory of the kind 'happy period
of marriage’/ 'tormented period of divorce’/ ‘enthusiastic formation of a new
couple’, the same inquiry could produce three very different biographical
stories, according to the moment at which the story was given: (1) the story
of a happy conjugal history; (2) the story of a long descent into nightmare;
(3) the story of a trajectory punctuated by tests overcome (perhaps necessary
in order to know what true happiness is ...}, which gave fresh impetus to a
new and far more passionate life.
11 Ulf Hannerz writes, quite correctly, that ‘the most extreme type of folk
society, or, for inmates, the total institution without an underlife’, would
represent ‘a society which is only a single stage’ (1980, p. 232). But, even for
representing the least differentiated societies, the model of the 'single stage’
remains too much of a caricature, more appropriate to animal societies whose
members are in constant interaction with one another, without an institu­
tional context that makes it possible to distinguish timeframes of practice and
avoid encroaching on any member at any moment, in any interaction.
12 Durkheim explains very well the historical exceptionality of this realization,
by recalling how ‘the French system of boarding derives from that excessive
passion for uniform regimentation which imbued the university in the fif­
teenth century with an intensity which is matched nowhere else’ (Durkheim,
1977, p. 122).
13 [n a certain fashion, indeed, Bourdieu can be played against himself in order
to advance towards resolving the problem of the singleness and plurality
of the actor, following here, moreover, an advice on general orientation in
reflective work that this author often gave and that his most faithful epigones
are unable to apply to him: 'One does science - and above all sociology -
against one’s training as much as with it’ (1982, p. 9).

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 N O TES TO PP. 21 -7

14 (In short, unable to speak the two cultural languages well enough to keep
them clearly separate, he is condemned to the interferences and contradic­
tions that make up the cultural pidgin1 (Bourdieu and Sayad, 1964, pp.
167-8); ‘like the sub-proletariat, the wrongly occupied peasant refers con­
stantly, when he lives, thinks or judges his condition, to two different and
even opposing logics’ (ibid., pp. 164-5).
The models of behaviour and the economic ethos imported by colonization
coexist within each subject with the models and ethos inherited from ances­
tral tradition; the result is that behaviours, attitudes or opinions appear as
fragments of an unknown language, incomprehensible both to someone
who only knows the cultural language of tradition, and to someone who
refers only to the cultural language of colonization. Sometimes the words
of the traditional language are combined according to modern syntax,
sometimes the reverse, and sometimes it is the syntax itself that appears as
the product of a combination. (Ibid., p. 163)
15 When statistical inquiries ask junior high-school students to classify a list of
activities that include playing, practising sport, watching television, listening
to music, and reading, variations according to the social milieu of the family
are naturally conspicuous, but so too is the fact that reading is never placed
at the top of the hierarchy of preferences. At this level reading is thus clearly
out of favour, even among young people from the most culturally privileged
milieus, and our investigations show very well how the production of a
taste for the reading of texts, like many other aspects of children’s educa­
tion, presupposes a struggle and an asceticism on the part of the parents. A
struggle to make children read when they prefer to play, a struggle to make
them read other things besides comics, a struggle to integrate reading into
ordinary moments of family life. When these students are asked about their
preferences in reading matter, we note that in all social milieus comics come
top (around two-thirds). In the same way, when asked if they have regular
or occasional conversations about literature, or none at all, it is notable that
social homogeneity dominates social heterogeneity (Singly, 1990b).
16 These findings are confirmed in the studies conducted by Roger Establet
(1987, pp. 200-32).
17 Pierre Bourdieu sees the state as the means that differentiated societies give
themselves in order to ‘impose and inculcate in a universal manner. ,. identi­
cal or similar cognitive and evaluative structures’, playing here a similar role
to institutional rituals in weakly differentiated societies: ‘As organizational
structure and regulator of practices, the state exerts an ongoing action for­
mative of durable dispositions through the whole range of constraints and
through the corporeal and mental discipline it uniformly imposes upon all
agents’ (1998, pp. 53-4).
18 This implies that we are never completely in the same group at different
moments in this group’s history - e.g. two children belonging to the same set
of siblings are not born into or grow up in exactly the same family.
19 Halbwachs - who was appointed professor of social psychology at the
College de France just a few months before being deported by the Nazis
- has finally found successors on this fruitful path. [ believe, even if this is
shocking for some French sociologists, that it is in a school of contemporary
American sociology that came out of interactionism that this type of interest

227
 NOTES TO PP. 28-36

has managed to persist through to today. Anselm L. Strauss, for example,

made this plural membership of social worlds and sub-worlds (not always
mutually compatible and sometimes even in conflictual relationship) one of
the fundamental conditions of contemporary social life (1993, pp. 41-2). He
stresses, on the other hand, the fact that few social formations are made up
of actors acting and engaging in a single social universe.
20 As against what James M. Ostrow writes: ‘I am a white, Jewish, suburban-
bred son of a lawyer, a man, a husband, a father, a teacher, a colleague - 1 am
all of these things at once’ (1990, p. 91), we are precisely not all these things
‘at once’, but rather - for some of them at least - often at di fferent times and
places in the day.
21 Leslie McCall notes how, for Bourdieu, ‘the social structure . . . is defined by
occupations and the capitals associated with them’, and that habitus contains
a dimension that is ‘in large part political’ (1992, p. 841). As a consequence
of this, the social practices of women, who are more present in the private
spheres, enters little into this definition - professional and public - of the
sociologist’s social space.
22 The author compares ‘the interpretation of the text of an interview with
a mere layperson’ with that of ‘the work of a celebrated author’, and says
that the second case none the less ‘pose[s] particular problems, notably the
belonging of its author to a fi eld’ (Bourdieu 1996b, p. 392, note 25).
23 One might say that even this is not so bad.
24 From Bergson’s ‘storehouse of auditory images’ or ‘reservoir’, via Schiitz’s
‘reserve of experiences’ to Bourdieu’s metaphor of the body as ‘depot’,
‘storage’ metaphors have longbeen current in sociology. But if we do employ
a metaphor, it is better to take it to its logical conclusion (also as a way of
finding its limitations).
25 George Herbert Mead (1863-1932), a contemporary of Proust (1871-1922),
proposed a theory of the ‘diversity of selves’ that is very similar. According
to him, ‘the organization of the whole self with reference to the community
to which we belong . . . varies, of course, with different individuals’ and ‘a
multiple personality is in a certain sense normal’ (1967, pp. 142-3). More
generally, Proust’s literary work and his presentation of the synchronic and
diachronic plurality of actions certainly owe much to the psychology of his
time, and especially to the work of Theodule Ribot on Les Maladies de ia
personnalite (1885). Ribot maintains here that ‘everyday observation shows
us how much the normal self has lost cohesion and unity’, and that ‘there
is in each one of us tendencies of all kinds, all the possible opposites, and
between them all intermediate shadings, with all combinations between these
tendencies. If moralists, poets, novelists and playwrights have amply shown
us these two selves struggling within the same self, everyday experience is
still more rich: it shows us several, each one excluding the others as soon as
it comes to the fore’ (cited in Raimond and Fraisse, 1989, p. 40). The idea
of the existence of several ‘provinces of the self’ was also proposed by the
psychologist [gnace Meyerson (1888-1983). Cf. Malrieu (1996).
26 Thus Pierre Bourdieu was recently led to maintain the existence of ‘cleft, tor­
mented habitus bearing in the form of tensions and contradictions the mark
of the contradictory conditions of formation of which they are the product’
(2000, p. 64).
27 This raises the question as to the historical conditions of appearance of

228
 N O T ES TO P P . 1 6 -4 )

scientific interest in the duplication of the personality and in what came to

be called ‘schizophrenia1. This is one of the lines of socio-historical investiga­
tion in the research programme that [ have established in the context of the
[nstitut universitaire de France.
28 Pierre Bourdieu speaks of ‘destabilized habitus, torn by contradiction and
internal division, generating suffering’ (2000, p. 160).
29 Rather than speak of ‘mental conflict’ or ‘internal conflict1, it seems more
exact to speak of conflicts of habits (of thought, taste, language, bodily
movement, etc.) or schemes of action.
30 These contradictions or double constraints can even be characteristic of
‘normal1social positions. We can think today of the lower-level supervisory
staff (e.g. foremen or contractors) wedged between the social logics of hier­
archically superior positions and those of hierarchically inferior ones. But
we could also evoke the case of the artist at the eighteenth-century court as
described by Norbert fclias in the case of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1993,
pp. 10-27). Mozart occupied like all artisans a subaltern position in respect
to ‘the court society’. As a musician, he was a servant with slightly more
prestige than others (coachmen, cooks, goldsmiths .. .). As a bourgeois of
the court, he lived in two social worlds: a bourgeois world and a world of
the court nobility within which he had to respect specific norms of behav­
iour. But Mozart, overprotected by his father, never completely managed to
integrate these norms and consider himself really as a subaltern (he wrote to
his father that he had a horror of ‘begging’; ibid., p. 20). His biography sup­
plies a case of internalization of the highest and most noble musical canons
without internalization of the manners that generally accompanied this.
Mozart, a prodigious individual, possessed a musical knowledge that implied
a profound embodiment of noble tastes (for him, as for the nobility, opera
was the pinnacle of musical categories), but he kept the style of behaviour of
a commoner. He found it particularly hard to conceal his frankness, whereas
court behaviour demanded more euphemistic behaviour (not to shock, to be
diplomatic, etc.). He adopted only the most outward norms of the court (i.e.
dress), not its conduct.
31 Less is known about social ascent by the economic path, in so far as these
cases of upward social mobility leave little in the way of written testimony,
and so attract correspondingly little attention.
32 Naville even mentions the existence of ‘attempts at double, triple (and
sometimes multiple) predominance of systems of habits’ (1942, p. 222),
unfortunately without giving examples of these.
33 Annie fcrnaux, born 1940, is a French writer whose literary work is auto­
biographical, focusing notably on the process of moving into adulthood and
away from her social origins.
34 Even after establishing themselves in their new social position, these trans-
fuges are not always free of their past. Their feeling of being ‘uprooted’ and
their sense of ‘unease’ can sometimes even lead to them becoming ‘psychotic1
(Hoggart, 1998, p. 225); having ‘left his class of origin, at least in spirit’, the
‘odd man out1remains none the less ‘ill at ease with the middle classes’ (ibid.,
p. 233).
35 For anyone ready to look at them and decipher them, contradictions, omis­
sions, silences and lapses are present in any in-depth interview of any length,
[t is the practice of homogenizing interpretation, rather than the discourses

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 N O T E S TO P P . 42 - 6

themselves, that wipes out any awkward trace of their presence, or one judged
insignificant in the selected theoretical framework. Besides, while remaining
in the register of discourse, the practice of interweaving interviews, such as
those [conducted with teachers,parents and children in Tableauxde families
(Lahire, 1995a), makes it possible patiently to reconstruct heterogeneous
social contexts.

A ct lr S cene 2r T he W ellsprings of A ction

1 J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, however, point out that, with the idea of the
'deferred revision’ of the past (reinscription of memory traces) bound up with
a new event or new situations, Freud ruled out ‘the summary interpretation
which reduces the psycho analytic view of the subject’s history to a linear
determinism envisaging nothing but the action of the past upon the present’
(2006, p. 111-12).
2 In Cadres et mecanismes de la socialisation dans la France d’aujourd’hui
(1977, pp. 81-2), Jean-Claude Passeron very clearly expressed, in a para­
graph entitled 'First socialization: towards a sociology of primary experi­
ences’, the implicit assumptions shared by many French sociologists of the
time, and a number of them still today: The object that theoretical considera­
tion raises most clearly for empirical research is undoubtedly the socializa­
tion exercised in the first three years of childhood, since both psychoanalysis
and the ethnological and sociological theories of constitution of the personal­
ity agree, in different terms, in conferring a prototypical importance to such
early experiences.’ The same is expressed more recently by a North American
author, Peter E. S. Freund: The quality, degree, and intensity of social
construction and bio-social interaction depend on the time and timing. We
are more open when we are very young than as adults. Socialization begins
when the human organism is unfinished . . . Primary socialization has a deep
impact on the organism’ (1988, p. 849).
3 If Bourdieu recently made clear that this was ‘a particular but particularly
frequent case’ (2000, p. 145), this rhetorical concession changes nothing in
the fact that texts continue to be cited in which this author makes this the
general model of all practices. We have here a case that infringes both the
principle of charity and the principle of non contradiction.
4 Leslie McCall describes the case of an Islamic woman, Shabano, who had
been married for forty years, with several children, before being thrown
out of her house following a divorce. This rupture abruptly questioned
the ordinary routines of everyday life and the values that these bore, and
led Shabano to ‘a sharp consciousness’ of the situation of women in a
patriarchal culture. After emerging from such situations of domination,
these women may say some years later: 'That’s not me’. Leslie McCall
concludes by saying: 'The ontological complicity between habitus and field
breaks down: fit no longer explains the relationship between positions and
dispositions’ (1992, p. 850).
5 It is not by chance that these big moments are when personal diaries are most
frequently kept: divorce, retirement, adolescence, etc. (Fabre, 1993, p. 82).
6 See Christine L. Williams’s study on women in the US Marines and men
practising nursing (1989).

230
 N O T E S T O PP« 46-55

7 Novels by Albert Memmi (1984) and Degracia (1968) are excellent illustra­
tions of these gaps: ‘When [ am at your place, with Christian friends, [ suf­
focate, [ feel ill at ease, as [’m always asked questions which [’m forced to
reply to in with lies. When t find myself back in a Jewish milieu, ( also feel
awkward, as t realize that t no longer belong completely to this community.
Then l tell myself: you don’t have a place anywhere. And l get sad’ (Degracia,
1968, p. 96).
8 Which leads Rogers Brubaker to remark on the basis of the findings pre­
sented in Distinction that the relationships between the indicators Bourdieu
selects to ‘measure’ conditions of existence and those that he uses to grasp
dispositions are ‘discouragingly weak’ (1985, p. 763).
9 This is what l myself did with respect to the world of students, by taking the
relative weight, according to domains and dimensions of educational prac­
tice, of the school and university situation and the ‘outside’ social situation
(Lahire, 1997a).
10 Bourdieu (in Labov, 1983, p. 71) refers to the‘relative weight’ of educational
level or social origin according to the cultural domain in question (painting
and cinema, for example). We could say that it is not the same schemes or
cultural habits that are activated in every case. The domain of cinema, or
better still that of sports activities, may activate cultural tastes constructed
in the social universe of origin, whereas the literary domain may trigger
schemes that are educationally acquired.
11 [t is important to make clear how rare it is - [ shall give an example of this
further on with the case of university students - for actors to make a ‘choice’
to activate or not habits or experiential schemes, [n the great majority of
cases, it is the situation that ‘decides’ on these inhibitions or triggers.
12 Bergson also uses formulas that seem in total contradiction with the ele­
ments [ am stressing here. He writes, for example, that ‘our character,
always present in all our decisions, is indeed the actual synthesis of all our
past states’, or again that a person ‘collects’ and ‘organizes the totality of its
experience in what we call its character’ (1912, pp. 188, 225).
13 Rather than ‘cause’ and ‘effect’, certain philosophers prefer to speak of
‘reciprocal disposition partners': ‘when salt dissolves in water, the salt and
the water are reciprocal partners’ (Crane, 1996, p. 9).
14 As Paul Ladriere writes: ‘Thus it is not that the stone, which naturally falls,
might have acquired the habit of rising, even if one tried to accustom it to
this thousands of times by throwing it up in the air. . . . For the virtues, on
the other hand, their possession presupposes a previous exercise, as is also
the case for other arts, [n actual fact, we learn them by doing the things that
have to be learned to do them’ (1990, p. 24).
15 [t goes without saying that scientific debate about any given study lea ves open
the question whether the series of facts observed really can be interpreted as
manifestations of a single underlying disposition.
16 Dispositions, Pierre Bourdieu writes, ‘are revealed and fulfilled only in appro­
priate circumstances and in the relationship with a situation.They may there­
fore always remain in a virtual state, like a soldier’s courage in the absence of
war’ (2000, p. 149).
17 ‘The difficulty is that understanding is not just a capacity but also an act, and
that we do not manage to give ourselves a satisfactory image of the relation­
ship that exists between the act of understanding and the ability that makes

231
 N O T E S TO PP. 55-8

it possible; to understand a sentence is not to understand the language at the

moment that one understands this sentence’ (Bouveresse, 1987, p. 319).
18 This is how it is possible to speak of ascetic and hedonistic dispositions in
order to characterize the multiple usages or non-usages of the practices of
writing within the household space. The notion of disposition, in a case such
as this, makes it possible, in a context of study that is clearly circumscribed,
to avoid dividing the analysis practice by practice (list of tasks, list of things
to do, jotter, diary, calendar ...). It is impossible all the same to general­
ize such dispositions to all the (non-studied) dimensions of existence of the
actors on which this study bears (Lahire, 1993b, 1995b).
19 Richard Hoggart explains, for example, how members of the working classes
can infringe a certain number o f‘rules’ or neglect certain fundamental values
of their group when they are in contact with other social groups located on
the other side of the divide (us/them). On the one side, ‘never do the dirty on
your mates’, and, on the other, ‘screw the “others” , bosses or foremen’. ‘You
will not fiddle from your mate, but you will flog anything you safely can from
the “firm” or the Services. You will not twist a neighbour, but a middle-class
customer is fair game’ (Hoggart, 1998, p. 212).
20 Adolescence, a critical period (and a period of criticism) par excellencey
constitutes a particularly interesting moment for the sociologist studying the
phenomena of embodiment of habits. It is in effect a time in the life cycle
during which habits are formed both despite and thanks to (or at least by
way of) the conscious resistance that is actively opposed to them. Refusal
to tidy the bedroom, to listen to parents’ advice on all manner of subjects,
‘adolescents’ resistant to different family constraints internalize these all the
same in these moments of crisis in habits and demands, that are reactivated as
if by magic in post-adolescent periods. Adolescents are against their parents
in both senses of the term: ‘close to’ and ‘opposed to’.
21 One woman studied by Anne Muxel, for example (forty-four years old, a
teacher), explained how, despite her critical feminist discourse and her active
resistance until the age of twenty (T did absolutely nothing at home, I didn’t
even boil an egg until I was twenty’), rediscovered aptitudes of her mother (‘a
very good cook’) without any particular effort (‘from having seen her do it, it
came by itself’) with her son (1996, p. 87). In the same way, J.-C. Kaufmann
describes the situation of a male respondent living in a couple who, following
a course in Paris that led him to live by himself for several days each week,
found that ‘the (bad) old bachelor habits, which he thought were behind
him, re-emerged and his old untidiness came back with astonishing ease and
familiarity’ (1998, pp. 101-2).
22 J.-C Kaufmann describes the missing act of a woman who, although devoted
to housekeeping and domestic organization, forgets each morning to iron her
husband’s shirt - like an act of resistance.
23 Calm/Agitated; Attentive/Distracted; Gentle/Aggressive; Agreeable/
Disagreeable; Polite/lmpolite; Active/Passive; Regular work effort/lrregular
work effort; Hard-working/Lazy; Babyish/Mature; Assured/Fearful;
Reserved/Talkative; Participating/Not participating; Relaxed/Anxious; Keen
to work/Not keen to work; Influenced by schoolfriends/Not influenced . ..;
Emotional/Not particularly . ., ; Autonomous in work/Not autonomous
. . .; Disciplined/Undisciplined; Stable/Unstable; Serious/Unserious; Applied/
Not very applied; Careful/Not very careful; Organized/Disorganized; Fast/

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 N O TES TO PP. 60-65

Slow; Self-con fident/Lacking self-confidence; Good memory/Bad memory;

Logical mind/Lack of logic; Often asks for explanations/Doesn’t ask much
. .. ; Gifted/Not gifted; Quick on the uptake/Hard-going on the uptake;
‘Brilliant’/'Pedestrian’; Rigorous/Not very rigorous; Well mannered/Not
well mannered; Curious/lncurious; Reflective/Unreflective; Organized/
Unorganized; ‘Imaginative’/'Stubborn’,
24 We can note in passing that this twofold division of our everyday reason­
ings is common to our own social formations, in the differences they make
between, on the one hand, gifts and their exchange in the family or between
friends and, on the other hand, commodity exchanges. More generally,
Francois de Singly sees this kind of tension between the spirit of rivalry and
competition, the pursuit of one’s own interest and the demand of ‘disinter­
estedness’, ‘humanity’, ‘love’ or ‘friendship’, as a fundamental - and rarely
highlighted - characteristic of individualism in our societies. This double
constraint sometimes finds its resolution in a dissociation of the types of
relationship to others between ‘private life’ and ‘public life’ (Singly, 1990a).
25 Thus Ulf Hannerz writes: ‘There maybe occasions which one wo uld prefer to
keep well insulated from another because of the contradictory demands they
make on the self, but which impinge on each other so that at least certain of
its accoutrements must be made to match them all. At worst, the experience
maybe like that of a chameleon on a multicolor patchwork’ (1980, p. 237),
Analysing the novels of Albert Cohen, Clara Levy shows very well the sepa­
ration that the character Solal has to live so as not to experience a feeling of
shame towards some people close to him, immediately doubled by a shame
at being ashamed: ‘As soon as he has understood that the two facets of his
personality must never come publicly into contact, Solal clearly separates his
life into two parts - one of which is lived in the Western way and the other
in the Eastern, without the two ever colliding’ (1998, pp. 371-2),
26 ‘Ideas and experiences associated with the speaker’s Hispanic p ast. . . trigger
a communication in Spanish’ (Gumperz, 1989, p. 89).
27 The way in which Paul Connerton refers to the work of David Efron is
revealing with regard to the unifying conception of culture, completely
ignoring this key point of his thesis (1989, pp. 79-82).
28 The very nature of ‘individual’ work within the different establishments
varies: the objectives of individual work are made more or less explicit by the
different establishments of higher education; the different acts of work are
more or less prescribed; the different injunctions for the submission of indi­
vidual work more or less frequent. The distant objective of the final disserta­
tion in the faculties of letters and humanities, which leaves the students ‘free’
to determine the most adequate means of arriving at this, is thus quite con­
trary to the denser micro-injunctions that constitute ‘homework’, exercises
or revisions that are prescribed almost daily, especially within the prepara­
tory classes. Whereas university students are led to organize their individual
work themselves, with a view to reaching objectives that are more or less
clearly laid down by their teachers, pupils in higher-education establishments
with a strong pedagogic formation are literally led by the institution, and
their ‘individual’ work is thus very largely a directed work,
29 Personal lodgings and the parental home are today the main workplaces of
students, far ahead of the library or the university premises.
30 Oscillations of this kind are also to be observed in domestic practices. Cf, a

233
 N O T ES TO PP. 67-70

case of household oscillation between ‘doing the essentials’ and ‘everything

must be just so’ in Kaufmann (1997, p. 154),

A ct lf S cene 3, A nalogy and T ransfer

1 Anne Muxel (1996) offers a phenomenological approach to these different

ways of triggering memory that is very suggestive,
2 Despite its evident limitations, the metaphor of jurisprudence makes it
possible to draw on a strong historic opposition that distinguishes (and
sometimes opposes) Anglo-Saxon jurisprudential law from that of continen­
tal Europe, which arose from Roman law and is based on a code deemed
applicable to all possible circumstances. Legal work in the first case consists
in comparing each new situation with similar situations judged previously
(the logic of analogy and ‘precedent’), [n the second case it presupposes the
construction of general rules (laws), impersonal and universal, on the basis
of which various decisions can be deduced for various future cases. On the
one hand we have a movement from one particular case to another, on the
other a movement leading from the general rule to the case that depends on
it (Weber, 1978). By using the metaphor of jurisprudence here, [ thus wish
to emphasize the extreme formalism of those theories of action that invoke,
with no sense of distinction, the ‘norm’ or the ‘rule’. By being too widely
used, these end up on the one hand giving the impression that actors, in their
most everyday actions, are engaged in a fastidious work of guidance or orien­
tation of their behaviour as a function of norms or rules, while on the other
hand no longer making visible, when this would be particularly useful, the
specific social effects on practice of the effective presence of express (written)
rules or norms to which reference can be made, and which can be contested.
Cf. on the ‘educational rule’, Lahire (1994a).
3 ‘We thus note that Marie-Line’s conflicts with her husband reactivate con­
flicts with her father. The question for her is always to maintain the right
to be her own person, against a retaliatory threat from the man’ (Schwartz,
1990, p. 237).
4 ‘In essential aspects of her relationship to her husband, the woman thus occu­
pies a position of mother, homologous to that which she fulfils in relation to
her children’ (ibid,, p. 177).
5 James M. Ostrow gives on this subject the very fine example of an extract
from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse in which we see a theme from
Cam’s childhood resurface several years later, without Cam having any need
to ‘recall’ his mother, the environment he finds himself in being ‘saturated
with his mother’s presence’ (1990, pp. 47-8),
6 Anne Longuet Marx recalls how ‘Proust always defined metaphor and invol­
untary memory in the same way, as the “miracle of analogy” , the encounter
and superposition of two objects or two sensations’ (1986, p. 181).
7 It is not by chance, moreover, that Piaget could write, in certain formulas
that are not very happy but are symptomatic of the proximity of the two
orders of phenomena (memory and habit): ‘The child no longer merely tries
to repeat or prolong an effect which he has discovered or observed by chance
. . . he adapts the familiar schema to the particulars of (the present] situation’
(1952, pp, 212-13).

234
 N OTES T O PP. 70-76

8 We should note that these quotations from Bergson do not imply a general
acceptance of his theses. On questions such as the dualism between memory
and habit, ‘motor mechanisms’ and ‘memory-images’, the idea of a 'true
memory’ or ‘pure remembrances’ or the idealism of certain propositions,
Bergson’s reflections do not all seem pertinent, [t must be recognized,
however, that this author, unloved by sociologists and little read for his­
torical and institutional reasons that can readily be imagined, correctly
accounted in some of his formulas for the operation of habit-memory, or
what he also calls ‘memory of the body’ ('the ensemble of sensory-motor
systems that habit has organized’).
9 I should note in passing that, if 'habitus as incorporated acquisition’ is the
‘presence of the past - or to the past - and not memory of the past’ (i.e. in
Bergsonian terms, habit-memory and not remembrance-memory), then the
theory of habitus is powerless to conceive 'remembrances’ (or does it see the
latter as outside the field of sociological investigation?), which is not without
its problems (see Bourdieu, 2000, p. 210).
10 See, in Kaufmann (1997,pp, 133-47), chapter 10 devoted to habit,
11 The model ‘habit or routine’/'crisis situation’/'reflection or consciousness’
is already present in Durkheim’s work, [t was variously examined by James
Dewey, Anselm L. Strauss and Pierre Bourdieu.
12 Paul Connerton, for example, criticizes the conception of habits as compe­
tences or skills 'waiting to be called into action on the appropriate occasion’.
He gives the example of ‘bad habits’, to emphasize the fact that habits are
tendencies or strong impulses to act in a certain way, even when the actor
does not consciously desire this. This tends none the less towards a model
of self-propulsion, in which embodied habit no longer needs any support,
encouragement or external trigger (1989, p. 93).
13 We are then dealing with what certain psychologists call ‘modularization’:
‘Modularization refers to all processes by which a motor action that consti­
tutes a sequence acquires a relative constancy of duration, quantity of energy
required, and form, and ends up being accomplished without any need to be
interrupted in order for information to be processed’ (Bruner, 1991, p. 146).
14 'When, for example, the traffic light turns red as I approach in my automo­
bile, [ do not in general deliberate and then choose to release the accelera­
tor and apply the brakes. Indeed, most of the actions we perform are done
without deliberation or choice. In most cases habits, desires and impulses
prevail - we act as we do as a matter of course, straight off, without reflection
or pondering of any kind’ (Melden, 1968, p. 28).
15 Olivier Schwartz describes the case of a woman who embarks on a critical
discussion of her condition and her husband only when she is alone with the
researcher (1990, p. 237),
16 We need only think of the ‘self-evident’ choice (but one that no linguist,
psycholinguist or psychologist had the idea of making before him), made
by William Labov (1972a, 1972b), of asking a black researcher (who had
himself come from the ghetto) to record ‘natural’ speech in black American
vernacular in the black ghettos of New York. When [ myself had to conduct
interviews with women teachers (Lahire, 1993a) or with the specialized staff
of primary schools (Lahire, 1993b), a large part of these interviews owed
their richness - and ( believe their quality - to a kind of relationship that
was sometimes not spoken, sometimes explicitly mentioned (‘I have a son or

235
 N O T ES T O PP. 77-83

daughter of your age’; ‘You remind me of my son’) of the mother-child kind.

This transfer of the mother-son relationship into the context of the socio­
logical interview was sometimes accompanied by other complicities based on
common family or cultural experiences.
17 ‘According to this usage, habit is the durable and generalized disposition
that suffuses a person’s action throughout an entire domain of life or, in the
extreme instance, throughout all of life - in which case the term comes to
mean the whole manner, turn, cast or mold of the personality’ (Camic, 1986,
p. 1046).
18 The same privileged-class habitus can generate radically opposed political or
aesthetic opinions’ (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977, p. 35).
19 The question still remains unanswered whether it is the researcher who ‘sees’
a combination scheme in both situations, or whether in actual fact, from the
standpoint of the cognitive functioning of the child, there is indeed a transfer
of the same scheme from situations of material manipulation to more logical
and abstract situations.
20 As some findings in cognitive psychology suggest, ‘the development of
rationality cannot be reduced to the improving substitution of new struc­
tures, whether symbolic or sub-symbolic. . . but development also frequently
means inhibiting a competing structure’ (Houde, 1995, p. 3).
21 The heroes of various novels by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, for example (1990,
1991,2008).
22 What are the various manifestations of educational ‘difficulty’ in children
from working-class milieus, if not the expression of a feeling of foreignness
that they experience in particular social forms and their resistance - not
necessarily conscious - towards these? Those unable to engage in the edu­
cational forms of apprenticeship, who ‘dis-invest’ educational practices,
pragmatically reappropriate into their own dialogue the most formal educa­
tional exercises, and - out of the necessity of adaptation - apply ‘imitations’
and ‘automatisms’, undergo the curious experience common to everyone
compelled to enter into a logic that they have no means of understand­
ing systematically, being forced to live in forms in relation to which they
remain foreign. The ‘automatisms’ or ‘imitations’ that can give the illusion
of ‘success’ enable these pupils to supply ‘good’ results even when they lack
mastery of the principles of educational production of these results. But at
the least trap set by a new exercise, the ‘automatism’ appears in broad day­
light and ceases to cast its illusion, thus showing the weak degree of mastery
of the educational situation or, more precisely, the extremely low transfer-
ability of the knowledge, techniques, modes of reasoning, skills, etc., that are
acquired there. The behaviours at school that [ referred to as ‘educational
dis investment’, ‘oral imitation’ and ‘automatisms’ are in any case revealing
indicators of the effort of adaptation to an educational world perceived as
strange and foreign.
23 ‘It surely should not require such elaborate efforts to demonstrate transfer
effects if in fact it is the major mechanism for knowledge deployment in
cognitive theory and Western socialization practices. But the news in this
ethnographic excursion is how little transfer there is, rather than how much’
(Lave, 1988, p. 34).
24 In the same fashion, faced with evidence of the existence of specific intel­
lectual capacities in practices as different as writing a letter or keeping an

236
 NOTES TO PP. 83-91

account book, the British anthropologist Jack Goody has suggested 'the
generalization of skills exhibited by an individual in one realm of activity to
other spheres in open to doubt’ (1987, p. 206).
25 There are no syllabic lists, or tables of graphic signs, that would provide
material for a specific apprenticeship in reading and writing.
26 As I have been able to show by offering an analysis of it in Lahire (1993a, pp.
36-40).
27 But, whatever their general character, schemes always remain marked by
and attached to the singular circumstances of their constitution (content of
knowledge, type of activity, domain of existence, etc.). These ‘summaries of
experience’ always preserve in them a trace of the nature of the experience
on the basis of which they were established. It is this fact that explains how
it is possible to discover in one and the same individual disparate tastes or
cultural dispositions according to the cultural domain in question: the same
actor who applies an aesthetic disposition in relation to literary reading (for
reasons of educational formation) may apply a less educated ethico-practical
disposition when watching television or going to the cinema.
28 'When we asked an informant to tell us the names of the various Vai clans
ordinarily represented at funerals in his town we . . . obtained an impres­
sively long list. . . [This] stands in sharp contrast to the many experimentally
contrived situations in which populations such as the Vai fail to demonstrate
conceptually ordered recall’ (Goody, 1987, p. 207).
29 'Our handwriting is recognizable whether we trace letters on paper with a
pencil held by three fingers or on the blackboard with chalk held at arm’s
length - for our handwriting is more than simply a power that our body
has of circumscribing a certain absolute space, limited once and for all by
certain conditions and the use of certain muscles rather than others, (t is a
general capacity to formulate a constant type (of gesture?), handling all the
transpositions that may be necessary’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1973, p. 76).

A ct lr Scene 4 r L iterary Experience

1 This type of reading is displayed in Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader

(1998). The illiterate Hannah has texts read aloud to her by her young
lover Michael, and reacts to the characters’ adventures as if they were real
people: 'She was an attentive listener. Her laugh, her sniffs of contempt,
and her angry or enthusiastic remarks left no doubt that she was follow­
ing the action intently, and she found [the two heroines) to be silly little
girls. Her impatience when she sometimes asked me to go on reading
seemed to come from the hope that all this imbecility would eventually play
itself out. “Unbelievable!” ’ (ibid., p. 41). And, in connection with reading
Eichendorff’s Good for Nothing, 'she held it against him he’s a good-for-
nothing who doesn’t achieve anything, can't do anything, and doesn’t want
to besides’ (ibid., p. 58).
2 We could cite here Gustave Flaubert, James Joyce, Alain Robbe-Grillet or
Claude Simon, considering them - wrongly - as in a way theorists or ideolo­
gists of the cultivated relationship to literature. For example, Flaubert well
expressed this pure aesthetic conception in a letter to Louise Coler of 16
January 1852:

237
 NOTES TO PP. 92-6

What strikes me as beautiful, what [ would like to do, is a book about

nothing, a book with no external attachment, which would maintain itself
by the internal strength of its style, like the earth floats without being
held.. . . This is why there are neither good nor bad subjects, and one
could even establish it as an axiom, situating oneself at the standpoint of
pure Art, that there is nothing of the kind, style being in and of itself an
absolute manner of seeing things. (1980, p. 31)
3 ‘As if’, since in the end what is sought is as much the ‘real’ or the ‘true to life’
(which leads to reading romanticized biographies, documentaries, history
books, stories hinging on a real drama of some kind) as the effect of reality
or authenticity (which leads to reading novels knowing that the story did not
really take place, but written in such a way that ‘you believe it’). Readers can
thus ‘act as if’ they were reading real, true, authentic stories, while still not
being completely duped by their fictitious character.
4 Erich Schon (1993) mentions the role of reading in the ego-formation of
children and adolescents. Among the young people he interviewed, girls
‘privilege reading that can help them “assume” analogous situations in their
everyday life’ (ibid., p. 32).
5 See above, ‘The many occasions for maladjustment and crisis’, p. 45-7.
6 My research shows, moreover, that the same circumstances of rupture, dis­
connection and crisis are propitious to the keeping of personal diaries for
actors who have already acquired a certain familiarity with writing. The
diary is then a catalogue of situations experienced, which is written down,
re-read and reworked, or of fictitious situations in preparation for real
actions, [t is a place for reflection on oneself, one’s past and one’s future.
7 An exception to this is the work of Jacques Leenhardt and Pierre Josza
(1982), as well as the arguments of Frangois de Singly (1993b). Besides the
innovative work of historians of reading (Chartier, 1993, 1994), however,
there is also the sociological research into cultural reception. Cf. in particular
Passeron and Pedler (1991). For my part, I place these reflections on literary
experience in the more general context of a sociology of the social uses of
writing (produced or received).
8 See, for example, Donnatand Cogneau (1990).
9 See, on ways of defining reading in education, Chartier and Hebrard (1989),
and in particular ‘Troisieme partie: Discours d’ecole’,pp. 169-394.
10 At a lecture - ‘The World of the Reader and the World of the Text: Readings
and Readers in the Renaissance’ - given at the Villa Gillet in Lyon in January
1993, Roger Chartier mentioned the importance of age and family situation
in understanding the interest for certain literary genres in Spain at that time.
Crossing social milieus that were classically divided, novels of chivalry on
the one hand and devotional literature on the other circulated among readers
who were either young and single, or else elderly and married or widowed.
11 A model of writing based on ‘trying out’ can be found in Montaigne’s Essays.
The exempla that the author cites are ones that have an echo in his own
experience, as Fausta Garavini emphasized:
But how to discover oneself if not by identifying with the agent or subject
of a moral act - i.e. with the character of a story? Montaigne’s ‘examples’
are not responses to the need to compose a mosaic of the varieties and
contradictions of human nature in general, which is the customary intent

238
 NOTES TO PP. 97-103

of compilers. He does not choose them at random: '[ prefer to note the
examples that affect me,’ These anecdotes signify that the subject is directly
concerned by the attitudes he observes in people like himself, and that he
records by way of evidence dispositions that he recognizes in himself or,
on the contrary, tendencies that are foreign to him, [f he reflects in this way
on the diversity and incoherence of our nature, this is in a certain sense sec­
ondary. The main point is the question that surfaces from each example:
What would I, Michel de Montaigne, do in similar circumstances? A ques­
tion that ultimately sums up the whole undertaking of the Essays: 'trying
out’ also means putting oneself in someone else’s skin ('[n my imagination
[ completely insinuate myself into their place'), trying to experience, by
slipping into another person, all the experiences that one cannot experi­
ence in everyday life, expanding one's real life by the boundless directions
of possible lives. The person who has renounced being always the same
individual finds in the protagonists of the exempla the means of being
many people. (Garavini, 1995-6, p, 723)
12 The dreams of certain subjects seem to be anticipations or rehearsals of
experiences that they will have to confront in the future, such as the death
of a loved one. When one of the subjects was asked if he dreamt of his
brother, who suffered from a cancer of the spinal column that was rapidly
progressing, he replied: '( don't know: only dreams of the sleeping kind
(sir). I see my thoughts going in this direction. Sometimes [ wonder, after
his latest bout of surgery, how it would be if he wasn’t there any more,
if he died. This haunted me for a while, [t disturbed me: what would [
do? How would all this affect my life, my family? It was quite a morbid
thought. After thinking about it I feel calm when Tthink of the possibility
that something might happen. But if it did, [ think I'd be better able to con­
front it than [ was before. It wouldn't be the same shock as it would have
been earlier,’ (Wunder, 1993, p. 121 )
13 The characters in dreams are thus very often members of the dreamer’s
family: 'Hall makes the hypothesis that we dream of members of our family
because it is they whom we are emotionally involved with and towards
whom we have mixed feelings of affection, antagonism and unresolved ten­
sions (Hall, 1966, p, 33)’ (Wunder, 1993, pp. 118-19).
14 A similar case of parapraxis is found in context in my Portrait de configura­
tion no* 20, titled 'Un surinvestissement scolaire paradoxale’ (Lahire, 1995a,
pp. 217-25).
15 Erving Goff man puts it as follows: 'A back region or backstage may be
defined as a place, relative to a given performance, where the impression
fostered by the performance is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course’
(1956, p. 69),
16 'It was not that t denied daydreams could be idle, playful or merely expres­
sive, but [ was focusing on their relation to action’ (Strauss, 1993, p. 6 ).

A ct II, S cene l r School, A ct /on and L anguage

1 Writing was considered for a very long time as 'derived' from 'oral language’
and 'external' to it, so that its invention left intact an 'oral language' that

239
 NOTES TO PP. 104-9

pre-existed it. For Rousseau, Condillac, Warburton, Locke, Leibniz and

Hegel, as well as Saussure, 'writing’ was conceived from an instrumentalist
perspective as a 'representation’ of 'language’. 'Representation’, 'vehicle’,
'communication technique’, 'duplicate’, 'means of expression’ are all images
and metaphors that completely demolish any possibility of considering
writing as tracing a kind of homogeneous and continuous space of meaning.
But the privilege conferred on the 'voice’ in relation to 'writing’ in much sci­
entific discourse is not to be taken literally. For example, contrary to his pro­
claimed intentions, Saussure, like so many others before him, never stopped
referring unconsciously to writing, written language, practices of writing and
the relationship to language formed in these practices.
2 'The men who invented and perfected writing were great linguists, and it is
they who created linguistics’ (Meillet, 1912-13, p. cxiv).
3 As [ remarked above, we actually have a tendency to reverse the historical
course of events by thinking that writing is simply a duplicate of speech,
whereas it is because we are accustomed to perceiving speech through the
categories that alphabetic writing and grammar have enabled us to construct
(e.g. letters, syllables, words, sentences ,,.) that we are able to believe that
speech and writing resemble one another like two drops of water.
4 To illustrate, for example, the cases of misunderstandings that revolve
around the opposition between passive, grammatical, paradigmatic compre­
hension, on the one hand, and active, dialogical, pragmatic comprehension,
on the other, [ presented the situation that Wittgenstein describes on the basis
of a 'a boy ., , who had to say whether the verbs in certain sentences were
in the active or passive voice, and who racked his brains over the question
whether the verb “to sleep” meant something active or passive’ (1972, p, 22),
The pupils who committed misunderstandings of this kind reappropriated
the grammatical categories and questions (which presuppose a perspective on
language as such, as a world of its own) on the basis of a pragmatic relation­
ship to language (language as indissociable from a possible situation, real or
imaginary) (Lahire, 1993a, pp. 181-2).
5 One could also say Platonic, referring to E, A. Havelock’s magnificent
Preface to Plato (1963).
6 We know that the first scribes made very formal exercises for themselves,
copying and recopying the names of the months, lists of names in an arbitrar­
ily chosen order, model sentences ('dogs bark’, 'cats miaow’), etc. (Goody,
1987, p. 169).
7 'Associative relations, on the contrary, hold in absentia. They hold between
terms constituting a mnemonic group’ (Saussure, 1960, p. 1 2 2 ).
8 'Syntagmatic relations hold in praesentia. They hold between two or more
terms co-present in a sequence’; 'In its place in a syntagma, any unit acquires
its value simply in opposition to what precedes, or to what follows, or to
both’ (ibid., pp. 121 - 2 ).
9 A similar criticism is made by David Sudnow:
Almost without exception, the contemporary analysis of oral discourse
objectifies the discourse, completely depriving it of its characteristics of
a motivated movement that make up its essential experiential qualities.
Someone speaks and their discourse is transformed into text by language
itself. Instead of the fluxes and refluxes that circulate from one place to

240
 NOTES TO PP. 110-14

another (a continuous and developing performance that consists in intel­

ligent movements going this way and that and organized on the temporal
plane), we are immediately dealing with a 'text’, a silent and immobile
collection of objects visible on the page. We are confronted - in transfor­
mational analysis, in sociolinguistic analysis, in the analysis of everyday
discourse - with a range of visible objects. These are examined at leisure,
inspected from all points of view, and as is generally the case when modern
thought attacks visible objects, their different parts are named - here a
pronoun, there a noun, a morpheme, and so on. These classifications and
‘parts of discourse’ (a mistaken designation par excellence) are subse­
quently subjected to an exhaustive taxonomic treatment by using the same
system of movements that we are supposed to analyse. Thus these visible
objects become the reality of the discourse.. . . But to speak is to move.
(1978, p. 8 6 )
Yet Sudnow still does not see how school proceeds exactly in the same
fashion as the linguistics he criticizes.
10 This holds also for the Bourdieu’s Bakhtinian critical remarks on the gram­
marian way of dealing with language (1990, p. 32).
11 We need only read the statistical tables given in Bourdieu’s Distinction to
convince ourselves of the fact that it is the (longer or shorter) experience of
schooling that is determinant in this matter, and not general social position in
social space (upper, middle or working class) or amount of economic capital
(1984, pp. 36-8).
12 I used this distinction in Les Manieres d’etudier (Lahire, 1997a, pp. 137-8,
159).
13 The Hoggart family, consisting of mother and three children, received
support from the Committee of Guardians and public assistance, and lived in
very precarious material conditions.
14 Scientific analysis here is no different from a kind of critique addressed to
the school by certain educationalists: that this is ‘inconsequential’, ‘futile’,
‘artificial’, ‘inauthentic’, and opposed to ‘life’ - which life? - as the place of
the ‘reap, ‘useful’, ‘functional’, ‘natural’, ‘authentic’, etc .
15 The same economism is to be found in Bourdieu’s books on Algeria,
which explain rational dispositions in terms of the material conditions of
existence. Thus, ‘rational calculation, initially conducted in an imaginary
and abstract mode, is gradually embodied in behaviour, insofar as the
improvement of material conditions permits this’ (Bourdieu, Darbel, Rivet
and Seibel, 1995, p. 342). These authors refer to the ‘objective heritage of
a different civilization, techniques of remuneration or commercialization,
methods of accounting, calculation, organization, the system imported by
colonization’, which ‘appears as an infinitely complex game which workers
find themselves plunged into’ (ibid., 313), but this aspect of things seemed
secondary in the given scientific context. Today I would see it as central,
if we are to grasp the precise modalities by which dispositions or schemes
are established. And it was not accidental that the Algerian small peasants,
artisans and market traders were incapable of rational conduct, given that
the majority at that time were illiterate and in unstable and precarious
economic conditions.

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 NOTES TO PP. 116-24

A ct II, S cene 2, T he Everyday Practices of W riting im A ction

1 My discussion here is based on the results of a number of studies (in total,

around 100 interviews and 500 questionnaires) devoted to practices of
domestic writing in different social milieus. These were partly conducted
with the efficient and wise help of Luc Bourgade (1993) and Mathias Millet
(1993),
2 Itineraries based on reading maps. But the commonplace of using road maps
has ended up making us forget the revolution in relationship to space that
this miniaturized representation of space presupposes. The map presents in
synoptic fashion, in the form of a single image visible at a glance, a spatial
and geographical reality that can generally be crossed only in a discontinuous
fashion, in the succession of different moments of a real movement in space.
This fantastic abstraction gives ‘a visible simulacrum of what in reality has
always escaped the human gaze’ (Jacob, 1988, p, 275),
3 Cf. above, The many occasions for maladjustment and crisis’, pp. 45-7.
4 Among these conditions, we should certainly mention the familiarity with
writing that comes from having acquired through education a certain
mastery of written language (as confirmed by statistical inquiries as to the
educational level of subjects). Besides, the individual keeping a diary cannot
be completely forgetful of themselves, sacrificing themselves (and their time
and attention) to other members of the family: the ‘family-ization’ of which
Richard Hoggart (1988) speaks restrains any move in this direction and
explains why diaries kept by women frequently end on marriage or the birth
of the first child,
5 It should be noted that one of the presuppositions of our interview grid was
that discussion should bear on and remain at a very particular level of reality
- i,e. the level of language. We were speaking in fact of practices of writing
in relation to very different practices in everyday life, and not really dealing
directly and in depth with each of the dimensions of family activity with
which domestic writings are connected (purchases, travel, relationships with
family and friends, etc.). This tacit pact, however, was quite often broken
during interviews with working-class families, who are precisely not very
great users of writing, [f we asked about shopping lists, these respondents
spontaneously ended up talking about purchases and tastes in food; if we
mentioned lists of things to take for a new school year, they slipped from
writing to the reality of the new year and commented on that event. The
sociologist had each time to refocus these statements back to practices of
writing; each subject, each theme might have been commented on not spe­
cifically from the standpoint of practices of writing but that of the general
feelings that they had towards it. Fundamentally, however, the tacit pact
that underlay the whole interview rested on a relationship to language - in
other words on the dissociability of language from the world of situations,
events and things experienced. To break the pact thus meant resisting this
dissociation.
6 Cf,, on cognitive artefacts, Socioiogie du travail, 36 (1994),
7 But the embodiment of information depends on the relationship that one
has with the domain of activity in question. For instance, if women who are
responsible for the cohesion of the family group generally know the birth­
days of their nearest and dearest by heart and without particular effort, this

242
 NOTES TO PP. 127-33

is not necessarily the case on the male side; one subject (teacher of German in
a grande ecole) wrote down the birthdays of his family in his diary,
8 It seems that senior managers are statistically those most inclined to conceive
and manage their everyday family life as an 'organization’ and cultivate a
form of asceticism (Establet, 1987), However, if rational domestic disposi­
tions are unevenly distributed in society, the lines of division do not always
follow the boundaries of classes or social groups (Lahire, 1995b).
9 As do Bernard Coneinand Eric Jacopin: ‘Routine seems to explain quite well
the behaviour of customers in the supermarket: they use certain spatial bear­
ings to find the products they want, without thinking or deliberating, since
every gesture is controlled by a perception guided by these bearings’ (1994,
p. 491),
10 Certain occasions of speech can be 'prepared’ without the mediation of
writing being needed. Nevertheless, on the one hand, writing makes it pos­
sible to increase the degree of precision of preparation, while, on the other
hand, as Jack Goody suggests at many points in his work (see in particular,
1987, pp. 115-22), the existence of a written culture has cognitive conse­
quences on the relationship to language, including ‘oral’ practices, [ have
myself shown the fundamentally written character of the 'oral’ educational
practice of language - in structures of language that are acceptable at school,
but also and especially in the educational relationship to language (Lahire,
1993a, pp. 193-242).
11 A woman respondent (maintenance agent), for example, describes her
partner (a cook) as follows:
When he phones it’s enough, he knows very well how to tell you, he knows
exactly what he means and no one puts him off. For me it’s easier. Certain
places, it’s him who goes because he knows very well that it’s like that,
it’s like that and it’s finished, and the person can say what they want. It
doesn’t make any difference at all. Besides, he knows very well, there are
certain places he goes and [ don’t. For example he goes to the tax office and
things like that. ‘It’s like this, it’s like that, you’ve made a mistake!’ ‘No,
I’m sorry, we’ve not made a mistake.’ ‘But [ assure you, and [ don’t want
to wait in line like this.’ He goes to the head of the queue. Yes, he’s bold,
[Laughter] And it’s true that, when you’re in the right, you’re in the right,
when you’re sure of yourself. You’re sure, you’ve done everything needed,
they send you more and more forms to fill in. Well, he never fills in a form,
he just goes there. When he goes there, he’s sure of himself - that he’s in
the right. And the last time, that’s how it went, he went there and straight
to the head of the queue. And it ended up, well, he was quite right, they
apologized to him and everything. If it was me, I’m sure I’d have gone back
two or three times. Whereas him, it’s like that.
Once again, men from a working-class milieu echo the classic critique
addressed to rhetoric from its very invention: only open, spontaneous, direct
and improvised relationships are acceptable (morally and politically). Cf.
Desbordes (1991, pp. 26-7, 40).
12 Thus we can express some reservation as to the first hypothesis of the action
theory proposed by Anselm L. Strauss: *No action is possible without the
body: that is, the body is a necessary condition for action' (1993, p, 23).
13 ‘The emigrants were not content to sent money to their families. They

243
 NOTES TO PP. 135-9

continued to manage and direct their properties. The ties that they main­
tained with their family and their village could be secured by friends return­
ing home. But the freemason able to read and write was kept in touch with
incidents that happened on his land. He could thus keep economic control of
his domain, decide the rotation of crops, set the date for sale and the price of
animals’ (Dauphin, Lebrun-Pezerat and Poublan, 1991, p. 74).
14 We can add to this the practices of writing that participate in reflexivity and
self-control: personal diaries, poems, autobiographies, proto-literary com­
mentaries accompanying photographs . , . (Lahire, 1993b, pp. 148-51). The
case of personal diaries shows that, apart from any practical necessity, actors
make reflexive returns on past events, whether happy or otherwise, reflex-
ively prepare actions (things to say or do) and, in particular, interactions,
or invent fictitious scenes and characters (a lover, a friend, a big brother, an
elder sister, a father, etc.). Writing can thus intervene before the experience
of events, helping one to be stronger, more calm, less agitated . . . [t can also
intervene subsequently, making it possible to 'work through’ scenes outside
of the torment of action. Some diarists even speak of returning to the past
consigned to their journal with a view to resolving problematic situations in
the present, thus effecting, as in the reading of literary texts, jurisprudential
comparisons between past and present. They thus draw points of support for
future action from their own objectified experience.
15 On the basis of a sociology of action regimes, Laurent Thevenot (1995)
adopts the same attitude towards the notion of the plan.
16 This author compares a plan made to decide major operations before the
action proper with descending the rapids in a canoe (Suchman, 1990).
17 'They [forecasts] are more like resources that the actors construct and consult
before and after the performance of the action’ (ibid., p. 159).
18 ‘Instructions intervene directly on action and define the content of perform­
ance, i.e. a precise operation to be realized, whereas advice qualifies the
objectives of the task but remains vague on the way in which the action
should be accomplished: it gives an orientation and leaves part to improvisa­
tion, attenuating control’ (Conein and Jacopin, 1993, pp. 71-2).
19 A good example of deliberate interruption of activity for reasons of safety
is the use of checklists in industry, and especially in civil aviation. In this
field, the checklist is generally consulted by two pilots; one reads aloud the
items on the list, while the other confirms and responds aloud as each item
is read out. The aim of these actions is to force a deliberate and conscious
interruption, controlled behaviour, to deliberately interrupt the normal
flow of activity. The controls and precautions bound up with safety are
supposed to create a disturbance that stimulates an effort of conscious
attention. Automatic actions are exposed to two kinds of problem: errors
caused by forgetting an action (action slip) and disturbances caused by
external events and interruptions. Even the checklist may fail in its func­
tion. After being used thousands of times and after years of experience, its
use may become so routine that it becomes automatic, which may have
very serious consequences. (Norman, 1993, pp. 27-8)
20 'But in no case - and this is the crucial point - do such plans control action,
whatever the particular sense is given to the word “control” . Whatever
their number or the scope of the possible use, plans stop where the work of
descending the rapids begins’ (Suchman, 1990, p. 158).

244
 NOTES TO PP. 139-51

21 Long confined to the strictly economic order, these practices are now perme­
ating the domestic world by force of circumstance.
22 The notion of ‘rational calculation’, whether used or rejected, which is part
of the vocabulary of economics or a certain sociology, may be usefully put in
perspective by asking what are the intellectual techniques, and in particular
the written and visual practices, without which no rational calculation could
exist. Max Weber already described, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit o f
Capitalism (2001), the keeping of rational accounts (regular, rigorous, etc.)
as a precondition for the rationalization of economic practices.
23 Jurgen Habermas remarks, for example, that theories of strategic activity
'bear hypotheses about rationality that only apply (approximately) to limited
sectors of social reality’ (1995, p. 18).
24 On the notion of 'field of relevance’ as a tool of epistemological reflexivity,
but above all as a concrete (historicizing) attitude that the researcher deploys
in relation to ‘theories’, see below, ‘Workshops and Debates’, pp, 220-2.

A ct II, S cene 3, T he Plural L ogics of A ction

1 See below, ‘The Place of Language’, pp. 163-74.

2 ‘A particularly clear example of practical sense as a proleptic adjustment to
the demands of the field is what is called, in the language of sport, “a feel for
the game’” (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 6 6 ).
3 More generally, the theory of practical reason is based on the phenomenol­
ogy of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, [n ‘The dead seize the living’ (1980, p. 7,
note 10), Bourdieu refers to the ‘late Heidegger’ and to Merleau-Ponty, who
‘sought to express in the language of ontology’ and in terms of a ‘“wild” or
“barbaric” beyond’ . . . the intentional relationship to the object’, what he
himself denotes as a ‘practical’ relationship to the world.
4 If an academic or group of academics decide, for example, to put on a confer­
ence in a year’s time, they will have to plan preparatory meetings, draw up a
budget, book premises, fix dates and deadlines for proposed contributions,
etc. All these are acts that are consciously posited as such with a view to very
explicitly attaining a goal consciously aimed at. It would be ridiculous here to
say that the conference can be held simply thanks to a sense of the game (even
if the sense of the academic game is present from the moment that round
tables or symposia, for example, are formed), in the immediate, obscure, pre­
reflexive relationship of the habitus to a situation, or that it will be present
without anyone having targeted it as an explicit goal to attain, a goal to be
realized . . .
5 We may note, moreover, that the players taken as examples are often
'excellent’ or ‘good’ ones. Cf., for example, Bourdieu (1990b, pp. 63-4).
6 Practices could be seen here as varying according to the preparation or
training time that they require. For example, if there are sites and times for
the preparation of a good tennis player, footballer, engineer, car mechanic,
etc., for the formation of a ‘good father’ there are no other ‘sites’ than those
of our own family experience and the example of the role of father with
which everyday life supplies us. [t is hard to imagine - and this therefore
makes it worth questioning the reasons for this improbable situation - the
latter in a situation of simulation and training, constantly rehearsing the

245
 NOTES TO PP. 152-9

gestures to make or not make with his child, the reactions to have or not to
have.
7 'In a more general way, habitus has its “ blips”, critical moments when it
misfires or is out of phase: the relationship of immediate adaptation is sus­
pended, in an instant of hesitation into which there may slip a form of reflec­
tion which has nothing in common with that of the scholastic thinker and
which . . . remains turned toward practice and not towards the agent who
performs it’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 162).
8 T o live only in the present, to respond to a stimulus by the immediate reac­
tion which prolongs it, is the mark of lower animals: the man who proceeds
in this way is a man of impulse’ (Bergson, 1912, p. 198).
9 This perspective is best expressed in the qualified way that M. Crozier and
E. Priedberg pose the question of rationality in action:
The actor rarely has clear objectives and, even more rarely, coherent
projects. His objectives are diverse, more or less ambiguous, more or less
explicit, and more or less contradictory. Some will be changed in the course
of action, some rejected, others discovered during the process or even after
the fact, if only because the unforeseen and unforeseeable consequences of
his action require him to 'reconsider his position’ and 'readjust his aim.’
What is a 'means’ at one moment will be an 'end’ at another, and vice
versa. It follows that it would be illusory to regard such behavior as delib­
erate and reasoned, i.e., mediated by a lucid subject calculating his moves
as a function of objectives established at the outset. (1980, pp. 24-5)
10 An example of this way of conceiving the debate between theories of action,
from the standpoint of the theory of practical reason, can be found in
Wacquant and Calhoun (1989).
11 A critique of utilitarianism offered on the basis of anti-utilitarianism, and
presupposing an alternative a priori conception of human action, is thus not
any more pertinent. To oppose to the calculating satisfaction of interests the
'desire for inter subjective recognition’, and maintain that 'the real motor of
social practice is the search for prestige, or more modestly for a tolerable
social identity’, is to believe that there exist 'fundamental motives of human
action’ or 'real motors’ of practices (Caille, 1988, p. 196). But 'motives’ and
'motors’ are always the product of socio-historical forms of life. Durkheim,
moreover, would not have failed to say about anti-utilitarianism what he said
about utilitarianism - i.e. that it theorizes what it desires.
12 Cases range from those in which nothing that seems at all relevant happens
except the occurrence of the bodily movement - one responds to the situ­
ation in which one Ends oneself almost automatically, guided as it were
by habit and the whole accumulation of past experience - to the cases
in which force of mind, great effort, or internal struggles are involved as
habit is resisted or passions and temptations conquered .. .The character­
istic philosophic vice of generalizing from special cases is involved in the
familiar summary explanation of the concept of action in terms of various
psychological factors or processes. (Melden, 1968, pp. 30-1)
13 'Even when the action-present is brief, performers can sometimes train them­
selves to think about their actions. In the split-second exchanges of a game of
tennis, a skilled player learns to give himself a moment to plan the next shot.
His game is the better for this momentary hesitation, so long as he gauges

246
 NOTES TO PP. 159-71

the time available for reflection correctly and integrates his reflection into the
smooth flow of action’ (Schon, 1983, p. 279). See also Detienne and Vernant
(1978).
14 We even find a series of oxymorons in Bourdieu: ‘unconscious strategy’,
‘intentionally without intention’, ‘finality without purpose’, ‘regulated
improvisation’, etc. Pierre-Michel Menger is right to point out the theoretical
contortions and semantic torsions that these expressions involve. A precise
analysis, he writes, ‘would show the whole effort deployed to correct each
word by its opposite’ and reveal operations comparable with ‘a game of snap
played by a single player’ (1997, pp. 591-2).
15 [s it giving in to bad habits of thought to raise this kind of question and
proceed by empirical verification and the hunt for counter-examples, rather
than by peremptory a priori assertion? At all events, the habit of empirical
work in sociology is always better than the inclination to settle theoretical
questions by philosophical quotations, no matter how seductive these are.
To reply to theoretical problems with philosophy constitutes - for sociolo­
gists, not of course for philosophers - a clear sign of weakness and empirical
laziness. As Paul Valery ironically said: ‘Pascal “ found”, but undoubtedly
because he stopped looking.’

A ct III, S cene 1, T he Place of L anguage

1 To this we must add the metaphor of great depths: ‘the pugilistic illusio - the
half-inarticulate, quasi-organismic belief in the value of the game and its
stakes, inscribed deep within the body’ (Wacquant, 1995b, pp. 492-3); The
pugilistic illusio is found lodged deep within the body’ (Wacquant, 1995a,
p. 88 ); ‘Habitus can be understood as virtual “sedimented situations” . . .
lodged inside the body’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, p. 2 2 ); ‘the emotion
. . . that touches the depths of our organic being’ (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 140).
2 ‘What we are tempted to consider as raw experience often presupposes, in
reality, the existence of a whole world of concepts and the manipulation of a
certain technique’, writes Jacques Bouveresse (1987, p. 69).
3 ‘ It is language that must be internalized above all’ (Berger and Luckmann,
1979, p. 155).
4 After noting this critical reading, I discovered a similar text from Jean-Paul
Bronckart (1997) on Jean Piaget. Bronckart in fact conducts a re-reading of
a body of interaction situations between adult and child that Piaget coni'
mented on, bringing to light, in a particularly illuminating fashion, the fact
that the psychologist omits or neglects language in his interpretation of these
situations in the perspective of a theory of development of the child (the
formation of symbols).
5 ‘To acquire the specific bodily sensitivity that makes one a competent pugil­
ist is a slow and protracted process; it cannot be effected by an act of will or
a conscious transfer of information, [t necessitates, rather, an imperceptible
embodiment of the mental and corporeal schemata immanent in pugilistic
practice that admits no discursive mediation or systematization’ (Wacquant,
1995a, p. 72).
6 My intuition is that having the words to say what one is doing facilitates
subsequent execution. By drawing children’s attention repeatedly to points

247
 NOTES TO PP. 171-82

of particular observation, by asking them to name these themselves, I

would like to help them construct an ordered protocol that accompanies
and then guides the order of gestures to be subsequently executed, aiding
them with a kind of internal language. What [ desire is that the child faced
with a new task should be increasingly well armed to regard a complex
form, recognize it immediately from the simple forms she is able to repro­
duce, knowing where to begin in order to combine them in the right order
and end up with the complex form. (Chartierand Janssens, 1996, p. 17)
7 Cf. the operation of hospital services and the use of notebooks ‘recording the
state of each sick person and the care they have received’ (Lacoste, 1994).
8 All formalisms (grammatical, linguistic orsemiological) abstract (in the sense
of extract), from different types of language practice, elements to reconstitute
them, recompose them into systems (language types made possible thanks to
written and graphic practices).
9 [f the systematic relating of sociologically constructed characteristics (social
milieu, educational leverage class, sex, place of residence ...) and linguisti­
cally constructed characteristics (phonological, lexical, syntactical, stylistic
,..) is a way of questioning the autonomy of language, it tacitly accepts
none the less the legitimacy of the division between language and society, the
linguistic and the sociological, [n a construction of this kind, linguistic facts,
situations of utterance, serve only, as Goffman writes, ‘to banalize, in some
way, the geometrical intersection between actors who speak and actors who
offer certain particular social indices’ (1988, p. 146).

A ct I llr S cene 2r W hat Exactly is Embodied ?

1 From Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1979) to Pierre Bourdieu

(1990a).
2 An interesting contribution to the study of the first phase can be found in
Freund (1988).
3 For the modalities of educational socialization in primary school, see Lahire
(1993a).
4 As evidence of the vagueness that surrounds these notions, and is largely
explained by the very secondary attention that has so far been granted to
these terms in sociological models, it is possible to internalize, according to
the particular case, ‘significations’, the ‘principles’ of a ‘cultural variable’,
‘social structures’, ‘roles’ and ‘attitudes’, ‘schemas of interpretation and
motivation’, etc.
5 Michael Cole notes the results of certain studies showing how children who
have been left alone for a long time in front of television programmes in a
foreign language do not manage to acquire this language:
[t seems an inescapable conclusion from this kind of evidence that in
order for children to acquire more than the barest rudiments of language
they must not only hear (or see) the language but also participate in the
activities which that language is helping to create .. . Note that I am not
saying that adults must deliberately teach language; rather, that they must
arrange/allow children to participate in culturally organized activities
mediated by language. (1996, p. 203)

248
 NOTES TO PP. 182-95

6 The common people represent the doing twice over, when they make light­
ning flash - that is being doubled by another doing: it posits the same event
once as cause and then once again as effect’ (Nietzsche, 1996, p. 29).
7 Of course, some solicitations are non-existent, just as certain kinds of col­
laboration are not invited in certain families, on account of the place socially
ascribed to the child and the representations that adults may make about
what is possible and conceivable (in the sense of 'competence’ and 'right’) at
the age of eight to nine, or ten and eleven. Children may thus be forbidden to
write on visible supports - calendars, photos, photo albums, video cassettes
- out of fear that these will be damaged, to answer the phone or to make a
phone call themselves, to go out without first asking (oral) permission from
an adult, etc. Children may even be considered too young to write letters (the
case of Marouan, eight years old, father a boilermaker and mother a house­
wife), to want to write stories or poems by themselves, to be able to read
children’s novels or magazines (the case of Chaouki, eight years old, father
a plasterer/painter and mother a housewife), to be able to look up for them­
selves in a dictionary or little encyclopedia (the case of Damien, nine years
old, father and mother run a butcher’s shop). Limits of this kind imposed on
learning - bound up with a rather closed conception of roles and a particular
relationship to childhood - seem almost non-existent in the higher social
classes.
8 Julien (eight years old, father a skilled worker and mother a nurse) is thus a
good example of the infrequent reader with a good knowledge of French that
Francois de Singly discusses: 'a boy from a working-class milieu, excellent in
maths’ (1993a).
9 We should note that such cases provide interesting examples of heterogene­
ous dispositions activated as a function of the situation. On the one hand,
the parents do not like reading and writing but, on the other hand, they incite
and 'push’ their children relentlessly to practise these, so that they turn out
different from themselves.
10 Concerning family conditions of access to reading, large-scale studies have
shown that the share of great readers is higher among those who benefited
from their mother telling them stories each day than among those who
never (or rarely) heard these, and that this share is also higher among those
with a bookshelf in their bedroom than among those with no books in their
bedroom (Singly, 1993a).
11 At the opposite extreme we have the parents of Damien (see above), who
don’t like writing at all and whose pronunciation of certain words, and
grammatical mistakes, are the sign of a poor internalization of the specific
linguistic norms of written culture.
12 The 'rule’ may be suddenly modulated as a function of the context: if it is
impossible to apply it in town, then the environment has to be rigorously
respected when in the countryside. Cf. Madec (1996, pp. 119-20).

A ct IV, S cene 1, Psychological Sociology

1 Pierre Bourdieu wrote that habitus was 'one of the 'intermediate concepts
and concepts which mediate between the subjective and the objective’
(Bourdieu, 1990d, p. 3).

249
 NOTES TO PP. 198-203

2 We can often find in Max Weber, though he was far from excluding the indi­
vidual actor from his comprehensive sociology, the idea that an isolated indi­
vidual act is not a social act. Religious behaviour, for example, is not a social
activity 'if it is simply a matter of contemplation or of solitary prayer’ (1978,
p. 2 2 ). But a solitary behaviour is every bit as social as a behaviour with
someone else, because an ‘isolated individual’ is intersubjective by nature,
and her ‘internal’ mental activity is dependent on her past and present expe­
riences. See ‘Une anthropologic de I’interdependance’, in Lahire (1995a, pp.
283-9). One might reply to Max Weber, indeed, with the words of Maurice
Halbwachs: ‘In reality we are never alone. Other men need not be physically
present, since we always carry with us and in us a number of distinct persons’
(1980, p. 23),
3 It was Georg Simmel, however, who made the strongest division, and also
the most realist (in the sense of epistemological realism), between what was
social and what was not. We may note in passing that this division, fixing
an a priori limit to sociological analysis, holds a high place in the historical
honours of the abdication of sociological interpretation. Simmel conferred
on ‘individuals’ and their behavioural and mental schemas a life of their own,
independent from social ‘ forces’ and ‘forms’ (1981, p, 137). For Simmel,
instincts, interests, impulses, ends, inclinations, tendencies, etc., are in them­
selves not social (since they denote ‘the matter of socialization, the materials
that fill up existence, these motivations that stimulate it but do not yet form
either in or for themselves a social being’; ibid., p. 1 22 ), but simply ‘have the
effect that men engage in coexistence with others’ (ibid., p. 1 2 1 ). Simmel did
not adopt the sociological orientation that would have enabled him to con­
ceive that, on the contrary, it is because they are engaged in historical forms
of coexistence that people have particular interests, motivations, impulses,
inclinations, etc. Here again, if sociology makes this division between the
individual (the mental, the psychic, inclinations, intentions, impulses, etc.)
and the social, it plays a bad trick of sociological magic on us by reintroduc­
ing underhand those products denoted as sociologically illicit, [f individual
thoughts and behaviours are not the business of sociology, then sociologists
are unable to integrate these into their discourse. But the temptation, as can
be readily seen, is stronger than the principle of division initially proclaimed.
4 [ have criticized pluridisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in Lahire (1998a).
5 Gabriel Tarde, as is well known, opposed Durkheim’s sociology, which he
referred to as an inter-mental psychology; for him, to believe that there exists
anything but individual acts or deeds ‘is pure ontology’ (Durkheim, 1975,
p. 165).
6 See, among other less well-known works, Cole (1996); Shweder (1991);
Bruner (1991).
7 Why has it proven so difficult for psychologists to keep culture in mindi
A short answer might be: Because when psychology treated culture as an
independent variable and mind as a dependent variable, it broke apart the
unity of culture and mind and ordered them temporally - culture is stimu­
lus, mind response. The entire history of cross-cultural psychology can be
viewed as a long struggle to put back together that which was torn apart
as a consequence of the division of the humane sciences into the social
sciences and humanities. (Cole, 1996, pp. 327-8)
8 They also very often remain in thrall to a mentalist conception which claims

250
 NOTES TO PP. 205-12

that the ‘said’ is only the 'thought’ made public. Now, given that public lan­
guage is out only tool for tracing this ‘thought’, it is hard to understand the
interest that scholars have in placing a 'thought’ that is invisible in itself at
the coot of a public language that constitutes its one and only trace and proof
of existence. The idea that language is only the public expression of a mental
structure, a mental reality, totally reverses - quite unreasonably - the order
of realities that ace tangible, observable and open to study, [t is surprising,
therefore, to see the disproportionate place granted to this supposed reality,
inherently invisible, in relation to that assigned to objective and objectifiable
realities (verbal, para-verbal, written, gestural, iconic ...) , reduced to the
rank of a mere 'trace’ or ‘index’ of a mental activity deemed fundamental.
From this point of view, the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein amounts to a
real linguistic therapy. Cf. in particular the presentation of Wittgenstein’s
philosophy by Jacques Bouveresse (1987).
9 ‘The inside as an operation of the outside: in all his work, Foucault seems
haunted by this theme of an inside which is merely the fold of the outside’
(Deleuze, 1999, p. 81).
10 ‘The description of a historical context is never exhausted by a finite list
of variables’ (Passecon, 1991, p, 364), This does not mean that sociolo­
gists cannot effect a reduction of this kind, or even that they should not do
so on certain occasions, simply that they should not be mistaken as to its
application.
11 It makes no more sense to view actors as free electrons subject to magnetic
fields, or as independent bowling balls moving in an alley that would leave
them a certain ‘play’ (in the mechanical sense of the term) or a 'margin of
movement’. It is hard, in fact, to see what advantage there can be (apart
from the benefit of a rhetorical union of opposites) in calling actors ‘free in
a system of constraints’, or speaking of 'social determinism in indetermi­
nacy’, 'constraint accompanied by free play’, 'choices in the limits of a social
structure’, etc.
12 [ have in mind here the works of John Gumperz and William Labov, which
inspired psychologists working on language, in particular Michael Cole: ‘The
strategy we employed in two other studies, both carried out in New York
City, was to contrast the behaviour of the same children in their classrooms,
when they were being tested, and in an activity outside the school’ (1996,
P* 221),

A ct IV, S cene 2 r Pertinent Fields

1 This section is a shortened and modified version of Lahire (1996a).

2 This is the conception of debate in the social sciences that [ began to develop
in Lahire (1991b).
3 We can again mention Wittgenstein here, as he thought similarly about
philosophy.
4 Rogers Brubaker expresses some doubt as to the generalist claim made by
Pierre Bourdieu in his preface to the English edition of Distinction - i.e.
that the theoretical model developed in this work is valid for all stratified
societies. Brubaker asks whether this generality is of a meta-theoretical order
(e,g. bearing on relationships between conditions of existence, habitus and

251
 NOTES TO PP. 213-21

practices) or of a more historical order (e.g. changes in modes of domination

or in the increased value of cultural capital in relation to economic capital).
‘The uniqueness of the Parisian haute bourgeoisie and the French educational
system would seem to restrict the scope of at least some of Bourdieu’s gener­
alizations about the relationships between class and culture’ (1985, p. 774,
n. 60).
5 Thus C. Jouhaud writes: ‘Contexts do not exist prior to the operation that
constructs them, or rather they are only assumptions. What exists is not con­
texts, but rather operations, procedures, experiments of contextualization
which bear on a part of the historical reality in a partial, specific and relative
fashion’ (1994, p. 273).
6 The analysis of frameworks proposed by Erving Goffman (1974) studies
‘the structures of individual experience of social life’. For his part, Aaron V.
Cicourel, in Cognitive Sociology (1974), takes as object, among other things,
the interpretative procedures of the members of a community.
7 As practised by the Italian micro-historians, in particular Giovanni Levi
(1988).
8 This term is proposed by Jacques Revel, who maintains that the ‘macro’
and ‘micro’ versions of reality, ‘and many others at intermediate levels that
may be noted by means of experiment’, are equally ‘true’ (1994, p. 319). A
similar position is found in Lepetit (1993, p. 137): ‘The macro-phenomena
are no less real, micro-phenomena no more real (or conversely): there is no
hierarchy between them.’
9 Bourdieu speaks of ‘the impression of heuristic strength often gained by the
application of theoretical schemas expressing the very moment of reality’ as
having ‘its counterpart in the permanent feeling of dissatisfaction aroused by
the immensity of work necessary to obtain the full return on the theory in
each of the cases considered’ (1996b, p. 184).
10 The author appeals to ‘the direction which should be taken by a social
science concerned with converting into a really integrated and cumulative
programme of empirical research that legitimate ambition for systematicity
which is imprisoned by the totalizing pretensions of “grand theory’” (ibid.).
11 For Marxists [ am a Durkheimian, for Durkheimians [ am a Weberian, for
Weberians a Marxist. . . No one asks: ‘But what if he were all these at the
same time?’ And if the task of science were to accumulate instead of these
ritual antagonisms? [ believe this is completely possible. It is very preten­
tious, but these people Marx, Weber, Durkheim developed their thoughts
in relation to one another, and we may come to see that each saw the
others synthesize and thus accumulate in a non-eclectic manner. (Bourdieu
and Grenfell, 1995, pp. 15-16)
12 Cf. the severe criticisms he makes of textual genetics on the basis of his own
scientific objectives and interests, acting as if all researchers shared (or should
share) the same research objectives and interests: ‘[ could . . . , at the risk of
seeming unjust, evoke the disproportion between the immensity of the work
of erudition involved and the slightness of the results obtained’ (Bourdieu,
1996b, p. 197).
13 Besides, whenever there is too much worry about how to manage their con­
ceptual heritage and draw profit from it, the temptation to dogmatic and
hypostatizing defence of sociological concepts is never far away, even though
these concepts, by their nature, are always subject to revision.

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263
 INDEX

accounts, 116,127,141,173 Berger, Pierre, 27-8, 37,165,190,

action, meaning, 71 218
actor, meaning, 2-3 Bergson, Henri, 49-50,66,69, 70-2,
administrative communications, 246n8
129-32 Bernstein, Basil, 169-70, 176
administrative identity, 16-17 Binet-Simon test, 84
adolescence, 122 Boltanski, Luc, 223n3
Algeria, 19, 20-1,60, 141, 24lnl5 Bonenfant, Louis, 15
analogies Boudon, Raymond, 204
analogical transfer, 66-9, 88 Bourdieu, Pierre
boxing language, 166-7 on Algeria, 19,20-1,60,141,
dance, 168 241nl5
novels, 93 avoiding crisis, 45
triggers of action and memory, on case studies, 116
66-9 on cultural production, 89, 90
anthropology, 6 , 13-14, 83 dispositions, 23 ln l 6
anti-intellectualism, 163-5 freedom from urgencies, 111-14
anti-structuralism, 163 generalizations, 251n4
Aristotle, 7, 50, 52, 73 habitus, xi, xiv, 3, 16, 79, 87,141,
Athens, 203 146-7, 247nl, 249nl
Auerbach, Eric, 50 on history, 47
Augustine of Hippo, St, 219-20 on intellectual trajectories, 154-6
on language, 111-12,172, 214,
Bachelard, Gaston, 1 241nl0
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 89-90, 103,108— Panovsky and, 20
10,174, 219 on passing of time, 139
Bali, 13 Piaget and, 79, 82
Bally, Charles, 131 present past, 43, 44
Balzac, Honore de, 34 research methods and, 82
Baudelaire, Charles, 34 scholarly reputation, viii, 3-4
behaviourism, 72, 202 school, ix
Benoliel, Roger, 25 on silence, 164
Benveniste, Emile, 174 on singleness, 11-13, 15-16

264
 INDEX

on social principles, 135 cock-fighting, 13

on the state, 227nl7 codes
tennis player, 147-8,150 codification, 141-2
theory of fields, 2 8 , 216-17, 219 language, 52-3, 93,174
theory of practice, 143,145,149, switching and mixing, 60-2
151 weakly codified societies, 146
transfer o f schemes, 80 cognitive style, 13, 15, 202
unconscious strategy, 247nl4 Cohen, Albert, 233n25
on writing, 87,139-40 Cole, Michael, 83-5,106-7,248n5,
Bourget, Paul, 33 251nl2
Bouveresse, Jacques, 51,174,211, Colet, Louise, 237n2
2 1 2 ,231-2nl7 colonialism, 21
boxing, 159,165-8,169 Cometti, Jean-Pierre, 2
Bronckart, Jean-Paul, 247n4 Conan Doyje, Arthur, 115
Brubaker, Rogers, 251n4 Condillac, Etienne de, 240nl
Bruner, Jerome, 169,170,174 Conein, Bernard, 243n9, 244nl8
Burgess, E. W,, 72 Connerton, Paul, 235nl 2
consciousness
calendar notes, 115,116, 117,120, collective and individual, 198
121,124-5, 126, 139, 140,141 context levels and, 154-6
Camic, Charles, 72 mysterious inside, 173-4
Certeau, Michel de, 51 constructivism, 213
Chamboredon, Jean.-Claude, 82 context, see social contexts
Chattier, Anne-Marie, 153, 247-8n6 correspondence, 24, 49,116,130-1,
Chattier, Roger, 49, 238nl0 133,185,190
checklists, 244nl9 crises
chemistry, 51-3 maladjustment, 45-7
Chevallier, Denis, 180 rational choice, 146
children reflexivity, 152
development, 79-80 writing and, 122
family transmission of written criticism, rehabilitation, 2, 3
culture to, 183-9 crosswords, 116
imitation, 185-6 Crozier, Michel, 246n9
jigsaw puzzles, 176-8 cultural contradiction, 46
language learning, 101-7,171,174, cultural inheritance, 178-82
182,248n5 cultural transmission, see
negative indications to, 189-91 transmission
play, 89-90 curriculum vitae, 17
reading, 178
undesirable dispositions, 181-2 dance, 168
see also education; socialization daydreams, 95-8
Chiva, Isaac, 180 Degracia (Gracia Cohen), 231n7
Chomsky, Noam, 174 deja vu, 67
class Delbos, Genevieve, 169,181
declassementi 46 Descartes, Rene, 1,174,182
languages, 39-40 determinism, see social determinism
middle-class reading, 90 diary jottings, 115,116,117,120-1,
transfuges, 37-41, 56, 81 124-8,139,141
working-class readers, 91-2, 189 discursive mediation, 165,167,
working-class school failures, 82 168-9

265
 INDEX

dispositions processes, 175-82

children’s undesirable dispositions, social structures, 176, 182
181-2 written culture in families, 183-9
conditional dispositions, 50-6 Ernaux, Annie, 36, 39-40, 183
divorce, 46, 92, 122 esprit de corps, 22
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 72, 115 Establet, Roger, 25
dreams, 95-8, 219 ethnomethodology, 42
Durkheim, Emile experimental variation, 214-17
autonomy of sociology, 199, 200
boarding-school regime, 18,19-20 family worlds
collective and individual gender and, 190-1
consciousness, 198 illiteracy, 186-7,189
Halbwachs and, 6 interdependence, 67-8,182
legacy, 199 school culture and, 186-8
nature of sociology, 5 singleness, 23-5, 27-8
political economy, 157, 218 transmission of written cultures,
sociology and psychology, 195,198 183-9
traditional societies, 18-19 working-class, 31
writing and complex practices,
education 128-9
class transfuges, 39-40 writing to the absent, 133-4
family transmission of written fields
culture, 183-9 excessive generalization, 211-13
language teaching experimental variation, 214-17
departure from common sense, historicizing, 217-22
101-7 pertinence, 2 1 1 -2 2
Saussure on, 108-10 theory, 28-30
social conditions, 110-14 varying scale of context, 213-14
middle classes, 24-5 firefighters, 85-6
reading experience and, 94 Flaubert, Gustave, xiv, 15, 237n2
school culture and family worlds, folds of the social, 203-5
186-8 Foucault, Michel, 4,173
sociology, 175-6, 209 freedom of action, 206-7
teachers’ evaluations, 58-9 Freud, Sigmund, 36, 75, 98, 219
teachers’ timeframes, 153 Freund, Peter, 230n2
teachers’ writing, 119-20 Friedberg, Erhard, 246n9
university students’ timetables,
62-3, 64 Galton, Francis, xvi
working-class families, 31 game theory, 160
working-class school failures, 82 Garavini, Fausta, 238nll
Efron, David, 61-2 Geertz, Clifford, 13
Egypt, 103 gender
Eichendorff, Joseph von, 237nl family worlds, 190-1
Elias, Norbert, 180, 201, 218, 229n30 literacy and, 190-1
embodiment role transmission, 185-6
implicit injunctions, 189-91 generalization
language, see language excessive generalization, 2 1 0 ,
memory, 117-20 211-13
multiplicity of fields of action, 32 schemes of action, 85-6
negative indications, 189-91 Goffman, Erving

266
 INDEX

backstage, 98 interdisciplinarity, 6-7,199,201

collectively organized activities, 63 internalization, 175-82
daydreams, 97 interview, sociological interview, 75-6
interactionism, 132 itineraries, 115,121-2,126,136-7,
on language, 170, 213-14, 248n9 141
on singleness, 15,16
total institutions, 19 Jacobson, Roman, 102-3
Goody, Jack, 129, 139,218-19 Jacopin, Eric, 243n9, 244nl8
Gothic art, 20 Janet, Pierre, 202
Granet, Marcel, 1 Janssens, Florence, 153, 247-8n6
Greece, 104, 203 jigsaw puzzles, 176-8
Gumperz, John, 60-1, 251nl2 Jorion, Paul, 169, 181
Jouhaud,C, 252n5
Habermas, Jurgen, 245n23 Joyce, James, 237n2
habits
concept, 144-5 Kabyls, 19,141
plurality of social contexts, 26-32 Kaplan, A., 221
role, 72-4 Kaufmann, Jean-Claude, 226n7,
Halbwachs, Maurice 232n21
corporate worlds, 22-3
on heterogeneity, 26-7 labelling, 116,185
legacy, 6 Labov, William, 61, 235nl6, 251nl2
on memory, 36, 69, 70 Ladriere, Paul,231nl4
on musical language, 172 language
reading and memory, 96 class transfuges, 39-40
on use of time, 63 foreign languages, 248n5
handwriting, 87 forms of social life and, 172-3
Hannerz, Ulf, 226nll, 233n25 gestural bilingualism, 62
Havelock, Eric Alfred, 102 language games, 168, 177
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, learning, 182
240nl linguistic pathology, 182
Heidegger, Martin, xiv, 245n3 mysterious inside, 173-4
history psychology, 170-1
single mentality, 14 punctuation of action, 169-71
sociology and, 6 , 217-22 Saussurian model, 52-3
Hoggart, Richard, 38, 39, 40, 113, school teaching
232nl9,242n4 departure from common sense,
hospitalization, 46, 50 101-7
Hughes, Everett G, 122 Saussureon, 108-10
Husserl, Edmund, 13,165 social conditions, 110-14
silence, 163-9
illness, 122 , 135 switching, 61
imitation, 185-6, 200 tongue and, 103
implicit injunctions, 189-91 Laplanche, Jean, 49
imprisonment, 46, 50, 207 Lave, C , 106-7
inhibitions, 56-60 Lave, Jean, 82
intentionality, context levels, 154-6 Lefebvre, Henri, 173
interactionism, 42, 73, 132, 214, 219 legal precedents, 67
interdependence, 67-8,172, 176, 182, Leibniz, Gottfried, 1 , 1 2 , 146, 240nl
204 letters, see correspondence

267
 INDEX

Levy, Clara, 233n25 military service, 46

Liberia, 83-4 minority groups, 61-2
life stories, 17 modularization, 235nl3
lightning, 182 Montaigne, Michel de, 18, 26, 47, 77,
lists, 121, 125-6,127,129,135, 86, 207, 238nll
136-9,140, 141,185 mountain rescuers, 85-6
literacy, see reading; writing Mozart, Leopold, 180
literary experience, 89-98 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 180,
Lloyd, Geoffrey, 14 229n30
Locke, John, 240nl multi-determinism, 206-7
log books, 116 music, 149,172
Longuet Marx, Anne, 234n6 Musset, Alfred de, 35
Luckmann, Thomas, 27-8, 37,165, Muxel, Anne, 232n21
190,218
Naville, Pierre, 17-18, 38, 45, 202,
McCall, Leslie, 230n4 203
maladjustment, 45-7, 92,122 negative indications, 189-91
Marx, Karl, 172 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 4 ,1 8 2 ,249n6
Marxism, 215-16 Norman, Donald, 153
Maspero, Henri, 1 novelists, 3 0
Mauss, Marcel, 218 novels, 90-4
Mayas, 106-7
Mead, George Herbert, 228n25 obituaries, 17
Meillet, Antoine, 154-5, 156 objective structures, 43,146,175,
Melden, A, L, 235nl4, 246nl2 177, 182,195,202
Memmi, Albert, 231n7 objectivity of the subjective, 201-3
memory opium, 51
‘doing it like that’, 123-4 Ostrow, James, 234n5
embodied and objectified, 117-20
everyday writing and, 115-26 Pagnol, Marcel, 183
for the unusual, 124-6 Panovsky, Erwin, 20
gender and, 117-18 parapraxes, 98,150
involuntary actions and, 69-72 Park, R, E,, 72
Proust, 69,70 Parsons, Talcott, 72
psychological approaches, 86 Pascal, Blaise, 247nl5
reading and, 96 Passeron, Jean-Claude, 1, 82, 230n2
transferential repetition, 75 past
mental conflict, splitting selves, presence, 42-4
36-41 present openings and, 47-50
mental structures, 182 Peirce, Charles, 102-3
mentality, 14,197, 202, 203 philosophy
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, x, 87,102, generalizations, 212
109, 147,164-5 sociology and, 5-6
Mesopotamia, 103 phone calls, 129-31
Mestizos, 106-7 Piaget, Jean
methodology Bourdieu and, 79, 82
methodological individualism, 42 child development, 79-80
new requirements, 207-10 language and, 174, 247n4
Mexico, 46,106-7 legacy, 5, 87,196
migration, 46, 50, 133 memory and habit, 234n7

268
 INDEX

schemes of action, 78-9, 80-1, 82, cultural psychology, 200-1

85, 86 generalization of cognitive
school, 77 problems, 86
summaries of experience, 74 language, 170-1
terminology, 195 object, 202
planned behaviour theory, 160 sociology and, 5, 6,72-3,77
planners, 126-7,140 transfers, 82, 86
planning, 136-9, 153 see also psychological sociology
Plato, 102, 119, 133 pugilistic iiiusio, 247nl
plural actor punctuation of action, 169-71
plural logics of action, 143-60 Putnam, Hilary, 51,217
plural social contexts, 26-32
plurality, 10-41 Quine, Willard, 50,51
plurality of times, 156-60
Proustian model, 32-5 rational choice theory, 42,160
socio-historical conditions, reading
18-26 children’s learning, 178
splitting selves and mental conflict, daydreams and, 96-8
36-41 experience, 89-95
wellsprings of action, 42-65 family transmission, 183-9
see also singleness incentives, 190
pluridisciplinarity, 6-7,199,201 memory and, 96
Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand, 49 middle-class models, 90-1
power, fields of power, 30 one-to-one correspondence, 93
practical sense, departure from sociology, 94-5
language and social conditions, therapeutic role, 92-3
110-14 working-class readers, 91-2,
relative pertinence, 139-42 189
sporting model, 147-54 realism, 70, 215-16
theory, 160 recipes, 116,185
writing reflexivity
everyday breaks, 120-3 habits and, 72-3,144-5
sporting model, 147-54 reflexive habitus, 147
temporary disturbances, 134-5 school language teaching, 106,
practice, theory of practice, 143-4 110-14
prayers, 218 reminder notes, 115
precedents, 67 retirement, 46, 57, 92, 122
Protestantism, xiv, xv Revel, Jacques, 252n8
Proust, Marcel, 6, 32-5, 69, 70, 89 Ribot,Theodule, 228n25
psychoanalysis, 42, 49,74, 97-8 rituals, 124, 218
psychological sociology Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 237n2
exit from sociology, 197-201 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 240nl
multi-determinism and sense of ruptures, 46, 92, 116, 122
freedom, 206-7
new methodology, 207-10 Sainte-Beuve, Charles, 32-4
objectivity of the subjective, 201-3 salt-cutters, 169,181
overview, 195-210 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 183
singular folds of the social, 203-5 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 52, 108-10,
psychology 172, 209,240nl
cognitive psychology, 199 Sayad, Abdelmalek, 21,60

269
 INDEX

schemes of action contradictory experiences, 37

embodiment, see embodiment multi-socialization, 207
general and partial schemes, 82-6 personality and, 54
Piaget definition, 78-9 plurality, 31
Schlink, Bernard, 237nl primary, 27-8
scholasticism, 20 processes, 175-82
Schon, Erich, 238n4, 247nl3 school and language, 101-7
School, see education secondary, 28
Schwartz, Olivier, 235nl5 sociology
Scribner, Sylvia, 83-4, 106-7 concerns, 197
self daydreams, 97
class transfuges^ 37-41 education, 175-6, 209
Proustian plurality, 32-5 facts, 199
singleness, 11-14 nature of discipline, 2
split and mental conflict, 36-41 philosophy and, 5-6
Sharp, D,, 106-7 psychology and, 5, 72-3, 77
shepherding, 180 reading, 94-5
shopping lists, 115,116, 125-6,129, value of epistemology, 6
136, 137-8, 141, 185 see also psychological sociology
signatures, 17, 185 Socrates, 119
silence, 163-9 Sophocles, 86
Simmel, Georg, 250n3 Sperber, Dan, 199-200
Simon, Claude, 237n2 sport, 147-54
Simon, Theodore, 84 Stendhal, 34
singleness stock metaphor, 32
ambiguity of singular practice, Strauss, Anselm, 9, 49, 95-6,150,
143-7 228nl9,243nl2
anthropology, 13-14 students
corporate worlds, 22-3 daydreams, 95-6
family worlds, 23-5 use of time, 62-3, 64
history, 14 subjective, objectivity of the
social illusion, 15-18 subjective, 201-3
socio-historical conditions, 18-26 Suchman, Lucy, 136,148, 244n20
sociology, 11-13 Sudnow, David, 240n9
total institutions, 19-20 Sumerians, 103
traditional societies, 20-1 syllogisms, 106-7
Singly, Francois de, 189, 249nl0 symbolic inter actio nism, 42
situated action theory, 160
Smolenaars, A. J., 50, 53 Taine, Hippolyte, 33
social contexts Tarde, Gabriel, 200
code switching and mixing, 60-2 tennis players, 147-8,150,152, 153,
intentionality and, 154-6 155
memory and, 69 Thomas, W. I., 72
mentality and, 14 Tralongo, S., 97
negative power, 56-60 transfers
non-contextuality, 213 analogical transfer, 66-9, 88
plurality, 26-32, 204-5 analytic transfer, 74-5
varying scale, 213-14, 221-2 contemporary psychology, 82, 86
social determinism, 53, 206-7 general to limited, 86-8
socialization relative transferability, 77-82

270
 INDEX

transmission Wertsch, James, 176-7

channels, 20 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 66,101,107,
cultural transmission, 24, 175, 160, 182,212,219-20,221
178-82 women
gender role, 185-6 correspondence, 49
implicit injunctions, 189-91 learning gender role, 185-6
meaning, 178 life cycle, 57-8
negative indications, 189-91 literacy and, 190-1
processes, 175-82 memory, 117-18
skills, 142, 146 working-class men and, 57
written cultures in families, 183-9 Woolf, Virginia, 50, 234n5
see also education writing
traumas, 179 Bourdieu on, 87
twins, 203 correspondence and literacy, 48-9
crises and, 122
United States, 72, 216 ‘doing it like that’, 123-4
utilitarianism, 154, 156, 246nll domestic writing, 116
early writing, 103-4
Vai peoples, 83-4 embodied and objectified memory,
Valery, Paul, 18,247nl5 117-20
Van Heerden, J., 50,53 everyday practices, 115-42
Vygotsky, L .S., 106, 174,200 family transmission of written
cultures, 183-9
Wacquant, Loic J. D,, 11,146, 159, incentives, 190
165, 165-8, 166-8, 214, 247nl lists, 136-9
war, 50 longer-term planning, 126-7
Watson, John Broadus, 202 managing complex practices, 128-9
Weber, Max, 114, 191, 213, 215-16, memory for the unusual, 124-6
217-18, 245n22,250n2 objectification techniques, 140
wellsprings of action official and tense situations,
analogy, 66-9 129-32
code switching and mixing, 60-2 planning, 136-9
conditional dispositions, 50-6 practical sense and
habits, 72-4 everyday breaks, 120-3
inhibitions, 56-60 relative pertinence, 139-42
involuntary actions and memory, temporary disturbances, 134-5
69-72 presence of the absent, 132-4
maladjustment and crisis, 45-7 Vai peoples, 83-4
negative power of context, 56-60 Wunder, Delores, 97
overview, 42-65
past, 42-4 Xenophon, 125
plurality and present openings,
47-50 Znaniecki, F., 72
uncertain swings, 62-5 Zola, Emile, 201

271