HabitusAnalysis

HabitusAnalysis

"HabitusAnalysis" is our theory and method based on Bourdieu's sociology, which interrelates human dispositions of thinking and acting with the positions of actors in a wide variety of social power relations. Bourdieu had made it his program to overcome the separation of "social semiology" and "social physics" and thus also of qualitative and quantitative methods, thinking and structures, dispositions and positions. However, he did not develop an original method for analyzing dispositions.

Dispositional analysis, which we have developed in many empirical studies over the past 40 years, provides such a method. Using the models of the praxeological square and the network of dispositions, it allows a methodical reconstruction of concrete experiences of actors and the cognitive processing of these experiences. And it facilitates linking this reconstruction to the actors' positions in different fields of praxis (functional differentiation) and within the general distribution of power in society (social inequality).

Thus, it becomes possible to relate, in a sociologically controlled way, cognitive and emotional attitudes of actors to their objective positions in the social space. Beyond synchronic analyses, the approach can also be developed further in a diachronic perspective (see below, Schlerka: “Time…”).

Together with the Semantic Computing Group at CITEC, we are planning a software that will combine our methodology with state of the art techniques of Natural Language Processing, and thus enable dispositional analysis to be effectively applied to larger data sets.

Selected publications

• On the epistemological premises of praxeological theory and method in the relational ontology of Ernst Cassirer and the pragmatism of the late Wittgenstein: HabitusAnalysis 1. Epistemology and Language. (HW Schäfer).
• On praxeological theory, developing further Bourdieu's approach, especially with regard to the concept and analysis of dispositions and their integration into descriptive models of the social space: HabitusAnalysis 2. Praxeology and Meaning. HW Schäfer.
• A theory of identity as a network of dispositions generated from social relations, which in turn generates strategies of actors in view of shaping the social world: Identität als Netzwerk (Identity as a Network, 2015). HW Schäfer.
• A concise presentation of our praxeological theory and method using religious life as an example, "Towards a Praxeology of Religious Life 1 & 2". HW Schäfer, Leif Seibert, Adrian Tovar, Jens Köhrsen.
• Brief presentation of dispositional analysis as a complementary method to geometric data analysis: "Habitus as a Third Layer" (2019). HW Schäfer, Leif Seibert, Adrian Tovar.
• Dispositional Analysis based on Prototype Analysis and an empirical model of the religious field using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) Tools: Religious Credibility under Fire (2013). Leif Seibert.
• A Bourdieusian approach to social change: “It's time for a change” (2018). Sebastian Schlerka.

Further literature can be found under "Publications Schäfer and Team"