From doxic breach to cleft habitus: affect, reflexivity and dispositional disjunctures

Abstract

Previous research has examined how mismatched dispositions within a divided or ‘cleft’ habitus are subjectively experienced but has not adequately explored nor theorized the variety of ways in which the dispositional disjunctures that progressively give rise to a cleft habitus are initially generated. Combining recent sociological work on ontological ruptures with an affective reading of Bourdieu’s social theory, we use an empirical case to illustrate how subtle processes of social influence set in motion by affective ties can come to sever the ontological bond between the habitus and the social space that initially shaped it, setting an affectively driven and reflexively negotiated process of habitus change in motion. By shedding light upon some of the sufficient conditions underpinning the development of dispositional disjunctures and the psychosocial forces that mediate this process, we extend the literature on habitus change and conflict in several ways.