Habitus as the “Third Layer”: Qualitative Data Analysis by Habitus Analysis

Abstract

What is it that the concept of habitus has in common with models of the social space and of fields of praxis? Pierre Bourdieu gives a glimpse of an answer to this question in a chapter of Distinction pivotal to the development of his social space model. Constructing a model of a social space of lifestyles, he writes, is like superimposing transparent sheets of the diagram of social conditions on another one of lifestyles. “Finally, between the two previous diagrams one ought to insert a third, presenting the theoretical space of habitus, that is, of the generative formulae (…) which underlie each of the classes of practices and properties (…)” (Bourdieu 2010: 120).