Bourdieu on Habitus

More on Agency (from Susanne Eichner, Agency and Media Reception: Experiencing Video Games, Film, and Television)

The structures constitutive of a particular type of environment (...) produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations (...) The practices produced by the habitus [are] the strategy-generating principle enabling agents to cope with unforeseen and ever-changing situations (Bourdieu 2009: 72). 

The habitus is a ‘structured structure’, constituted by transposable dispositions (perception, thought, and evaluation) of a certain social position (a social practice), along with schemata (or representations) of these dispositions, generate practices, which in turn (re)produce social structures (structuring practice). Thus, the habitus adjusts practice to structure, ensuring the practical (re)production of structure. This model also holds implications for the agent, since, according to Bourdieu, the habi- tus, and not the agent herself, is determined by social structures.