Undoing Enclosure

Representation and Determination in Bourdieu’s Berber Home Charlotte Grace EffectsAboutArchiveIssues

By Charlotte Grace

… a particular difficulty: to describe a way of dwelling that does not reduce order to a question of the relationship between things and their plan, between a world and a map. Yet I will have to begin with a plan.1

For Bourdieu physical space (that which is built or perceived physically) and social space (incorporating both the objective model and subjective vision of the social world) are seen as fundamentally derived from each other, with physical space thought of as the “repository of social meaning”.2 Semantic space can be understood as the site of symbolic power that sits between social and physical space. Bourdieu developed the concept habitus to speak about the production and reproduction of subjects over time, through their social and physical engagement with space. The term stems from Bourdieu’s study of the shifting (and enduring) subjectivities of the Algerian people throughout the process of colonisation. Habitus is also referred to as “a sense of place” or the process that defines the relationship between the body and its space.3

Diagram adapted by the author from Nikolaus Fogle 4

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