Habitus, Reflexivity and The Structure-Agency Debate: Reconciling Bourdieu and Archer through an Adapted Emergentist Theory by Mr Nicholas Johnston

Degree Programme: PGDIP in Social Science Research.

Introduction

For many social scientists, the ‘structure-agency debate’ represents one of the most complex yet fundamental problems in the discipline. At its core, it asks to what extent are human actions constrained or enabled by surrounding social structures? Within this wider debate, Margaret Archer and Pierre Bourdieu offer two of the most influential yet contrasting perspectives. Each provide a starkly different account of thinking about how humans interact with the social world. First, Archer places the concept of reflexivity, the conscious, internal conversation through which all “normal” people make their way through the world, at the heart of human agency by arguing that it enables people to negotiate and respond to structural conditions (Archer, 2007, p.2). Reflexivity, in turn, plays a central part in what Archer terms morphogenesis, in which the social world has no pre-set form or preferred state and can indeed be changed by the intended or unintended consequences of reflexive actors’ agency (Archer, 1995, p.5). Through this framework, Archer can easily conceive emotions, dispositions or personal preferences as a reflexive part of agency. By contrast, Bourdieu emphasises a theory of practice in which agents pre-reflexively reproduce pre-existing, familiar social structures. He defines habitusas the embodied, historically conditioned dispositions through which agents think, perceive and act according to their social position (Bourdieu, 1990, p.64). As a result, the author claims that Archer abstracts the ‘normal’ actor into an isolated, reflexive mind, while Bourdieu dissolves the individual into a socially pre-conditioned object.

Drawing upon Dave Elder-Vass (2007, 2010), this essay will argue that these accounts can be reconciled within an ‘Emergentist Theory of Social Action’. Elder-Vass proposes an ontology that resembles Archer’s dualism, while retaining the theoretical value of Bourdieu’s praxeology – such as the concepts of habitus, capital and field (Elder-Vass, 2007b, p.327). This approach allows sociologists to recognise the influence of social structures without reducing agents to mere bearers of disposition, and to affirm human reflexivity without treating minds as somehow detached from and uninfluenced by the world around them. This shift can be illustrated through a single example: the traffic light (Sayer, 2005, p.26-28). Within this framework, the embodied decision to stop is a response in our neural-social systems, but a behaviour that we first consciously develop and can ultimately change. The same can be said for performative behaviours like wit, etiquette, social interaction, humour and other mundane aspects of social life. Accordingly, this essay will first compare and contrast the ontological assumptions underpinning Bourdieu and Archer, while examining the mechanisms of social action each proposes. It then introduces the possibility of synthesis in an emergentist framework before considering how such an approach can enrich understandings of structure and agency, particularly when applied to concepts such as emotions, class and social change.

Separating Bourdieu’s Ontological and Theoretical Framework

Bourdieu’s theoretical position arose from dissatisfaction with what he termed the “most ruinous” opposition between objectivism and subjectivism, or structure and agency (1990, p.25). Drawing on Heidegger’s ontology and Wittgenstein’s cognitive-epistemic system, Bourdieu developed a relational sociology in which practice is understood as both structured and structuring (Bourdieu, 1990, p.53). In The Logic of Practice (1990), he defines the concept of habitus as a system of durable, transposable dispositions and the cornerstone of his praxeological approach. Habitus pre-reflexively orientates individuals toward particular ways of perceiving, thinking and doing, thereby enabling action to be regulated without recourse to formal or explicit rules. Agency, therefore, is explained through ‘strategy’, in which human action, which is demarcated by social position and habitus, is patterned and predictable without being firmly mechanical. Thus, Bourdieu writes that the good player of the game, “does at every moment what the game requires” (1990, p.63) to advance their own social position, acting through a feel for the game. As such, this double framework of structure and agency requires what Wacquant and Bourdieu (1992, p.7) term a “double reading” of social action or one that accounts for both parts of the supposed ruinous dichotomy between objective structures and subjective experiences.

Given that practice is both structured and structuring, Bourdieu argues that social hierarchy is reproduced everyday through action without conscious intent. In practice, this means that the reproduction of class identities and social distinctions occurs continually in the classroom, workplace and across any field of social life (Bourdieu: 1973, p.56). For Bourdieu, this reproduction of social and cultural hierarchies and norms explain the persistence of inequalities and class division, even in societies that profess to be a meritocracy. In Distinction (1984), he writes that, “the principle of division into logical classes which organises the perception of the social world is itself the product of internalisation of the division into social classes” (p.170). As such, habitus therefore not only structures classed practices, but is itself structured by class position. Differing class dispositions are thus not only mere learned behaviours, or conscious expressions of reflexivity, but rather are embodiments of social distinction. The internalisation of such difference necessitates actors to act predictably in their bodily dispositions (hexis) as displayed in posture, accent and language, which both arises from and reproduces social distinction. How this dynamic of structure and agency is maintained derives precisely from the broader social architecture of field and capital.

For Bourdieu, a field is a “relatively autonomous world” (1993, p.73) of social life, structured by relations of power, struggle and competition. Each field (political, educational, cultural or other) is defined by its particular stakes, rules and dominant form of capital: economic, cultural, social and symbolic (Wacquant and Bourdieu, 1992:7). Agents occupy positions of varying dominance in these fields according to the capital that they possess, while habitus predispositions them to act in ways likely to reproduce their own position. As Bourdieu argues in On the State, the state itself emerges as the “central bank of symbolic credit” or the ultimate authority in processes of shaping action by controlling legitimisation, classification and emotional regulation (Heaney, 2024, p.145). In this context, even seemingly individual and human expressions of agency, such as emotional expression and personality, are products of habitus and may even be used strategically by the state or actors, in a deployment of capital.

Bourdieu’s social theory has been widely criticised. First, both Archer (2007) and Sayer (2005) argue that Bourdieu’s ontology produces an over-socialised conception of agency, which leaves little room for the individual. For instance, he rarely explains how agents can step outside of their dispositions to critique or transform them. Sayer, in particular, argues that while “something like the concept of habitus” is useful, Bourdieu’s conception of it is overly deterministic (Sayer, 2009, p.88) Indeed, although Bourdieu does acknowledge some possibility for reflexivity in Pascalian Medititations, it is solely confined to a crisis of hysteresis, in which habitus no longer fits the field in times of disruption and dislocation (Bourdieu, 2000, p.160). Such moments are powerful but altogether exceptional. Second, although habitus is essentially the driver of human action, Bourdieu lacks the conceptual means to theorise its very transformation over time. In other words, where Bourdieu’s theoretical ideas are useful, they are somewhat limited by their author’s rejection of reflexivity or another concept to explain social change. Here, Elder-Vass provides a mechanism to reconceptualise habitus as an emergent, revisable system of dispositions grounded in neural and social processes (2010, p.21). Within this framework, dispositions are enduring but not immutable; practices can be modified or capital deployed either pre-reflexively or through conscious action. In this synthesis, a form of Archer’s reflexivity can emerge, rescuing habitus, field and strategy from Bourdieu’s determinism.

Reflexivity and the Problem of Over-Stating the Individual

In many respects, Archer’s ontological position is set against the coined central conflationism of Bourdieu (Archer, 1995). Rejecting the notion of practice being both structured and structuring, her morphogenetic approach rests upon a central ontological commitment: that there are explainable and intelligible interactions between society and our ideas, yet both structure and agency must be treated as analytically distinct (Newman, 2017, p.1). Archer’s critical realist framework therefore insists upon ‘analytical dualism’ (Archer, 1995), in which structure and agency are thus not erroneously collapsed into one another. As such, she argues that social structures have a reality and causal power independent of the agents who inhabit them. In Realist Social Theory (1995), Archer identifies reflexivity, the internal conversation through which agents mediate their objective cultural and social contexts, as the key mechanism through which reflexive internal dialogue links to social outcomes. Her later typology identifies four principal modes of reflexivity which shape how agents formulate and enact social action: communicative, autonomous, meta and fractured reflexivity. Each mode accounts for variations in agency by proposing distinct patterns of self-reflection. For instance, meta-reflexives will assess action through moral and value-orientated criteria, whereas communicative reflexives prioritise consensus and secondary confirmation from other agents. Regardless of the type of reflexive, every agent pursues reflexively defined ‘projects’ based upon their own concerns (Archer, 2007, p.5).

Archer’s reflexivity is of particular value when considering how Bourdieu fails to account for social change. First, Archer developed a clear morphogenetic cycle to close the gap between realist ontology and practical social theorising. For Archer, any social phenomenon can be explained by morphogenesis, in which agents change structures, or morphostasis, in which they act to maintain them (Archer, 1995, p.166). In her model, structural conditioning (t1) are emergent and necessary outcomes of the actions of past agents which then are interacted with by current agents in the process of social interaction (t2). During this process, agents either transform or reproduce structures (t3), which drives new or maintains social actions (t4) (Archer, 1995, p.194). For instance, Archer’s model can be deployed to explain the changing presence of women in the workforce. Where historical structures and conditioning (t1) previously limited access to paid employment, disruptive events, such as the World Wars, drove labour shortages which enabled women to enter the workforce (t2) (Goldin, 1991, p.741). Through these interactions, agents gradually challenged and transformed traditional gender expectations (t3), resulting in changes to legislation and workforce practices (t4).

In this sense, structures do not determine agency but rather simply constrain or enable the possibilities open to agents. Archer’s analytical dualism is therefore strongly supported by her own theory of social change and vice versa. Second, Archer’s theoretical framework can easily conceive emotionality as a reflexive “commentary on our concerns” (Archer, 2000, p.193) by defining emotions as a reflexive response. This conceptualisation is shared by Sayer, who argues that even our own morality and values, which are shaped by reflexive emotionality, drives internal conversation toward certain projects and away from others (Sayer, 2005, p.949., p.954).

While the author accepts Archer’s ontological position there are a number of ways in which her typology lacks Bourdieu’s theoretical robustness. First, although Archer recognises emotionality as a part of the reflexive project, her account has heavily been criticised by Burkitt for relegating emotion to a factor of simple reflection rather than being “woven into the fabrics of the interactions we are engaged in” (2012, p.459). Consequently, Archer’s rationalism of emotions neither accounts for its role in shaping an actor’s projects or how they are stimulated and shaped by surrounding structures. Second, Archer’s insistence that different types of reflexivity are a greater predictor of an actor’s social position and actions than class fundamentally relegates those of lower social standing by disavowing them from their social condition. Her neglect of the significance of actors internalised and structural constraints (Mouzelis, 2008, p.201, p.212) presents a reductive and patronising view of the working class, who she describes as lacking “a bit of gumption, a sense of grudge or grievance, an eye to the main chance and a touch of adventurism” (Archer, 1985, p.348). In contrast, Bourdieu’s theoretical frameworks have been heavily utilised in sociology to precisely challenge structural differences and to highlight inequalities. Therefore, applying reflexivity to agency without a fuller engagement of structural forces is not only analytically limited, but problematic. Again, Elder-Vass provides the bridge. Agency in an emergentist framework depends upon a two-stage causal process, in which structures inevitably produce one of two actions: an agent’s compliance through practical reasoning or a recalibration of action in response to constraint (2007, p.475). This formulation perseveres Archer’s stratified ontology while offering the possibility for the incorporation of Bourdieu’s relational approach.

Emergentist Theory as Reconciliation

As aforementioned, Elder-Vass’s Emergentist Theory offers the possibility of synthesis by proposing an ontology that resembles Archer’s dualism, which understands structure and agency as two different phenomena (Elder-Vass,2010, p.4). His approach fundamentally identifies agency with the causal powers of human individuals (2007b, p.330). Nonetheless, it retains the theoretical value of Bourdieu’s praxeology with an enhanced role of reflexivity within it. For Elder-Vass, Archer and Bourdieu’s position in the structure-agency debate can be bridged by understanding structures as made up of roles that are occupied by real, individual people but which also work to structure relations (2007a, p.34). This reflects the broader sociological concept of ‘emergence’, whereby structures arise from the actions of individuals yet are not reducible to explanation in terms of individuals (Sawyer, 2001, p.551). As such, roles do have a causal influence in the extent to which incumbents adopt to their characteristic behaviour in a case of downward causation, yet do not fully determine the actions taken or outcomes provoked by individuals (2007a, p.34). As a result, Elder-Vass recognises that the causal powers of roles lie in conditioning humans “neural networks” to predispose them toward certain mental states (2007b, p.337). Nonetheless, Elder-Vass re-affirms the reflexive capabilities of humans to challenge structures and even their own dispositions in a four-step process (2007b, p.340):

Belief formation: In which dispositions are shaped by surrounding structures, the field occupied and lived experience which are implemented at a neural level.
Decision making: In which agents have the causal power to reflectively think about plans or ‘projects’, which is co-determined by the expected behaviour in roles.
Decision storage: Actions, realised or not, are stored to modify current and future dispositions.
Implementation: Actions are then implemented, reflexively or not.

Elder-Vass’ social theory thus synthesises habitus and reflexivity by defining them as complementary. The former provides the pre-reflective basis of practice by defining roles and the social position of agents; the latter offers the individual the agency to transform themselves and their social world. In particular, action either derives from two sources: conscious reason or unconscious reason. In the former, a decision is made by agents due to a process of genuine, reflexive consideration and in the latter neural-social dispositions subconsciously influence them. Such dispositions are a learned, socially produced tendency in the brain that inclines individuals to perceive and act in a way consistent with social norms, although reflexive deliberation may be invoked up until the last minute in decision-making (Elder-Vass, 2007b, p.338, 339 & 342). However, this boundary between consideration and disposition remains blurred, as habitus operates ‘probabilistically’ by predisposing agents to take ‘probably’ take certain courses of action (Strand & Lizardo, 2021, p.405-407). An emergentist theory of social action can therefore identify the reflexive individual as being influenced by Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts of habitus, strategy and capital. In this sense, Sayer’s traffic light example (Sayer, 2005, p.26-30) is useful in outlining the practice of agency in Elder-Vass’ four-step process:

Agents are generally disposed to stop at red lights as a result of pre-existing, surrounding social structures created by previous agents.
Agents can reflexively reflect on the thought of stopping or not stopping, but this thought process is also co-determined by their expected behaviour and roles as a part of society.
Whatever action is taken, will affect future ones by re-affirming or challenging pre-dispositions.
Action (stopping or going) is then taken by the agent, either as part of a conscious or unconscious reason for action.

The remainder of this essay will briefly examine how this model of structure and agency can be helpful in enhancing the critiqued understandings of emotions, class and social change.

Emotions, Class and Social Change

While Archer’s ontological dualism is useful in locating emotion as a human quality, her relegation of it to a part of rational, reflexive commentary limits the relational construction of what emotions are. As Hochschild identifies (1983, p.18), acts and management of emotion are fundamentally guided by socially constructed feeling rules, including by the roles of agents in formal management and religious institutions. To be clear, feeling rules are not rules in the mechanical sense which Bourdieu rejects, and Hochschild further identifies the ability of agents to conform or deviate from them as necessary (1983, p.20). Thus, when interpreted within an emergentist theory, agents are neurally disposed in their emotional management and action by feeling rules, which are maintained both in practice and structure by habitus and the expected behaviour of roles. Nonetheless, agents have the reflexive power to conform to or deviate from emotional expectation and management through reflexivity, in a way that pursues their own projects. This emotional expression goes beyond a “commentary on concerns” by fundamentally re-affirming or challenging an individual’s dispositions and tendencies beyond their momentary reflexive response. (Archer, 2000, p.193). As a result, Bourdieu and Archer may be synthesised to understand emotions and emotional agency as a causal power of the individual outside of structure, but one also co-determined by both reflexive capacity and habitus in a way that shapes actual emotional practice (Elder-Vass, 2007b, p.341).

Second, incorporating Bourdieu’s theoretical framework into Archer’s account of reflexivity allows class tastes and dispositions to be understood as something partially structured and structuring, but not fundamentally immutable. Archer’s emphasis on reflexivity as a determinant of social outcomes can be related to the structural conditions of class, which, in turn, co-determine action. Empirical research by Golob & Makarovič (2019, p.5-10) in Slovenia demonstrate this dynamic: post-communist structural changes have produced gendered, classed and generational gaps in reflexive capacities, largely as a result of uneven access to education. Using a quantitative survey design based on Archer’s Internal Conversation Indicator (ICONI) (p.6), the author’s analysis reveals statistically significant variation across socio-demographic variables in levels of reflectivity. Thus, within Elder-Vass’ framework, class is reproduced through social conditions and mechanisms such as expected behaviour of roles, which shape reflexive capacities. Nonetheless, class mobility remains possible due to an individual’s ability to mediate between structure and agency or promote wider morphogenesis. Within this, agents must be understood as classed through both unequal access to capital in certain fields and the conscious actions of organised agents known as norm circles (2012, p.182). However, class and class culture itself is only an imagined convergence that may produce actual convergence, as it remains co-dependant on morphostasis and thus vulnerable to changes in either social structures or individual agency (Elder-Vass, 2012, p.181). As a result, an emergentist framework of structure and agency is useful in recognising that while class and reflexive capacity do shape dispositions, neither are utterly deterministic.

Finally, Elder-Vass’ four-step process aligns closely with Archer’s morphogenetic model of social change while cementing the neural-social predispositions that may inhibit it. Within this framework, structural contexts, like Bourdieusian notions of the uneven distribution of capital across specific fields, can be shown to play a significant role in shaping practiced, pre-reflexive dispositions that are held in neural-social networks. The ensuing pattern of unconscious reasoning tends to maintain morphostasis (Elder-Vass, 2007b, p.338, 339 & 342). Nonetheless, Morphogenesis remains possible due to the reflexive capacities of agents to question and resists the behavioural expectations attached to their roles (Elder-Vass, 2007a, p.34). In this sense, emergentist theory can account for social change by introducing a critical distance between what norm circles demand and the deliberative capacity of individuals to have agency over what they endorse in conscious reasoning (Elder-Vass, 2012, p.10). In this way, Elder-Vass adds nuance to both Archer’s structural conditioning (t1) and social interaction (t2) by incorporating Bourdieusian attention to inequalities and reproduced practices while preserving reflexivity as the engine of change. The result is a helpful model in which structures co-determine tendencies and the praxeological action of reproducing positions, but agents retain the reflexive capacity to transform their surroundings, enabling morphogenetic outcomes over time.

Conclusion

This essay has demonstrated the contested nature of the structure-agency debate through an analysis of Pierre Bourdieu’s and Margaret Archer’s theoretical oeuvres. It has argued that for a more granular framework of sociological analysis, an emergentist model of structure and agency can synthesise the strengths of both thinkers while mitigating some of their weaknesses. It first examined the conflationist ontological assumptions underpinning Bourdieu’s praxeology, while recognising the value of concepts such as habitus, field and capital in explaining how social position and inequalities are reproduced through dispositioned practices. On the other hand, it demonstrated the limits of Bourdieusian theory when confronted with social change and the transformation of dispositions. It then explored Archer’s critical realist framework, noting how her insistence on analytical dualism and the causal power of individuals provide a clear mechanism through which agents negotiate structural concerns and pursue their own projects. Nonetheless, it also demonstrated how Archer’s typology risks over-rationalising the self, reducing agents’ emotions to a mere commentary on concerns, rather than a concern in itself, and underplaying the structural influences on individuals’ reflexivity.

The essay then introduced Elder-Vass’ emergentist model in section three as a route to reconciliation. By conceptualising dispositions as neurally grounded yet socially formed, and by treating roles and norm circles as having distinct causal powers yet being limited by the extent to which reflexive individuals endorse them, emergentism preserves Archer’s emphasis on reflexivity while incorporating Bourdieu’s relational aspect of practice. This integrated account demonstrates how, although structure and agency remain analytically distinct, action can arise from both pre-reflexive tendencies and reflexive deliberation, with dispositions remaining durable yet revisable through reflection and social interaction (t2). In sub-chapter four, the paper illustrated the added value of this conception of structure and agency by applying it to emotions, class and social change. It showed how emotional expression can be considered as shaped by Burkitt’s feeling rules yet open to reflexive calibration and how class dispositions and reflexive tendencies are structured by imagined convergence that may produce actual convergence. Finally, it considered how morphogenesis emerges from the reflexive capacities of agents to question and resists the behavioural expectations attached to their roles and thus change structures.

In sum, an emergentist model of structure and agency offers a more comprehensive understanding of structure, agency and social action than either Bourdieu or Archer alone. It captures both the influence of social structures in shaping dispositions and the transformative powers of the agents themselves to challenge their own surroundings.

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