The bourdieusian notion of body hexis in Brazilian thesis and dissertations

Abstract

The article presents the notion of body hexis in Bourdieu’s work and a review of its use in Brazilian theses and dissertations. The notion of body hexis comprehends the body dispositions of habitus, it is the understanding of the body as a social signum. The search made in the Catalogue of Thesis and Dissertations of CAPES revealed the use of the notion of body hexis in empirical researches with several social groups, such as: teachers, military, peasants, sportspeople, among others. In these researches, the notion is associated to the analyses which lead to other aspects of Bourdieu’s work: the social distinction, the practical sense, the symbolic disputes, the matrices of social classifications and to the socially treated body.