Selective kinships: comparing the literarture sociologies od Pierre Bourdieu and Raymond Williams

Abstract

The literature sociologies of Bourdieu and Williams are structured in two fundamental concepts: “habitus” and “sentiment structures”, respectively. It’s very clear the resemblance between them: both try to translate a kind of practical conscience, acquired by the social agents from a particular socializing process. To the fi rst, the “habitus” is internalized in the living experience of a specifi c fi eld; while that to the second that conscience is formed in the interior of cultural groups. In this sense, both ideas talk about shared values which approximate and withdraw some agents one from the others, creating solidarity and competition. This text intends to show that, despite of the existing differences, the authors concepts don’t overestimate neither the reproduction, nor the social change, but, otherwise, try to explain these phenomena as a dialectic game.