Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer – författare

This book is the first of three volumes of HabitusAnalysis that take the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu as a starting point to develop a methodical approach to the habitus of social actors. However, the concept of habitus and Bourdieu’s approach to language are somewhat disputed while his relationist epistemology is seldom paid tribute to. The present volume therefore in its first part deals with Bourdieu’s roots in relationist Neo-Kantian philosophy, the basic traits of his relationist sociology. The second part examines Bourdieu’s theoretical and empirical work on language before elaborating its own praxeological concept of language use that opens the road to a methodically and theoretically sound reconstruction of the habitus of social actors. In the second volume of HabitusAnalysis we will carefully re-read Bourdieu’s theory in order to develop a disposition-based theory of the habitus that emphasizes the creative potential of the linkage between mental orientations and socio-structural processes, classification and classes, as well as dispositions and positions. The method presented in the third volume will facilitate a detailed empirical analysis of the creative transformations operated by the habitus in relation with the social structures of domination and the dynamics of social differentiation.

Identität kann nach Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer als Netzwerk von Dispositionen des Wahrnehmens, Urteilens und Handelns begriffen werden. So lassen sich kollektive Akteure wie religiöse, ethnische oder politische Bewegungen in ihren sozialen Entstehungs- und Operationskontexten neuartig beschreiben. Bourdieus Soziologie weiterführend, kann das Zusammenspiel von kognitiven, affektiven und leiblichen Dispositionen mit den Dynamiken gesellschaftlicher Differenz und Konfliktivität als menschliche Praxis erfasst werden. Akteure kommen somit über subjektive Einstellungen und gesellschaftliche Positionierung, Reproduktivität und Kreativität des Handelns, Übereinstimmungen und Differenzen in den Blick. Kollektive Mobilisierung individueller Identitäten wird ebenso plausibel wie der Zusammenhang zwischen dispositionaler Orientierung und strategischem Kalkül. Schäfer entwickelt aus der empirischen Untersuchung religiöser Bewegungen in einem Counter-Insurgency-Krieg eine methodisch operationalisierte Theorie der Identität, die unmittelbar anschlussfähig ist an die bei Springer erschienene praxeologische Epistemologie und Methodologie der HabitusAnalysis.

Starting from the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Schäfer composes a methodical approach to habitus of social actors and the logic of their praxis: Building upon the generative terms of praxeology, he focuses on identity and strategy in processes of internalization, their transformation by means of dispositional schemes, and their externalization in action. The emphasis lies on a theory of dispositions that allows a flexible understanding of identity and strategy formation in the context of social experience and the interplay with social structures. This theory is developed over the course of a three-step analysis on habitus as a network of dispositions, on the dynamics that unfold between the logic of socio-structural processes and practical logic, and on the praxeological assessment of social structures via models of fields and the social space.This book is the second of three volumes of HabitusAnalysis. While the first volume deals with the epistemological underpinnings of praxeology, this book advances Bourdieu's theory with a special focus on creativity of action in the context of social structures, thereby preparing the methodological design of empirical models in the third volume.