Desistimiento de común acuerdo y desistimiento unilateral

At its core, the method implemented in the present study is concerned with the explanation of survival and adaptation as a process of creative reinvention in the practice of individuals. This practice is 'produced' through a set of dispositions which evolve from the interpenetration of individual lives and objective structures. These two elements, subjective activity and objective structures, are found constantly in juxtaposition in Bourdieu' s work. While many attributes of practice are built from customary dispositions which have outlasted many changes, including the change associated with the move from village to urban setting, they are also adapted to changed circumstances through reinvention and transformation. This is a quite distinct view from the traditions examined in Chapter One which argued that migrant practice was a mix of old and new ways, or simply a learning the new at the expense of the old. It is, in fact, a reinvention of the city as a form of new practice. Thus, Bourdieu proposes a theory for the dialectical analysis of practical life. The method offers the potential to exhibit the interplay between personal economic practice and the 'external' world of class history, structural and class practice. Further, one can demonstrate through the process of the dialectic, how the 'success' or 'failure' of people to achieve economic survival can be assessed.

One of the major characteristics of Bourdieu's work is the fact that his ideas are written, presented and re-written in a dialectical fashion. He works between theory, empirical work and back to the re­

formulation of theory again. Beginning with his work in the early 1960's until the present day, Bourdieu is constantly reformulating his theory, and the core ideas in it. 1 1 This makes reading his texts a journey in thought, and leads to a cumulative as well as an almost intuitive acceptance of his work. The main concepts of interest are habitus, and the social field which generates practice. Within these boundaries one finds other important threads. These include notions of strategy and struggle (for symbolic and material power) and various kinds of capital, i.e. economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital. Again, this is a method; Bourdieu 's work cannot be approached as a series of disparate concepts, or even as a theoretical approach with core ideas (Bourdieu 1985c). Understanding the approach as a method immediately removes it from a stultified form of categorical activity, and embraces an immediate and dynamic quality in the work of investigation. It provides a way of framing the problem, and a manner of asking questions.

The term 'generative structuralism' is used here since it is close to the sense Bourdieu generally applies to his method. Arguing that 'generative structuralism' is a simultaneous invention with the idea of 'generative grammar' found in Chomsky's work, Bourdieu refers

to

the way the general method

provides creative sources of analysis, rather than some simply-applied formula. In this way, he is actually making a clear and unambiguous break with all forms of structuralism, whether its source is Levi-Strauss, Althusser or Saussure. The parallel with Chomsky also has its limitations because of Chomsky's famous assertion that the generative structure for language has innate properties, a view which Bourdieu would not share. Nonetheless, for him, the method is generative in its general purpose to provide openings for creative investigation.

Habitus

Habitus12 refers to a set of dispositions, created and reformulated through the conjuncture of objective structures and personal history. Rather like the culture of a class or group which becomes internalised by an individual, and which becomes, in part, the basis for behaviour, it is also defined as sets of 'durable dispositions'. As a system of durable dispositions, it has an important implication for ethnography: that an informant's life, and their account of it, is not to be reduced to the 'objective experience' of the individual, independent of objective structures, nor as a simple mirror-image of those structures. Instead, the habitus generates an infinity of practices depending on the changing objective situation. In this way, habitus is thus posed as a generative principle, with the limits of its invention being contributed by the structure. Bourdieu writes:

The habitus is a system of durable, transposable dispositions which function as the generative basis of structured, objectively unified practice.

(Bourdieu 1979a:vii) The concept of habitus is perhaps most easily grasped at a theoretical level. However the following account offers an example of how 'habitus' can be used to understand the data.

Maria Elena comes from a very poor matrifocal household on the Oaxacan coast. The move to Oaxaca was due to her husband's work prospects. In the squatter settlement Maria Elena's family have no economic capital. Maria Elena's general approach to life in Linda Vista is one which is foreign to any Western rationalized version of time and success. For her the ultimate responsibility for her family's welfare lies in the hands of the Virgin of

J

uquila, a popular saint from her natal home. While she has organised certain practical aspects of her economic and social life to conform

to urban poor lifestyles she

has never changed her fundamental view of 'life's chances' which have always been based on appeal and prayer to the virgin. Thus, while she was able to use her work skills from the village to earn money in the city and while she has some

compadre

ties which give her a measure of support in daily matters,

she never felt that education for her children would ensure them a job and better chances at life in the

In document El estatus de la República Federativa de Yugoslavia entre 1992 y 2000 : “una cuestión no libre de dificultades jurídicas” (página 117-120)