RECOMENDACIONES

Social stratification was one of the main dimensions which Weber identified that constrained lifestyles choices; ‘the life chances that enhance participation in health lifestyles are greatest among upper and middle socioeconomic groups who have the best resources to support their choices’ (Cockerham et al. 1993, 418). This implies that the distribution of resources, which is determined by the political economy, has a direct impact on people’s choices by defining individuals’ structural positions. One of the main sociological theories about the importance of people’s social location and its

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relation to actions or practices was developed by Bourdieu (1977, 1984). As it will be argued, Bourdieu’s social theory on reproduction of the social structure and social practice is a very good approach to understand the tension between choices and chances, i.e. agency and structure, that underlies the research question. Even though Bourdieu did not explicitly analyse health, his theory of capital and the reproduction of social structure has been widely used by researchers of health inequalities (S. Williams 1995; Gatrell, Popay, and Thomas 2004; Carpiano 2007; Singh-Manoux and Marmot 2005; Veenstra 2007; Abel 2008; Pinxten and Lievens 2014; Blaxter 2010; Shilling 2003)

According to Bourdieu, people’s location within the social structure depends on the distribution of different types of capital which ‘represents the immanent structure of the social world’ (Bourdieu 1986, 242). He recognises three types of capital: economic, cultural and social (Bourdieu 1986). Economic capital makes reference to income and wealth; anything that can be converted immediately into money, such as property. Cultural capital, which may exist in the embodied, objectified and institutionalised state, refers to ‘long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body (…); cultural goods; (…); and educational qualifications’ (Bourdieu 1986, 243) respectively. Finally, social capital is the actual or potential material and non-material resources that people have from the fact that they belong to a network of social relations, and how this belonging may be translated into benefits. These different types of capital are interrelated and may all be converted into economic capital, with varying degrees of difficulty.

A person’s social location would define what Bourdieu calls ‘habitus’, i.e. ‘systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as

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structuring structures, that is, as principle which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attend them’ (Bourdieu 1990, 53). This means, firstly, that the habitus engenders the dispositions, that is, thoughts and perceptions that give meaning and sense to the existent conditions and practices, in this case, health-related practices. These dispositions are embodied and are experienced by people as ‘natural’ ways of thinking and acting. Since they depend on the individual’s social position, those who share the same habitus, have similar dispositions, thoughts and perceptions (Bourdieu 1984, 173), e.g. similar health-related practices.

Secondly, Bourdieu states that the habitus produces the practices that make sense according to the dispositions, therefore, reproducing itself. This ‘structuring structure’

‘tends to generate all the ‘reasonable’, ‘common-sense’, behaviours (and only these) which are possible within the limits of these regularities, and which are likely to be positively sanctioned because they are objectively adjusted to the logic characteristic of a particular field, whose objective future they anticipate’ (Bourdieu 1990, 55–56). The habitus produces practices that make sense within the ‘natural world view’ and the objective limits, reinforcing or structuring individuals’ predisposed dispositions and generates a ‘stylistic affinity’ (Bourdieu 1984, 173) since they are similar among individuals of the same habitus.

In accordance with this theory, health-related practices are situated in the unconscious of individuals, implying that people’s actions do not respond necessarily to a health concern, but rather on what is obvious to them according to their worldviews and perceptions; they follow their own practical knowledge, which reproduces the

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structure and dispositions created by the habitus. Bourdieu calls this the ‘feel for the game’ which he defines as ‘what gives the game a subjective sense – a meaning and a

raison d’être, but also a direction, an orientation, an impending outcome, for those who take part and therefore acknowledge what is at stake’ (Bourdieu 1990, 66). However, this ‘investment’ would be an illusion since it never becomes conscious for the agents involved in the practices. The practical knowledge and belief that guides and gives sense to health-related practices is internalised in such an unconscious way, that it is embodied and is described by Bourdieu as ‘a state of the body’ (1990, 68). This means that the actor’s practices are unconsciously oriented towards the reproduction of his or her conditions and predispositions, and therefore, the social structure.

One way through which Bourdieu states that habitus and practical knowledge orient practices is taste. Taste is considered to be ‘the propensity and capacity to appropriate (materially or symbolically) a given class of classified, classifying objects or practices, is the generative formula of life-style, a unitary set of distinctive preferences which express the same expressive intention in the specific logic of each of the symbolic sub- spaces, furniture, clothing, language and body hexis’ (Bourdieu 1984, 173). People act according to their tastes, to their preferences, which have a symbolic and distinctive character and operate in an unconscious and determined way that they ignore. This would mean that people’s choices are not undetermined preferences, even though they may be experienced as such, but they rather respond to necessities structured by the habitus which is determined by people’s social location or possession of the different types of capital. Bourdieu states that taste ‘functions as a sort of social orientation, a ‘sense of one’s place’ guiding the occupants of a given place in social space towards the social positions adjusted to their properties, and towards the practices or goods

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which benefit the occupants of that position’ (Bourdieu 1984, 466). An example of this is Bourdieu’s observation about the different sport preferences between working class and professional class individuals (Bourdieu 1984). While the first showed a tendency to prefer sports that are popular and accessible to all social classes, such as soccer, the second were more interested in those activities that required investing not only money, but also time and training, such as golf. By engaging with these health- related practices, both social classes reproduced the structure.

To sum up, following, Bourdieu’s theory, health-related practices would be determined by the habitus, that is to say, by the social structure that reproduces itself in those actions. Williams defines health-related behaviour as ‘a largely routinized feature of everyday life which is guided by a practical or implicit logic’ (1995, 583). People are not aware of the meaning or significance of health behaviours since these are embedded into their daily life and, therefore, are not a matter of reflection or questioning. In this sense, health-related behaviour acquires different meanings to individuals, depending on their habitus and taste, all of them ‘caught up in struggles for social recognition and distinction’ (S. Williams 1995, 599) which remains in the unconscious of individuals.