Ideologies, Narrative, Stereotypes and Discourses

2268 words 10 pages
According to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, a habitus is referring to a person’s way of thinking, acting, and behaving. A habitus is a structure that helps a person comprehend and deal with society. It can be simply seen as a merger of society and the individual. (Wysocka, Paulina, 2013). Habitus is both a “structured structure”—the effect of the actions of, and our interactions with, others—and a “structuring structure”—it suggests and constrains our future actions (Bourdieu, 1992). In other words, habitus is both the “embodiment of our social location” (i.e., class, ethnicity, race, sexuality, gender, generation, and nationality) (Noble & Watkins, 2003) and “the structure of social relations that generate and give significance …show more content…

Being ideological is adhering to ones beliefs in the face of the overwhelming contradictory. Making a stereotype is a generalization therefore there is always contradicting evidence. However discourse is the opposite as it is language and language is reality. I would argue, based on Marxist theory that the way the individual habitus is shaped by ideology is that individuals will conform to the beliefs and all things ‘natural’ according to the group with the most power. Their ideas, thoughts and actions will be controlled by the dominant ideology. This creates less individuality and more agreement in view and opinion in society. However according to Gramsci’s theory of Hegemony operating on the level of common sense audiences are not easily or always convinced that the system operates in their best interests. Ultimately, therefore, he believed that audiences exercise agency (Lane, Dr. Karen, 2013). Therefore the individual habitus is shaped through self-awareness and self understanding and personal opinions therefore it allows more room for freedom thinking creating more ideas and more individuality.

O’Shaughnessy and Jane Stadler define the narrative as a ‘basic way of making

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