The logic of practice

Pierre Bourdieu identifies two main forms of the logic of practice, which he designates as practical and reflexive knowledge. Practices, and the negotiations, deliberations and option-taking that produce them, are misrecognized by subjects as congruent with the order of things or as arising out of individual decision-making and agency. Bourdieu’s understanding of reflexivity is re-examined and reevaluated in his work on the socio-cultural roles, functions, status and value of the autonomous pole of the field of cultural production. The key element is Bourdieu’s reappraisal of the notion of disinterestedness. Practical sense or logic can be defined as the ability to comprehend and negotiate cultural fields, and by extension to participate, in a literate manner, in the game that is played out between subjects and the dynamics of those fields. Reflexivity involves a reflexive relation to the habitus, to demands and influences exerted by cultural fields, and to one’s own practices within those fields.