BOURDIEU’S POSITIVE ACCOUNT OF TACIT KNOWLEDGE
In this section I want to consider whether Bourdieu’s theoretical remarks succeed in
avoiding the horns of legalism and voluntarism (if they constitute a real dilemma) by
providing a dispositional account of tacit knowledge, or if they reduce to elaborate
redescription of his dilemma. In other words, perhaps Bourdieu succeeds in articulating
constraints on a theory of tacit knowledge rather than such a theory itself.
The notion of habitus is the central concept.
The structures constitutive of a particular type of environment . . . produce habitus,
systems of durable transposable dispositions, structures predisposed to function as
structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices
and representations which can be objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’ without
in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals
without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations
necessary to attain them, and, being all this, collectively orchestrated without
being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor. (Bourdieu, 1977: 72)
His second key explanatory concept is the notion of cultural capital, what might be called
the prestige or value attached to cultural artefacts, occupations, identities and activities.
Thus the tacitly understood imperative which governs the production of social structure
is the maximization of cultural capital.
Bourdieu’s other theoretical notions, field and strategy, are almost self-explanatory. A
field is the domain of an activity, so that we are all actors in many overlapping fields,
each of which determine strategies (plans) for maximizing cultural capital. Habitus is the
crucial notion since it articulates the idea that maximizing cultural capital depends on
knowledge of the constraints of the domain, the value of activities, and the ways to
maximize them. This knowledge is acquired through habituation. The agent who has it
does not have to intellectually plan her activities but simply recognizes and directly
responds to her situation. She is like Aristotle’s virtuoso who simply acts in character.
The contrast between the assent of the intellect to a propositional formula and the form
of knowledge Bourdieu is invoking is nicely expressed by Ryle when he contrasts a dispositional
to an intellectual conception of belief.