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Pierre Bourdieu

1 August 1930-23 January 2002

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Action is a trajectory within a social field which determines the 'social fate' that propels an actor towards the places to which their socially constituted dispositions predestine them.

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Action is explained in terms of position and trajectory within a social field.

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Agency is a phenomenon limited to those instances where there is a selection between culturally determined predefined choices (i.e. Chocolate or vanilla).

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Agency is always confined to the constraints of the habitus which embodies the history of the group or class to which the agent belongs.

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Agency is constrained on the one hand by ingrained dispositions (which constrain understanding) and on the other, by social or material capital (which constrain the sphere of possibility).

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Agency is not at all the same as free will insofar as it is deeply imbued with, and patterned by habitus... that is, the notion that you know what you are supposed to do and not supposed to do without even the need for anyone to explain it.

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Agency is something one negotiates vis-a-vis the social and cultural structures of society.

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Agency is the idea that men are like cardplayers, seizing chances in the flow of the game, often through intuition as much as reason.

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Agency is the idea that, in a card game, while the prior distribution of the cards sets limits, a good player can squeeze out extra tricks from quite unpromising hands.

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Agency is when a rule plays a role in the production of the action, by making it sensitive to the possibility of mistake.

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Bodily hexis is a pattern both individual and systematic, charged with a host of social meanings and values.

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Bodily hexis is political mythology embodied, rendered into a permanent disposition of standing, speaking, feeling, and thinking.

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Bodily hexis is the physical space one claims with one's body through a bearing and gestures (which can be self-assured or reserved, expansive or constricted, aggressive, careless, or unconscious).

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The Body is a resource to greater or lesser degrees, and can be converted into economic, cultural, and social capital.

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The Body is biological, yet it is inherently unfinished, becoming transformed (imbued with marks of social class) within society.

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The Body is, for society, itself a kind of memory entrusted in abbreviated and practical form, with the fundamental principles of the arbitrary content of the culture.