THE CONCEPT OF HABITUS IN THE RESEARCH OF DIGITAL DIVIDES AND INEQUALITIES
Abstract
In the paper, we discuss the relevance of the concept of habitus, developed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in the research of social inequalities and divides in digital practices. We approach digitalisation as a field of practice and social inequality, in which social processes are deeply imbued with the mediation of technologies. We particularly emphasise dimensions and levels of digital inequalities and divides, including the first-level digital divide that points to Internet access, the second-level digital divide that aims to differentiate the binary inequalities of Internet access from inequalities in skills and uses, and the third-level digital divide that poses the question of inequalities in the outcomes of Internet use. We present relevant empirical studies, with the aim of testing our main hypothesis regarding the relevance of the concept of habitus as an adequate research tool in the field. We confirm the hypothesis, demonstrating that this concept has both theoretical and methodological significance in the research of digital divides and inequalities.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Allan, G., & Phillipson, C. (eds.) (2003). Social Networks and Social Exclusion: Sociological and Policy Perspectives. London: Routledge.
Ambrasat J., Scheve C., Schauenburg, G., Conrad, M. and Schröder, T. (2016). Unpacking the Habitus: Meaning-Making Across Lifestyles. Sociological Forum, 31(4), 994-1017. doi: 10.1111/socf.12293
Birešev, A. (2014). Politika habitusa kao sociološki utemeljena utopija The politics of habitus as a sociologically grounded utopia Sociologija, 56(1), 41-59.
Blank, G., & Groselj, D. (2014). The dimensions of Internet use: Amount, variety and types. Information, Communication & Society, 17(4), 417-435.
Bourdieu, P. (1980). Le sens pratique. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Bourdieu, P. (1988). Vive la Crise! For Heterodoxy in Social Science. Theory and Society, 17(5), 773-787.
Bourdieu, P. (2013). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, D. E. (1991). Human Universals. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Brydolf-Horwitz, R. (2018). Embodied and entangled: Slow violence and harm via digital technologies. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 40(2), 391-408.
Chambers, D. (2006). New Social Ties: Contemporary Connections in a Fragmented Society. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Collins, R. (1975). Conflict Sociology: Toward an Explanatory Science. New York: Academic Press.
Collins, R. (2004). Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Costa, C. and Murphy, M. (Eds). (2015). Bourdieu, Habitus and Social Research: The Art of Application. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Deeming, C. (2014). The choice of the necessary: class, tastes and lifestyles. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 34(7/8), 438-454.
DiMaggio, P. (1979). Review Essay: On Pierre Bourdieu. American Journal of Sociology, 84(6), 1460-1474.
DiMaggio, P and Hargittai, E. (2001). From the 'digital divide' to 'digital inequality': Studying Internet use as penetration increases. Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Working Paper Series number 15. Retrieved from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pri/cpanda/15.html
DiMaggio, P., Hargittai, E., Celeste, C., & Shafer, S. (2004). Digital inequality: From unequal access to differentiated use. In K. M. Neckerman (Ed.), Social inequality (pp. 355-400). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Eynon, R. & Helsper, E. (2011). Adults learning online: Digital choice and/or digital exclusion? New Media & Society, 13(4), 534-551.
Gallisti, V., Rohner, R., Seifert, A., & Wanka, A. (2020). Configuring the older non-user: Between research, policy and practice of digital exclusion. Social Inclusion, 8(2), 233-243.
Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Goldthorpe, J. H. (2007). Cultural Capital: Some Critical Observations. Sociologica, 2, 1-23.
Goode, L. (2007). Digital. In Ritzer, G. (Ed.), The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (pp. 1159-1164. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Gorard, S., Selwyn, N., & Williams, S. (2000). Must try harder! Problems facing technological solutions to non-participation in adult learning. British Educational Research Journal, 26(4), 507-521.
Greer, B. et al. (2019). Digital exclusion among mental health service users: Qualitative investigation. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 21(1), e11696.
Halford, S. & Savage, M. (2010). Reconceptualizing Digital Social Inequality. Information, Communication & Society, 13(7): 937-955.
Hargittai, E. (2002). Second-level digital divide: Differences in people's online skills. First Monday, 7(4), 1-14. Retrieved from https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/942
Hargittai, E. and Hinnant, A. (2008). Digital inequality differences in young adults’ use of the internet. Communication Research, 35(5), 602-621.
Helsper, E. J. (2012). A corresponding fields model for the links between social and digital exclusion. Communications Theory, 22(4), 403-426.
Helsper, E. J. (2017). The social relativity of digital exclusion: Applying relative deprivation theory to digital inequalities. Communications Theory, 27(3), 223-242.
Hilgers, M., & Mangez, E. (2015). Bourdieu’s theory of social fields: Concepts and applications. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge.
Ignatow, G. & Robinson, L. (2017). Pierre Bourdieu: theorizing the digital. Information, Communication & Society, 20(7), 950-966. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2017.1301519
Khalid, S. & Pedersen, M. J. L. (2016). Digital exclusion in higher education contexts: A systematic literature review. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 228, 614-621.
King, A. (2000). Thinking with Bourdieu against Bourdieu: A ‘Practical’ Critique of the Habitus. Sociological Theory, 18(3), 417-433. https://doi.org/10.1111/0735-2751.00109
Kvasny, L. (2005). The role of the habitus in shaping discourses about the digital divide. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(2). Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2005.tb00242.x
Kvasny, L. (2006). Cultural (re)production of digital inequality in a US community technology initiative. Information, Communication & Society, 9(2), 160-181.
Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Lenski, G. (1966). Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification. New York: McGraw Hill.
Levina, N., & Arriaga, M. (2014). Distinction and status production on user-generated content platforms: Using Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production to understand social dynamics in online fields. Information Systems Research, 25(3), 468-488.
Liu, D., Baumeister, R. F., Yang, C. C., & Hu, B. (2019). Digital communication media use and psychological well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 24(5), 259-273.
Lutz, C. (2016). A social milieu approach to the online participation divides in Germany. Social Media + Society, 2(1), 1-14. https://doi.org/10. 1177/2056305115626749
Lutz, C. (2019). Digital inequalities in the age of artificial intelligence and big data. Human Behavior & Emerging Technologies, 1, 141-148. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.140
Macdonald, S. J., & Clayton, J. (2011). Back to the future, disability and the digital divide. Disability & Society, 28(5), 702-718.
Madden, M., Gilman, M., Levy, K., & Marwick, A. (2017). Privacy, poverty, and big data: A matrix of vulnerabilities for poor Americans. Washington University Law Review, 95, 53-126.
Madigan, E, & Goodfellow, M. (2005). The influence of family income and parents education on digital access: Implications for first-year college students. Sociological Viewpoints, 21, 53-62.
Mariscal, J., Mayne, G., Aneja, U., & Sorgner, A. (2019). Bridging the gender digital gap. Economics, 13(1), 1-13.
Marković Krstić, S. and Milošević Radulović, L. (2020). The social origin of the students and their choice of study programs at the faculties of the University of Niš. Teme, XLIV(4), 1137-1162.
McChesney, R.W. (2013). Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. New York and London: The New Press.
Micheli, M. (2015). What is new in the digital divide? Understanding Internet use by teenagers from different social backgrounds. In Cotten S. R. et al. (Eds.), Communication and Information Technologies Annual: Digital Distinctions and Inequalities Studies in Media and Communications, Volume 10 (pp. 57-89). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Napoli, P., & Obar, J. (2014). The emerging mobile Internet underclass: A critique of mobile Internet access. The Information Society, 30(5), 323-334.
Norris, P. (2001). Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet in Democratic Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Park, S. (2017). Digital inequalities in rural Australia: A double jeopardy of remoteness and social exclusion. Journal of Rural Studies, 54, 399-407.
Petrović, M., Bojković, N., Anić, I., and Petrović, D. (2012). Benchmarking the digital divide using a multi-level outranking framework: Evidence from EBRD countries of operation. Government Information Quarterly, 29, 597-607.
Pew. (2018). Social media fact sheet. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center: Internet & Technology. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/
Powell, A., Bryne, A., & Dailey, D. (2010). The essential Internet: Digital exclusion in low-income American communities. Policy & Internet, 2(2), 161-192.
Robinson, L. (2009). A taste for the necessary. Information, Communication & Society, 12(4), 488-507.
Robinson, L. et al. (2015). Digital inequalities and why they matter. Information, Communication & Society, 18(5), 569-582.
Rye, S. A. (2008). Exploring the gap of the digital divide: Conditions of connectivity and higher education participation. GeoJournal, 71(2-3), 171-184.
Sanderson, S. K. (2001). The Evolution of Human Sociality: A Darwinian Conflict Perspective. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Sassen, S. (1998). On the Internet and the Sovereignity. Indiana Journal od Global Legal Studies, 5(2). Retrieved from: http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol5/iss2/9
Sassen, S. (2002). Towards a Sociology of Information Technology. Current Sociology, 50, 365-388.
Sassen, S. (2007). A Sociology of Globalization. New York: Norton&Company.
Seifert, A. (2020). The digital exclusion of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of gerontological social work, 63(6-7), 674-676.
Sims, J., Vidgen, R., & Powell, P. (2008). E-Learning and the Digital Divide: Perpetuating Cultural and Socio-Economic Elitism in Higher Education. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 22(1), 429-442.
Smelser, N. J. (1988). Social Structure. In: Smelser, N. J. (ed.), Handbook of Sociology (pp. 103-129). Newbury Park: Sage Publications.
Spasić, I. (2013). Kultura na delu – Društvena transformacija Srbije iz burdijeovske perspektive Culture at work – Social transformation of Serbia from a Bourdieusian perspective Beograd: Fabrika knjiga.
Štrangarić, S. (2017). Kulturni kapital i znanje: problemi operacionalizacije u istraživanjima obrazovnih nejednakosti Cultural capital and knowledge: problems of operationalization in research on educational inequalities Sociološki pregled, 51(2), 300-323.
Thamm, R. (1992). Social structure and emotions. Sociological Perspectives, 35(4), 649-671.
Van Deursen, A., & Helsper, E. (2015). The third-level digital divide: Who benefits most from being online? In Communication and information technologies annual (pp. 29-52). Bingley: Emerald.
Van Dijk, J. (2005). The Deepening Divide: Inequality in The Information Society. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Van Dijk, J. (2006). Digital divide research, achievements and shortcomings. Poetics, 34(4-5), 221-235.
Warren, M. (2007). The digital vicious cycle: Links between social disadvantage and digital exclusion in rural areas. Telecommunications Policy, 31(6-7), 374-388.
Zillien, N., & Hargittai, E. (2009). Digital distinction? Status-specific types of Internet usage. Social Science Quarterly, 90(2), 274-291.
Zillien, N., & Marr, M. (2013). The digital divide in Europe. In M. Ragnedda & G. W. Muschert (Eds.), The digital divide. The internet and social inequality in international perspective (Routledge advances in sociology) (pp. 55-66). London: Routledge.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22190/TEME221221055R
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
© University of Niš, Serbia
Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND
Print ISSN: 0353-7919
Online ISSN: 1820-7804