A Critical Reflection of the Habitus and Its Potential for the Polarized Classroom

ABSTRACT

Within an increasingly polarized political society, the American university system is a space that is no exception. The authors approach the complex and dynamic issue of community engagement within a polarized space using their unique standpoint of attending and teaching at predominantly white institutions in the American rural Deep South. This piece takes into consideration the perceptions of the student and the instructor that contribute to a continuation of polarized space that inhibits not only our ability to build community but also our ability to “do sociology” in the classroom, promote critical thinking, and use our sociological imaginations to truly explore nuances. Given the two-fold issue of instructors and students often perceiving each other to be at odds within an increasingly politicized society, this commentary offers three pieces of advice on (1) transforming critical thinking for both the instructor and the classroom, (2) avoiding potential pitfalls within polarized spaces, and (3) offering hope for the future through suggestions on applying community-engagement in the classroom. This advice will transform the classroom to fit the ideals of community-engaged sociology and remind us that sociology should not simply be taught from a top-down approach, but rather utilized as a tool for social change.

KEYWORDS:

• Habitus
• political polarization
• reflexivity
• transformative classroom

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Our understanding of worldviews draws on Bourdieu’s (1977:72) articulation of habitus as “systems of durable, transposable dispositions,” as well as Wacquant’s (2016:66) argument that the habitus is actually “not static or eternal.”

² The focus is not on our womanhood; it is on our geographical space and preconceptions based on geographical location. We welcome further investigations more focused on the intersections of other marginalized statuses, such as race, gender, and class.

³ We emphasize the expression of negative views because that is evidence of a lack of critical reflexivity.

⁴ An example of this would be complaining about a space while not engaging in any community efforts or long-term organizing.

⁵ In many K-12 public institutions in the South, certain concepts and terminology are increasingly politicized and outlawed from the classroom such as critical race theory, gender theory, etc.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emily Lynn Tingle

Emily Tingle is a doctoral student at the University of Georgia. She received her Master of Science (Sociology) and Bachelor of Arts (Political Science and Sociology) from Mississippi State University. Her main areas of research include political sociology, social movements, family, and race/class/gender. Her master’s thesis, “Beyond the PTA: Mothering Work and Women’s Activism in the Deep South,” focused on the intersections of social movements and the family regarding the maintenance of gendered activist spaces. https://orcid.org/0009-0006-3761-2694

Megan Y. Phillips

Megan Phillips is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Mississippi State University. Megan’s research focuses on gender and stratification. Megan completed her Master of Social Science degree at Georgia Southern University, where she was recognized with the Graduate Research Award for her research on the manhood acts of trans men in the South and her contributions to the study of the perceptions of the American Dream among black college students. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2312-3965

Kaitlyn Paige Hall

Kaitlyn P. Hall is a doctoral student at Mississippi State University. She received her Master of Arts (Sociology) at the University of Mississippi and her Bachelor of Arts (Sociology) at Henderson State University in Arkansas. Her main research areas include gender, race, restaurant work, community, and methods. Her master’s thesis, “Serving Motherhood: Analysing the Balance and Justice of Foodwork in the Lives of Working Moms,” investigated the struggles and experiences of working moms in the restaurant industry as well as in the home during the 2020 COVID-19 shut down.