At the Table: A Reflexive Essay on Research Dispositions

Abstract

In response to a call for submissions for a theme issue of Studies in Art Education, I examine concepts of orientations, dispositions, and habitus, combining personal reflections with analysis of research literature to examine the history of one art educator and researcher. Significant influences included graduate school, the research discourse of the field, and social networks formed with peers and faculty. Sara Ahmed’s notion of orientations resonates with Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of dispositions and habitus; both have roots in phenomenology. However, while Ahmed examined racial and sexual orientations, Bourdieu applied his concepts to sociological analyses of artistic and cultural fields. In other research, I have adapted Bourdieu’s conceptual framework for historical analysis and interpretation of the field of art education. This reflexive history draws on concepts of orientations and dispositions to reflect on how the field structured one art educator’s habitus.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 My use of reflexive to describe my research is adapted from sociology, where reflexivity refers to the capacity of an agent to recognize forces of socialization, what Bourdieu (1996) referred to as “the space of possibles” (p. 206), and analyze their place in the social structure. I thank senior editor Dónal O’Donoghue for recommending Didier Eribon’s Returning to Reims (2013), an example of reflexive writing by a French historian and literary critic who examined his working-class upbringing and formal education. Like Eribon’s autobiographical book, this article fits within the tradition of humanities scholarship broadly conceived and informed by social science theory.