Power between habitus and reflexivity – introducing Margaret Archer to the power debate

Abstract

This article introduces Margaret Archer’s research on reflexivity to the power debate, alongside Pierre Bourdieu’s already influential concept of habitus. Both offer significant insights on social conditioning in late modernity. However, their tendency to the extreme of social determinism and voluntarism must be avoided. To do so, this article adopts Haugaard’s family resemblance concept of power, describing habitus and reflexivity as an important new binary of power instead of a conceptual zero-sum game. This strengthens the explanatory role of agency, central to the three dimensions of power, without losing sight of constitutive, structural power. It also helps overcome the habitus–reflexivity dichotomy in social theory and provides a starting point to evaluate Archer’s work from a power perspective.

Keywords:

• family resemblance
• habitus
• reflexivity
• Margaret Archer
• Pierre Bourdieu

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers, and Margaret Archer, Jonathan Dean, Gerard Delantey, Stuart McAnulla and Demetris Tillyris, for their insightful comments and encouraging words.