An acquired but structuring disposition towards the world constituted in practice (i.e. as a consequence of actual, practical experience) and always oriented towards practical situations and problems. The term dates back to Aristotle---habitus is the Latin translation of the Greek word hexis. It was revived for critical usage by the French scholars Marcel Mauss, working in anthropology, and several years later by Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The German theorist Norbert Elias also used the concept in Ăber den Prozess der Zivilisation (1939), translated as The Civilizing Process (1994). It was, however, the French sociologist Bourdieu, Pierre, who gave the concept the prominence it enjoys today. Interestingly, too, it seems he did not draw on any of these precursors, but rather came across the concept in Irwin Panofskyâs book on Gothic architecture. He developed the concept to theorize cultural behaviour as simultaneously subjective and objective. Habitus refers to those aspects of cultural behaviour such as taste in food or definitions of beauty which appear ânaturalâ but are in fact âlearnedâ. It manifests as âsavoir faireâ (âknowâhowâ) or more precisely as an understanding of how to âplay the gameâ---as Bourdieu points out, in sport, the rules of the game only create the conditions of possibility, but they do not determine how the game will actually be played, nor in fact how one will best succeed at the game. Knowing this---how to succeed in the game---is the practical knowledge Bourdieu has in mind when he refers to habitus. Crucially, the habitus is the locus of those actions---which Bourdieu defines as practices---which are performed unthinkingly, without intention or specific goal, save that of conforming to the demands of the field, which the subject has internalized. Bourdieu says habitus is embodied history. It transmutes the lessons of the past into a kind of âsecond natureâ that activates those lessons even as it forgets them. We do not need to recall when or how we acquired the taste or habit for a certain practice for that practice to be central to how we think and act in our daily lives. Further Reading: P. Bourdieu Le Sens pratique (1980), translated as The Logic of Practice (1990).