From the habitus to an individual heritage of dispositions. Towards a sociology at the level of the individual

It is argued that the notions sociologists use to conceptualize psychological processes occurring at the level of social groups capitalize too strongly on the idea that these processes are general and homogeneous in nature. In particular, the notion of ‘disposition’, which is central to Bourdieu's theory of the habitus and which is widely employed in sociological research, is found to rest upon these tacit and problematic assumptions which have never been tested empirically. Instead, we should envision that social agents have developed a broad array of dispositions, each of which owes its availability, composition, and force to the socialization process in which it was acquired. In particular, a distinction should be made between dispositions to act and dispositions to believe. Moreover, the intensity with which dispositions affect behavior depends also on the specific context in which social agents interact with one another. A focus on the plurality of dispositions and on the variety of situations in which they manifest themselves is at the core of a sociology at the level of the individual. Its research program conceives of individuals as being products of pluriform social processes occurring in very different domains. It focuses on social factors that may account for behavioral variations and changes rather than for irreducible differences between social groups.