Communities of Practice and Habitus: A Critique

Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is frequently drawn upon in work on learning and knowledge in organizations. However, this use is much looser than Bourdieu’s emphasis on habitus as generative structure. This tension is explored in an examination of the work of UK public house managers, using the notion of communities of practice. The issues that this raises about habitus are developed through a consideration of the work of Basil Bernstein. His work indicates the value of a concept that emphasizes durable dispositions to act, but such a concept needs to be embedded in a relational conception of the agency-structure divide.