Intersubjectivity and Bourdieusian approaches to ‘ identity ’ Wendy Bottero

Bourdieu’s emphasis on the socialised subjectivity of habitus is increasingly used in discussions of ‘identity’ to indicate the limits to reflexivity, situating ‘identity’ in tacit practice. In emphasising the dispositional nature of ‘identity’, analysts also acknowledge more explicitly reflexive and selfconsciously mobilised aspects, however Bourdieu’s restrictive treatment of reflexivity makes it difficult to theorise the relations between these different aspects. The ‘problem of reflexivity’ is more properly a question of the intersubjective nature of practice, and the different aspects of ‘identity’ are better theorised as features of situated intersubjectivity. With practice the negotiated outcome of intersubjective coordination, then ‘calls to order from the group’, the routine monitoring of conduct, agents’ reflexive accounts of their activity, and the mobilisation of agents into collectivities can be explored as features of the collective accomplishment of practices, by networks of variously disposed agents, whose actions, whilst dispositional, must nonetheless be accounted for and aligned.