Does Habitus Matter? A Comparative Review of Bourdieu's Habitus and Simon's Bounded Rationality with Some Implications for Economic Sociology
Sociological Theory, Vol. 27, No. 4, Pg. 419-434.
Francois Collet
In this article, I revisit Pierre Bourdieu's concept of
habitus and contrast it with Herbert Simon's notion of bounded
rationality. Through a discussion of the literature of economic
sociology on status and Fligstein's political-cultural approach, I
argue that this concept can be a source of fresh insights into
empirical problems. I find that the greater the change in the social
environment, the more salient the benefits of using habitus as a tool
to analyze agents' behavior.
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