THE POLITICAL, THE PUBLIC, AND THE PRACTICED: Towards an Interdisciplinary, Habitus-Based Theory of Social Space

Abstract

This thesis is an interdisciplinary project on theories of habitus and the social constitution of public space. I evaluate the utility of habitus in anthropology as an analytical approach to the social, focusing particularly on the context of urban space, and I use my development of the theory of habitus to explain the underlying process of Lefebvre’s right to the city and spatial appropriation. I engage in close readings of Bourdieu, Mauss, and Durkheim to develop a unified theory of habitus, and I then demonstrate the utility of this theory in relation to feminist theory and the constitution of the urban. I determine that the right to the city describes a natural result of urban social processes and that appropriation/production of space is the product of habitus through the embodiment of spatially and socially meaningful practice.