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Habitus · Agency · TCI-R
Three bodies of work stand behind the reading: a sociology of inherited taste, a theory of how choice and structure make each other, and a validated instrument for measuring temperament and character.
One
Habitus — Bourdieu
- Habitus is Pierre Bourdieu's framework for how behaviour, thought and taste are shaped by social structure.
- He introduced it in his 1977 work Outline of the Theory of Practice.
- It names the durable, ingrained dispositions people acquire from their social environments.
- Class, gender and ethnicity are the structures that leave the deepest marks.
- Those dispositions guide everyday navigation and choice, usually without conscious thought.
- Habitus therefore links societal structure to individual action.
- People are not fully determined by context, yet their practices and preferences are shaped by it.
- Ways of moving, speaking and preferring an aesthetic quietly disclose a social background.
- The concept travels widely — sociology of culture and anthropology read bodily practice through it.
- Habitus is never static: education and work can reinforce or unsettle it, so agency and structure keep interacting.
Two
Agency — Structuration theory
- Structuration theory was developed by the British sociologist Anthony Giddens in the late twentieth century.
- Agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to choose.
- Social structure is the institutions, norms and forces that shape collective behaviour.
- Tradition treated the two as opposed; Giddens argued they are interconnected.
- He called this the duality of structure.
- Structures are produced and sustained by individual action.
- The same structures then constrain and guide that action.
- Nothing is fixed: ordinary practices such as childrearing and voting keep structures evolving.
- The theory clarifies how private decisions can move public norms over time.
- It has been criticised for vague definitions and for underweighting technology, yet it remains central to sociology.
Three
TCI-R — A validated personality instrument
- The Temperament and Character Inventory–Revised (TCI-R) rests on Cloninger's biopsychosocial model of personality.
- One validation study applied it through a positive-psychology lens to young international managers.
- Its first aim was to test for systematic differences from the US normative population.
- Its second aim was to validate the instrument cross-culturally and offer better normative data.
- 442 MBA students at an international business school in Spain completed the TCI-R.
- Data were collected between 2012 and 2017, from 58 nationalities, aged 25 to 38.
- Each dimension and subscale was compared against the US norms.
- Gender, age and cultural differences were analysed and the factor structure assessed.
- Significant differences from the US norms appeared on almost every personality dimension, with good psychometric properties in the international sample.
- The original seven-factor structure was confirmed with good fit, making the TCI-R valid and reliable here — useful for MBA teaching and positive leadership development.