We defined habitus as a way of being, a way of using rules to navigate field and gain capital. Skills such as this can be used in a variety of ways. For example a simple card game such as Golf. Knowing the rules, and knowing your hand will help you navigate your further decisions to allow you to get ahead in the game. You are then able to manipulate these rules to your advantage. Habitus has five characteristics that are extremely important in its meaning. It is durable/ and transposable dispositions, a structured structure, a structuring sharable structure, practices in a non-reflexive way, and it has capacity for change, although change is seldom. Who we are is highly dependent on the society we live in, how we grew up, and the values that we all have instilled in us. Such an example can be seen again in gender roles. Traditional gender roles support that men are superior to women. Men work, women stay home, boys like blue and girls like pink. As sociology students, we all know that gender is a social construction, yet we still adhere to them. When it is known that a family member is having a little girl many of us will still gravitate toward pink clothing, bows and dolls. We have been constructed to believe that blue is a boy color. We are all predisposed to these ideologies. So while we all know that colors do not truly reflect a difference between male and female, that change is hard to make. I have a five year old cousin, and while my uncle says he doesn’t care if he plays with girl toys because a toy is a toy, he still complained that his son was watching a “girl show” Isn’t a cartoon a cartoon? Again, he is predisposed to these beliefs and his structure is based on the experience of what he knows.
Field and habitus while very complex, are both detrimental to understanding the society that we live in. All of us are members of various fields whether we know it or not. This can be a team, our work place, or even a scholarly activity. We all also practice habitus, there are some structures that have been changed due to our certain beliefs or actions, and we have all used rules to our advantage to make advancements.