`Habitus and Bureaucratic Routines', Cultural and Structural Factors in the Experience of Informal Care

Abstract

This article draws on Bourdieu's notion of habitus to address the interaction between cultural and structural factors in influencing the experience of informal care among Bangladeshi women in London. The authors present a secondary analysis of a qualitative study focusing on the accounts of informal care. The data were drawn from a two-year study with Bangladeshi women aged 35—55. Thirty-two out of the 100 women in the original study were providing care, mostly in isolated circumstances and with little or no formal support. The authors analysed the accounts of these 32 women and in the context of high levels of suffering and distress, three key themes emerged: amplification of suffering, dispositions of duty and religion and entitlements and fields of struggle. The gaps in access to formal support faced by these women suggest that strong cultural and structural forces determined their experience of informal care and the meanings they attached to their role as informal carers. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu and others, the authors suggest that where there is a lack of agency and resistance to support services, the explanation needs to move beyond poor information and language issues to a more rounded understanding of relationship between habitus and conflicts over local fields of welfare.

Perceptions of unmet needs for community social care services in England. A comparison of working carers and the people they care for

“…These are disability, hours of unpaid care per week, carer's gender, ethnicity, health, employment status, care‐recipient's ethnicity and gender, and relationship of carer to care‐recipient (Zweibel & Lydens , Twigg & Atkin , Doty et al . , Pinquart & Sörensen , Ahmed & Rees Jones , Van der Roest et al . , Williams & Johnson , Parveen et al .…”

“…) and may result in unmet need. In addition, cultural norms of duty and filial obligations related to ethnicity and caring may result in disagreement between carer and care‐recipient on needs for services (Pinquart & Sörensen , Ahmed & Rees Jones , Williams & Johnson , Parveen et al . ).…”

Cultures of resistance? A Bourdieusian analysis of doctors' antibiotic prescribing

“…Ahmed & Jones, 2008;Brown et al, 2008). Here we utilise Bourdieu's theory of practice (1990; 1998) for conceptualising the structure-agency dialectic as evident in a group of Australian doctors' accounts of antibiotic prescribing.…”

“…It is worth returning to the fact that this study provides insight into habitus within one particular context of antibiotic use and infection control. Furthermore, that there are distinct spheres of practice within health systems whereby rules and norms develop, exist and perpetuate (Ahmed & Jones, 2008).…”

Hygiene and Biosecurity: The Language and Politics of Risk in an Era of Emerging Infectious Diseases

“…Habitus is an embodied reality which often is taken for granted by a particular social group (Rhynas 2005, 185). ‘Habitus captures the way the social is internalized individually; integrating all past experiences in the form of durable, lasting and transposable dispositions to think, feel and act’ (Ahmed and Jones 2008, 60). As we showed in the ‘habitus of hygiene’ paper, the practice of hygiene disclosed to us involved three major elements.…”