Habit’s Pathways

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Habit has long preoccupied a wide range of theologians, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists. In Habit’s Pathways Tony Bennett explores the political consequences of the varied ways in which habit’s repetitions have been acted on to guide or direct conduct. Bennett considers habit’s uses and effects across the monastic regimens of medieval Europe, in plantation slavery and the factory system, through colonial forms of rule, and within a range of medicalized pathologies. He brings these episodes in habit’s political histories to bear on contemporary debates ranging from its role in relation to the politics of white supremacy to the digital harvesting of habits in practices of algorithmic governance. Throughout, Bennett tracks how habit’s repetitions have been articulated differently across divisions of class, race, and gender, demonstrating that although habit serves as an apparatus for achieving success, self-fulfilment, and freedom for the powerful, it has simultaneously served as a means of control over women, racialized peoples, and subordinate classes. Tony Bennett offers a sweeping political history of habit and its use to govern conduct across a range of past and contemporary regimes of power. Tony Bennett is Emeritus Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University and Honorary Professor in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. Among his many books are Making Culture, Changing Society and, as coauthor, Collecting, Ordering, Governing: Anthropology, Museums, and Liberal Government. Note on the Text  vii
Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. Habit—Then and Now  1
1. Powering Habit  19
2. Dead Ends and Nonstarters: Habit, Discipline, Biopower, and the Circulation of Capital  46
3. Unwilled Habits: Descending Pathways  70
4. Pathways to Virtue  97
5. Unfolding Pathways: Habit, Freedom, Becoming  111
6. Exploded Pathways: Plasticity's Mentors  137
7. Progressive Pathways: The Dynamics of Modernity, Race, and the Unconscious  160
8. Contested Pathways: Habit and the Conduct of Conduct  184
Conclusion. The Arbitrariness of Habit  206
Notes  211
References  225
Index

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