<P> Doxa refers to the learned, fundamental, deep - founded, unconscious beliefs, and values, taken as self - evident universals, that inform an agent's actions and thoughts within a particular field . Doxa tends to favor the particular social arrangement of the field, thus privileging the dominant and taking their position of dominance as self - evident and universally favorable . Therefore, the categories of understanding and perception that constitute a habitus, being congruous with the objective organization of the field, tend to reproduce the very structures of the field . A doxic situation may be thought of as a situation characterized by a harmony between the objective, external structures and the' subjective', internal structures of the habitus . In the doxic state, the social world is perceived as natural, taken - for - granted and even commonsensical . </P> <P> Bourdieu thus sees habitus as an important factor contributing to social reproduction because it is central to generating and regulating the practices that make up social life . Individuals learn to want what conditions make possible for them, and not to aspire to what is not available to them . The conditions in which the individual lives generate dispositions compatible with these conditions (including tastes in art, literature, food, and music), and in a sense pre-adapted to their demands . The most improbable practices are therefore excluded, as unthinkable, by a kind of immediate submission to order that inclines agents to make a virtue of necessity, that is, to refuse what is categorically denied and to will the inevitable . </P> <P> As mentioned above, Bourdieu used the methodological and theoretical concepts of habitus and field in order to make an epistemological break with the prominent objective - subjective antinomy of the social sciences . He wanted to effectively unite social phenomenology and structuralism . Habitus and field are proposed to do so . </P> <P> Bourdieu's ambition to unite these sociological traditions, which had been widely thought to be incompatible, was and remains controversial . The most important concept to grasp is habitus . Crudely put, the habitus is the system of dispositions which individuals have . Sociologists very often look at either social laws (structure) or the individual minds (agency) in which these laws are inscribed . Great sociological arguments have raged between those who argue that the former should be sociology's principal interest (structuralists) and those who argue the same for the latter (phenomenologists). When Bourdieu instead asks us to consider dispositions, he is making a very subtle intervention in sociology . He has found a middle ground where social laws and individual minds meet and is arguing that our proper object of analysis should be this middle ground: dispositions . </P>

Who was not considered to be one of the most influential early sociologists