The habitus of the athlete: a sociological interpretation through the prism of P. Bourdieu's theory

The article provides a sociological interpretation of the concept of the «athlete’s habitus» performed through the prism of P. Bourdieu’s theory based on sociological research data. To describe the athletes’ habitus, data of the following sociological studies were used: interviews with athletes studying at the Faculty of Physical Culture and Sports of Lobachevsky University (n = 74 persons representing individual and team sports in a 50/50 ratio); secondary analysis of interviews with mothers of high-performance athletes (n = 3 persons); participant observation carried out during the training and sports process with representatives of the following sports: volleyball, basketball, hockey, athletics, martial arts. The grounded theory approach, proposed by A. Strausset and D. Corbin, was used to analyze the data obtained during the interviews with student athletes, part of which were applied the method of «life histories» (analysis of the life of athletes from their mothers’ words) and conversational analysis (analysis of the interviewer-athlete dialogues). During the data analysis (coding procedure) the following concepts were identified and described: trajectories and stages of the sports habitus formation, social practices of the athlete’s habitus; a strong connection was noted between these concepts. Reliability of the obtained results is within the acceptable level as the subjective views of the informants are expressed in the indicators typical of their activity, acquired in the process of integration into the sports field over 10 years or more. This resulted in a high sports status (candidate master of sports, master of sports), which was the rationale for their selection for the interview. The paper reveals the peculiarities of the formation of the athletes’ habitus, its trajectory, and formation stages. Depending on the stage of the habitus formation in the sports field, the agent is endowed with transitional sports habitus, which, accumulating, allow the individual to acquire the habitus of the established athlete. The athlete’s habitus synthesizes the diversity of social experiences of agents of various social fields, thereby endowing itself with the identity of the realization of practices characteristic only of the social space of sport. In general, we can define the athlete’s habitus as a system of acquired predispositions that are imposed by the structure of the social field of sport.