Bourdieu, Social 
 Theories of Practice and 
 Infiltration into Public 
 Health Nutrition 
 Territories
 Wendy Wills
 Director, Centre for Research in Public 
 Health and Community Care (CRIPACC)
 School of Health and Social Work
 University of Hertfordshire
 w.j.wills@Herts.ac.uk
 KCL Symposium April 2019 
                                                                  •    Eating is not driven by conscious 
                                                                       decision-making or ‘freedom of choice’  -
                                                                       It is a result of habitus
                                                                  •    We all develop an automatic, 
                                                                       unconscious capacity to act in a way that 
             Bourdieu                                                  is meaningful in our social context
                                                                  •    Food, eating and ‘tastes’ – relate to 
            and Social                                                 cultural, social and economic capital
                                                                  •    Therefore unspoken moral boundary 
         Distinctions                                                  work might shape what groups consider 
                                                                       ‘tasty’ or ‘disgusting’
                                                                  •    How does this underscore /reflect the 
                                                                       reality of poverty, disadvantage or 
                                                                       affluence?
       A practices approach to understanding 
                  [eating] behaviours
      •  “A practice . . . is a routinised type of behaviour which consists of 
         several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily 
         activities, forms of mental activities, things and their use, a 
         background knowledge in the form of understanding, knowhow, 
         states of emotion and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz, 2002: 
         249–50)
      •  Practices encompass three domains (Warde 2005):
         – The people who shape/ perform practices
         – The available resources
         – The meaning given to the practice
      •  Individuals can be viewed as ‘carriers of practices’ (Warde
         2005) – one part of the jigsaw puzzle
                A practices approach to understanding 
                                        [eating] behaviours
                                                        •    Practice frameworks account for the 
                                                             entangled nature of relational events, 
                                                             things people and places – it provides 
                                                             context for the ‘doings and sayings’ 
                                                             (Schatzki 1996) of everyday life
                                                        •    Practices are performed repetitively with 
                                                             little reflection (we have a ‘feel for the 
                                                             game’ (Bourdieu 1984)