Divorce and social stratification – test of the hypothesis of individualization habitus on the case of Czech Republic
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Deep changes in the area of intimacy result in decreased stability in partnerships. Its consequences for the social reproduction regime can be conspicuous and relatively easily examinable: divorce moves the social reproduction outside the institution of marriage and forces the actors to redefine more or less their reproduction strategies. Therefore I have tried to design a theoretical model to explore this link. I have used Bourdieu’s specific notions of concepts of “habitus” and “reproduction strategy” to describe a mechanism which structures the acting, self-consciousness and identity of women after a divorce by creating a specific kind of “individualization habitus”. This work was published in the article The Emergence of a Specific Kind of Individualization Habitus Among Divorced Women (Fučík 2013). The aim of this work was to conceptualize the self-reinforcing nature of the individualization habitus after divorce as an alternative explanation for the lower rates of remarriage for divorced women and their small motivation for entering new partnerships (contrary to the concept of gender gap emphasizing the logic of deprivation and disadvantage). Now, in the second phase of the project, the aim is to empirically test the consequences of proposed theoretical model. There are four general hypotheses formulated in the process of grounded theory construction. This paper aims to present the empirical test of one of them – the self-reinforcing hypothesis. Idividualization habitus leads to the redefinition of divorced women identities by the mechanism of empowerment. The model considers the long-term aspect of the self-reinforcing nature of the habitus. Compared to the post-divorce adaptation perspective, it gives an opposing point of view that can offer alternative explanations of the long-term effects of divorce. While the perspective of post-divorce adaptation assumes a gradual coming to terms with its impact, and if it speaks of long-term consequences, then it perceives them as the result of the most problematic aspects of the breakup of a partnership. The perspective of the individualization habitus explains the growing shift away from institutionalized forms of partnership and parenting. The long-term development and strengthening of the individualization habitus is among particular actors to a major extent the result of successful, rather than problematic post-divorce adaptation. The grounded hypothesis that I offer within the framework of these arguments is the hypothesis of development of the habitus. I assume that when controlled for age, the longer the time spent outside marriage the less will be the willingness to start new partnerships or more generally the social actors do not have the tendency to enter into institutionalized forms of partnerships (including cohabitation). On the survey data from Czech Republic I will test, to what extent and in which social groups of women the divorce is connected with empowerment processes, which are 1) strengthening the labour market position and 2) redefinition of gender roles in the partnership. These aspects represent two dimensions of sources of the individualization habitus. Through the necessity to hold up on the labour market and the role of breadwinner, divorced women increase their independence in the economic dimension which leads also to the redefinition of expectation from possible future partnership and gender roles tied to the intimate relationships. To empirically test these theoretical connections I use the available datasets (EU-SILC, ISSP, Class structure, social mobility 2009) from Czech Republic, where the divorce rate reach one of the highest values across the Europe. |
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