[csaa-forum] ANU School of Sociology Seminar Series: "Habit’s Pathways: Guiding Repetition, Governing Conduct, Contested Interruptions", Professor Tony Bennett

[Thao Phan]

Hi all, please join us for the next seminar in the ANU School of Sociology
Seminar Series:



*Habit’s Pathways:  Guiding Repetition, Governing Conduct, Contested
Interruptions*

*https://sociology.cass.anu.edu.au/events/habits-pathways-guiding-repetition-governing-conduct-contested-interruptions
<https://sociology.cass.anu.edu.au/events/habits-pathways-guiding-repetition-governing-conduct-contested-interruptions>*

Speaker: Professor Tony Bennett



Date: Monday 21 July, 2025

Time: 12 – 1pm

Location: Room 4.69 RSSS Building


Join Zoom Meeting
https://anu.zoom.us/j/84809168558?pwd=DMfRbKahFDOqi6aA630enmJdOOn9Sp.1&from=addon

Meeting ID: 848 0916 8558
Password: 328489



*Habit’s Pathways:  Guiding Repetition, Governing Conduct, Contested
Interruptions*



Drawing principally on the work of Michel Foucault, this paper considers
how the relations between habit and repetition have been construed in the
exercise of different forms of power: disciplinary, pastoral,
governmental,and algorithmic, for example. It does so by reviewing a range
of the pathway metaphors that abound in the literature on habit, paying
particular attention to how these differ in their interpretation of habit’s
relations to repetition and the role they accord different authorities –
theological, philosophical, psychological, sociological – in guiding the
conduct of different social agents along the pathways that those
authorities superintend. This involves considering how strategies for
governing conduct are differentiated by the “politics of gapped time”
according to which some populations but not others – differences
constituted in a mix of classed, raced, and gendered terms – are accorded
the ability to review and redirect their conduct when habit’s repetitions
are periodically interrupted. These processes of habit formation,
perpetuation, interruption, and re-formation are considered in the context
of their operation in different social machineries and technologies.



*Professor Tony Bennett,* FAHA FAcSS, appointed to an Emeritus
Professorship in 2020, joined Western Sydney University as Research
Professor in Social and Cultural Theory at the Institute for Culture and
Society in 2009. He was the Institute’s founding Research Director. His
previous positions included a period as Professor of Sociology at the Open
University where he was also a Director of the ESRC Centre for Research on
Socio-cultural Change, and as Professor of Cultural Studies at Griffith
University where he was also Dean of Humanities and Director of the ARC Key
Centre for Cultural and Media Policy. He was appointed Honorary Professor
in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University in
2019.
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