While feminist sociology has succeeded in being recognized as a legitimate field of sociological research (yet mainly as a limited field within the broader discipline), its core objective - namely, to reconfigure the discipline, instating gender as a central analytic category - has not yet been achieved. This article argues that Bourdieu's sociology of practice offers a theoretical framework for fundamentally reconstructing sociology to integrate gender as a central category. After a brief outline of Bourdieu's reasoning in Masculine Domination and of the controversy surrounding this essay, I discuss the concept of habitus, which forms the theoretical core of Masculine Domination, in the broader context of Bourdieu's work. Habitus is an analytical tool that overcomes the discipline's theoretical barriers to the integration of the category of gender on a central point: the concept of the social agent. I will demonstrate this by opposing the concept of habitus to the construct of the social role that, up to this day, is most influential in shaping the sociological understanding of the social agent.

The careers of women in German higher education are really careers which lead out of academe: women disappear on the route to the top. In order to track processes and structures which lead to this 'academic mortality of females', this article views higher education as a social field with its own dynamic of development, differentiated according to subject cultures. At the centre of the exploration lie organisational structures, hierarchies, time allocation, customs, traditions, everyday practices and interaction in the scientific community. In order to gain insight into these, detailed interviews were carried out with aspiring academics, institute directors and professors, both at universities and at research institutes outside the orbit of universities; the use of time was studied, and ethnographic material was assembled, together with statistical data. This contribution focuses on the structural conditions of the academic career, on symbolic violence in direct interaction, on patterns of competitive behaviour in the scientific community and on the role of mentors. Research questions and study designAcademia is an area in which very few women hold high-ranking positions. By the end of the twentieth century, the proportion of top-ranking (C4) German professorships 1 held by women was well below 10 per cent, in most fields it was below 5 per cent, and the women directors of German non-university research institutes could be counted on the fingers of two hands.Inspection of the education and career paths followed by women from the time they enter higher education reveals not only that fewer women than men obtain doctoral degrees, complete the Habilitation 2 procedure, or gain jobs as junior academics, but that the number of

Résumé Les statistiques de l’Union européenne montrent chaque année de nouveau la sous-représentation des femmes aux sommets des carrières scientifiques. L’Allemagne fait généralement partie des pays où des femmes sont très rarement dans ces positions. Jusqu’à la période actuelle, la recherche tente d’expliquer cet état de fait surtout par des facteurs liés aux femmes elles-mêmes, comme leurs intérêts, leur manière spécifique d’envisager leur carrière, leur personnalité « peu adaptée à la science », etc. Notre enquête n’étudie pas les femmes, mais le champ scientifique. L’article traite de l’organisation, des relations sociales et des interactions au sein du travail qui consiste à produire des résultats scientifiques. Ce contexte n’est pas neutre mais fondé sur des rapports sociaux de sexe. À partir de deux enquêtes empiriques, l’analyse montre qu’au centre d’un ensemble de conditions complexes qui mènent à l’exclusion des femmes des carrières scientifiques, se situe le problème de la non-reconnaissance des femmes comme « cojoueuses » du champ scientifique.

Das von Pierre Bourdieu entwickelte Konzept des Habitus richtet sich auf eine zentrale soziologische Problematik: Wie kann man den Menschen als vergesellschaftetes Subjekt denken? Anders als das ältere Konzept der sozialen Rolle funktioniert der Habitus wie ein lebendes System: flexibel und hoch anpassungsfähig, zugleich jedoch die Identität des Subjekts bewahrend. Der Habitus ist zu denken als ein generierendes Prinzip, das jene regelhaften Improvisationen hervorbringt, die man auch gesellschaftliche Praxis nennen kann. Dieses Prinzip, dieser modus operandi ist Produkt der Geschichte eines Individuums, er ist verinnerlichte, inkorporierte soziale Erfahrung. Dabei ist »inkorporiert« hier keineswegs nur metaphorisch gemeint: Der Körper als Speicher sozialer Erfahrung ist wesentlicher Bestandteil des Habitus; der analytische Blick richtet sich damit auch auf das Körperliche und Performative. Das Habituskonzept erschließt der Soziologie neue Dimensionen des sozialen Handelns.

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