I often ask my students to consider what the world would be like if we asked a different set of questions about it. Usually that results in some puzzled looks, for it’s hard to think of different questions precisely because it’s hard to think about a different sort of world. This is, after all, what Pierre Bourdieu was getting at when he described our social lives as “habitus,” or the series of preferences, dispositions, perceptions, and other taken-for-granteds that we think are relatively unique to and comprise our individuality, but that really describe large swaths of our given culture that, bit by bit, shape us into who we are. Continue reading “When the Question Matters More Than the Answer”