In the ethnography “Becoming a firefighter” by Matthew Desmond it discusses why people take on risky jobs such as a firefighter when they could easily take on jobs that are much safer to do. Matthew offers an explanation for this in his ethnography when he talks about the term habitus famously coined by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. He discusses how there are two types of habitus. The first type is the general habitus, which is formed when we are very young and then there is the specific habitus, which is the tools and skills that we are given later on when we have trained for a new job. In lecture, we discussed how habitus and the culture we live in has a major impact on our actions and that sometimes people do not think rationally when they
