Lifestyles and social position

 

A study of the history of lifestyles.

Three main phases can be identified in the history of lifestyle studies-[9]

Lifestyle and social standing

Early studies on lifestyle focused on analyzing social structure and the relative positions of individuals. Thorstein Veblen, with his concept of 'imitation', opens up this perspective by asserting that people practice particular forms of 'conspicuous consumption' based on their desire to distinguish themselves from particular 'plans of life' and especially lower social status. Willingness to imitate superiors; Max Weber intended lifestyles to be strictly linked to the dialectic of prestige recognition: lifestyle is the most visible manifestation of social difference, even within the same social class. Individuals in particular show the dignity they believe in. Enjoy or what they want. Georg Simmel individualized the analysis of lifestyle; identification; Differentiation and recognition processes can be found; Lifestyle initiatives are understood both as "vertical" and as effects generated by "vertical" and "functional" activities. horizontal.” Finally, Pierre Bourdieu renews this approach in a more complex way, where lifestyles are primarily constituted by social practices and closely related to individual tastes.

Lifestyles and ways of thinking

The approach that interprets lifestyles primarily as ways of thinking has its roots in the soil of psychoanalysis. In the beginning, Since Alfred Adler, lifestyle has been understood as a personality style. Guiding values ​​and normative frameworks developed during the first years of an individual's life end up defining a system of judgments that inform their actions; Lives. Later on, especially in the work of Milton Rokeach; Arnold Mitchell's VALS research and Lynn R. Kahle's LOV research; Lifestyle analyzes emerge as profiles of values, arriving at the assumption that different scales of values ​​can be hierarchically identified. It matches the population sectors. Then, with Daniel Yankelovich and William Wells, we discuss attitudes, Interpreting interests and opinions as components of basic lifestyles, he goes on to an approach called AIO, which interprets them on a socio-societal basis. cultural trends in a given social context (as in the work of Bernard Cathelat, for example). Finally, Another development is the so-called profile-and-trends approach; At its core is the analysis of the relationship between psychological and behavioral changes. Note that socio-cultural trends influence both the spread of various lifestyles. Various patterns of interaction between thought and action emerge within a population.