Lifestyles and Subcultures

History and a New Perspective

Luigi Berzano, Carlo Genova

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138911017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317434030
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Lifestyles and subcultures are tools through which people say – to themselves and to others – who they think they are, who they think they are similar to, and who they think they are different from. Lifestyles and subcultures are ways which people adopt to look at their own lives, and to try to keep together different roles, different practices and different realms which they are involved in. Lifestyles and subcultures are lenses through which we, as observers, analyze society, and orientate ourselves within it, looking for similarities and differences among individuals and collectivities which allow us to understand their thoughts and their actions.

This book presents the main analytical approaches through which lifestyles and subcultures have been studied, and also proposes a new interpretative perspective. Today a growing panorama of social phenomena and processes possess intermediate characteristics with regard to those which in the past were identified either as lifestyles or as subcultures. The hypothesis is that consequently these phenomena could be explained and interpreted by means of an analytical framework developed by the intersection of these two perspectives, and the last part of the book is therefore devoted to the presentation of this innovative framework. This book provides new lenses and a fresh view to try to both grasp and understand a constantly-changing reality.

Part I The Tradition of Lifestyles Study

The expression “lifestyle”, in that it refers to style, contains within itself the idea of a framework of elements which can be identified as being characteristic of a set of referents. Style is something shared, indeed characterizing the set or illustrating some similarity between different referents. But by illustrating such similarity, it must also, by definition, show the differences: in one way, differences among those sharing similarity, which would otherwise be equivalence or even perfect identicalness; in another way, differences from those outside, because similarity among some can only be detected through their dissimilarity from others. Thus talk of lifestyles refers to a game of resemblance and diversity which contemporaneously distinguishes and joins the various subjects to whom it refers.

Yet this distinguishing and uniting immediately causes two problems. On one hand it must be clarified on the basis of what elements the comparison is made, starting from how similarities and differences will be evaluated. On the other, it must be explained whether the differences observed distinguish diversified subjects horizontally or vertically.

We are therefore not very surprised to notice that the various perspectives from which lifestyles have been discussed are divided on these two points: first, starting out from what elements the confines between different lifestyles should be drawn, or what should be considered as their fundamental components; second, what reciprocal positions exist among them, and especially whether they could be organized in a hierarchical scale or whether, on the contrary, they should make up different sectors on the same plane.

In Part One the main definitions and analysis strategies developed with reference to the lifestyle concept will be examined.

Chapter 1 will dwell upon those proposals in which a lifestyle is considered essentially as the expression of a social position. This was the perspective developed first, and it posited as the basis of lifestyles elaboration the resources and cultural models typifying each individual, beginning with his or her social position. Based on such endowments, individuals develop their own socio-cultural profiles of thought and action, starting from an attempt to emulate their ‘betters’ while at the same time distancing themselves from their ‘inferiors’. Identity, distinction, identification and recognition are the stakes being played for. The upward leap is thus seen as a fundamental mechanism by which individuals try to influence the social standing which would be theirs from their own endowment of resources and models, and also a mechanism which, being replicated on every social level, allows the system to maintain its equilibrium.

Chapter 2 will be devoted to lifestyles analyses which consider them principally as being defined on the plane of thought. Sinking its roots into the psychological field, this study path has from time to time concentrated on personality traits, attitudes, interests and opinions. The idea that understanding these analytical levels not only allows interpretations of the various configurations of corresponding actions, but also that, more explicitly, lifestyles themselves can be defined even—or above all—on these levels gains ground here. Furthermore, with this very approach analytical models which do not stop at the identification of styles describing a given population at a given moment but, on the contrary, analyse these profiles from a diachronic perspective, reconstructing their evolution over time and seeking possible reasons for the evolution, progressively gain in depth.

Chapter 3 will concentrate on interpretative perspectives which have placed the level of action at the heart of lifestyles analysis. Consumption, daily life and the more general framework of each individual's activities have been variously, depending on the circumstances, identified as the basic points to which attention must be paid in order to reconstruct the shared profiles of reference beginning with which the population can be segmented. These profiles are sometimes explained and interpreted not only on the grounds of social position or each individual's characteristic personality traits but also on the meanings which the individual attributes to his or her own actions. On the basis of these meanings, the same product, the same choice or the same habit may assume very different shades and hues, and therefore significantly redefine the processes of identification and recognition which may derive from those actions.

Chapter 4 will be dedicated to the analysis of some concepts which could be identified as possible alternatives, at some times mostly linguistic, at others more explicitly analytical, to that lifestyle. These alternatives too, with their particular traits, may offer useful suggestions on the path towards the elaboration of a new sociology of lifestyles.

1 Lifestyles and Social Position

DOI: 10.4324/9781315692685-2

The earliest theoretical research tradition on lifestyles, starting from the 1890s, is that including models which—from different points of view—consider them as a direct expression of social stratification. In that research, a lifestyle is a variable depending on standing, i.e. social position, prestige, income. This is thus the approach which most closely associates the lifestyle concept with that of class, social level or, more generally, social position, assuming that the system of inequalities and lifestyles depends upon social structure. In this theoretical model, employment, education and availability of goods are objective indicators.¹

In this chapter, then, we shall introduce the main suggestions developed in this perspective, albeit according to different perspectives, considering in particular the classical theories of Veblen, Weber, Simmel and Bourdieu. Indeed, what distinguishes these authors is the interpretation of a lifestyle as an element produced by individuals’ social position. Of course this does not mean that they adopt a perspective within which individuals’ tastes and choices are totally determined, yet in their analysis a lifestyle takes shape explicitly as a visible expression of the endowments and cultural models which characterize a subject's standing. On the other hand, if it is true that social position is expressed and becomes visible, partly, by means of lifestyle, at the same time it is also true that the social position is itself in some ways defined by the lifestyle—in a circular process.

1.1 Emulation

Underpinning Veblen's point of view there is a criticism of classical economics, whose categories are applicable only in very specific circumstances because they do not sufficiently take into account social context or the historical and cultural variability of economic patterns (Coser, 1971: 264–5). More specifically, in his eyes such an approach considers the individual as an efficient calculator of costs and benefits, endowed with constant, homogeneous objectives, lacking a past, whereas reality demonstrates that an individual is a carrier of a set of attitudes and modes of action tending to be expressed and fulfilled through multiform, continuous activity of adjustment between means and ends, influenced by acquired experience and the social environment in which one finds oneself an actor.

Specifically, patterns of thought and awareness are in that sense largely a reflection of “schemes of life”: according to the predominant productive model in a society and the employment roles played by single individuals, one may observe in more detail an elaboration of diversified mental habits which also have repercussions upon different kinds of awareness and behaviour (Veblen, 1919).

Bearing in mind this historical and contextual variability of frameworks of action and thought, Veblen nevertheless stresses that it is principally the nature of competition connoting human vicissitudes that is central to the various environments: a person's self-esteem is in fact a reflection of the esteem of others; consequently, because individuals evaluate themselves exclusively or mostly through comparison with their peers, they will be constantly forced to attempt to demonstrate their superiority to the others. Indeed if everybody is seeking others’ esteem, this is an object of competition because—by definition—not everybody can reach the same elevated status. In a highly competitive culture, value accorded to effort will always be accompanied by the fear of potential loss of recognition on the part of others.

But in Veblen's eyes human evolution is based mainly on technological and economic innovations, and the individual's position vis-à-vis technological and economic models defines his/her way of acting and thinking. Efforts to procure means of subsistence develop customs which over time become institutional forms sanctioned by the community, and so the very evolution of society in its organization takes form as a process of natural selection of institutions.

With regard to today's Western society, the institution of private property is one of the fundamental traits which in this way defines its organization.

But the emergence of private property cannot be explained only by the need to procure the necessities of survival. The principle may be valid in the early stages of technological development, or in social situations characterized by extreme poverty, but once these conditions have been overcome, only the instinct to emulate can explain its institution. “The motive that lies at the root of ownership is emulation; [. . .] the possession of wealth confers honour; it is an invidious distinction” (Veblen, 1912: 26). Thus private property becomes a human institution arising from necessities connected not so much with subsistence as with antagonistic-distinction needs. Indeed, based on this different principle, the desire to possess derives not from biological needs but from a need for a sense of superiority over other people. However, this sense of superiority is fully realized only when it is acknowledged by the others: so there is a need not only to be, but also to demonstrate oneself to be, superior. The desire to appear economically powerful therefore strongly influences people's actions, driving them on to continuous competitive emulation of those social sectors which they perceive as being superior and to which, as a result, they wish to draw closer.

More specifically, in historical-social contexts where the separation of classes is porous and belonging mobile, each social level accepts as an honorable ideal the life pattern of that immediately above it and tries to live up to that ideal. The leisure class finds itself at the apex of the social structure in terms of respectability, and for this reason its way of living and evaluation criteria supply the community's canon of respectability, becoming a duty to be observed by all the inferior social classes (ibid.: 83–4).

But to acquire and keep the esteem of others, possession of wealth and/ or power is not enough: they must also be highlighted by consumption.² In contemporary society ostentation symbolizing a high living standard, and especially conspicuous consumption, are thus the basic means by which people try to overtake their peers and so to improve their self-assessment. And while in the past conspicuous consumption was characteristic only of the leisure class at the summit of the social hierarchy, it has become in time a point of reference for the whole social structure in that every class—within the limits of its possibilities—tries to imitate the distinctive practices of the upper class.

Because the possession of property has become the basis of social esteem it has also become the yardstick of “self-respect”: an individual must possess an equal amount of goods as do those among whom he classifies himself— more, if possible. And, because every degree of wealth defines a new level of comfort and a new financial classification, there is a progressive tendency to raise the barrier of socially-demanded wealth.³

Well then, whatever one's social level, the accumulation objective is that of overtaking those with the same financial possibilities. The conflict therefore takes shape as an antagonistic comparison oriented towards the conquest of “honour” (ibid.: 1–3, 15–8, 26–30), where there are no fixed targets; and relative success at a given moment in the financial confrontation, a temporarily-favourable position, becomes the conventional aim of action (ibid.: 32–4). Emulation is therefore behind conspicuous consumption, an antagonistic confrontation driving one to outdo those with whom one tends to classify oneself, defined by the customs of those immediately above on the social scale, until one arrives at the highest social class, which defines “the scheme of life [. . .] decent or honorific [. . .] by precept and example” (ibid.: 104). Conspicuous consumption is estimable because it is a sign of financial power which, in its turn, is estimable because it is an indicator of “success and superior force”: if a “good repute” is founded on financial power, conspicuous consumption of goods is the way to demonstrate it (ibid.: 84, 181).

Therefore the process of emulation and that of its counterpart, distinction, are not just based on goods: alongside wealth and its exhibition, there are also “other standards of repute and other [. . .] canons of conduct” (ibid.: 91).

Above all it is not only the quantity of goods consumed over and above what is necessary for survival that matters but also their quality ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I The Tradition of Lifestyles Study
• Part II The Tradition of Subcultures Study
• Part III Towards a New Sociology of Lifestyles
• Index