Life Styles

In the modern world our lifestyle helps to define our attitudes and values as well as show our wealth and social position. This clearly written introduction to the concept of lifestyle offers a concise guide to how the term is used in sociological accounts to refer to this modern social form. Lifestyles explores * how we should classify lifestyles * why they have become more important * what precisely constitutes a lifestyle. By reviewing a wide range of published material, introducing central themes in the sociology of modern life, examining distinctive styles in social theory and offering its own original contribution to current debates, Lifestyles provides students with a much needed overview of this often misused term.

This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to the world of consumption, covering different topics and including sociological, economic and marketing aspects. The term ‘consumption’ is vague and even in academic disciplines the term is used in a variety of ways. Consumption research asks how earnings and spending are related to each other. More generally, consumption research investigates how people, social classes or societies realize their consumption practices. The question of how consistent preference structures are due to changing empirical backgrounds of time, space and related culture is frequently asked. Which context variables (historical time, geographical framework, cultural background) specify the practice of consumption and in which way do attributes such as age, gender, class, occupation and life-style have their own impacts on the way in which consumption is realised? This book will be of interest to researchers working in economics, sociology, marketing, aesthetics and design, anthropology and communication studies.

This book gives insights into the basic values and life styles of peoples of ten societies in East, Southeast, South and Central Asia. Based on data from AsiaBarometer public surveys of 2003, it examines human values and life styles of peoples in Urban Asia. It presents country profile and comparative analysis by well-informed scholars, reports of the entire questionnaires (both standard common English language questionnaire and local language questionnaires), the whole comparable tabulated figures by society, the sampling methods and sizes and fieldwork in ten societies.

A generously illustrated examination of the boom in luxurious, resort-style scientific laboratories and how this affects scientists' work. The past decade has seen an extraordinary laboratory-building boom. This new crop of laboratories features spectacular architecture and resort-like amenities. The buildings sprawl luxuriously on verdant campuses or sit sleekly in expensive urban neighborhoods. Designed to attract venture capital, generous philanthropy, and star scientists, these laboratories are meant to create the ideal conditions for scientific discovery. Yet there is little empirical evidence that shows if they do. Laboratory Lifestyles examines this new species of scientific laboratory from architectural, economic, social, and scientific perspectives. Generously illustrated with photographs of laboratories and scientists at work in them, the book investigates how “lifestyle science” affects actual science. Are scientists working when they stretch in a yoga class, play volleyball in the company tournament, chat in an on-site café, or show off their facilities to visiting pharmaceutical executives? The book describes, among other things, the role of beanbag chairs in the construction of science at Xerox PARC; the Southern California vibe of the RAND Corporation (Malibu), General Atomic (La Jolla), and Hughes Research Laboratories (Malibu); and Biosphere 2's “bionauts” as both scientists and scientific subjects; and interstellar laboratories. Laboratory Lifestyles (the title is an allusion to Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's influential Laboratory Life) documents a shift in what constitutes scientific practice; these laboratories and their lifestyles are as experimental as the science they cultivate. Contributors Kathleen Brandt, Russell Hughes, Tim Ivison, Sandra Kaji-O'Grady, Stuart W. Leslie, Brian Lonsway, Sean O'Halloran, Simon Sadler, Chris L. Smith, Nicole Sully, Ksenia Tatarchenko, William Taylor, Julia Tcharfas, Albena Yaneva, Stelios Zavos

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.

* What impact has social change had upon young people? * To what extent do consumer lifestyles play a key role in structuring identities? * How successful has sociology been in dealing with the nature of young people's lives? Youth Lifestyles in a Changing World is an accessible examination of the changing nature of young people's lives at the start of a new century. Arguing that the 'sociology of youth' has struggled to bridge the gap between 'structural' and 'cultural' conceptions of youth, this book emphasizes the notion of lifestyle as an enlightening means of addressing young people's relationship with social change. Against a social and cultural backdrop characterized by postmodern fragmentation, risk and globalization, young people are apparently finding individualized 'transitions' into adulthood increasingly difficult, and this book shows how lifestyles play an important role. It considers key aspects of young people's lifestyles such as their relationship to rave, the media, and consumption in general, as a means of constructing identities. In this clear introduction to a complex field, Miles outlines the dilemmas faced by sociology, and examines the role played by consumer lifestyles in constructing who and what young people are in a rapidly changing world.

Learn the changing role of sexuality in American life! This helpful book offers a solid background in the sociology of family life and personal sexuality. Marital and Sexual Lifestyles in the United States: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Relationships in Social Context is designed to give readers a broad view of the diversity of contemporary U. S. attitudes, behaviors, and relationships. It also covers basic sociological concepts and research methods. Most human sexuality texts focus on the individual, whereas texts designed for sociology courses on the family downplay individual sexual expression. Marital and Sexual Lifestyles in the United Statesintegrates the two approaches. The choices of the individual take on additional meaning when seen within a unified historical, statistical, and conceptual framework. Marital and Sexual Lifestyles in the United States gives readers the tools to consider such pressing issues as: Does the divorce rate mean that the institution of marriage is in trouble? Are children's futures impaired if they come from single-parent households? Should same-sex couples be allowed to marry? How does marriage differ from cohabitation? What are the real sexual differences between the genders? What is sexual morality? How much confidence can we place in studies of human sexuality by such social scientists as Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson? These questions and others like them are placed in the context of U. S. social trends, beginning with the 1950s and moving toward today. Plentifully illustrated with tables, charts, and figures that show where we are going as well as where we have been, Marital and Sexual Lifestyles in the United States gives a clear perspective on relationships in social context.