Lecture 1 Lifestyle and Consumption
Part I: Sociological perspectives on consumption
Understand social paradoxes and problems by understanding the tension between societal
structures and individual agency. Whereby:
- Structuralist perspective (passive individuals)
o Social patterns shape human behaviour (norms & values)
o Social structure (demography, population)
- Constructive perspective
o Individual agency (reproduction by human action)
o Meaning in practices and relationships
The purpose of the theory:
- Serving as a lens to aid practical understanding of empirical reality.
- Theory should be useful for making sense of activities and problems
- Theories are instruments of selective attention which necessarily bracket off most
parts of complex reality.
Examples of paradoxes and problems, are:
More knowledge about healthy good vs. higher rates of obesity
More sustainable technologies available vs. growing CO2 emissions
We might not know our neighbours vs. growing amounts of friends on Facebook.
Who are interested in lifestyle and consumption issues?
- Governmental institutions (ministry, research institutes)
- NGO’s (consumer organisations related to health or environment)
- Companies
Sociology
- Social relations and social cohesion → heterogeneity and social institutions (multiple
influences and contexts)
- Social change and modernisation → dynamics
- Social inequality → patterns of material and cultural power and privileges.
Consumption vs. consumer
Economist & Psychologist (consumer):
- Rational decision-making
- Maximising utility – minimizing cost
- Preferences (as opposing taste) – purchases
Alan Warde (2017) considers consumption as:
“as a process whereby agents engage in appropriation and appreciation, whether for
utilitarian, expressive or contemplative purposes, of goods, services, performances,
information or ambience, whether purchased or not, over which the agent has some degree
of discretion”.
Part I: Sociological perspectives on consumption
Understand social paradoxes and problems by understanding the tension between societal
structures and individual agency. Whereby:
- Structuralist perspective (passive individuals)
o Social patterns shape human behaviour (norms & values)
o Social structure (demography, population)
- Constructive perspective
o Individual agency (reproduction by human action)
o Meaning in practices and relationships
The purpose of the theory:
- Serving as a lens to aid practical understanding of empirical reality.
- Theory should be useful for making sense of activities and problems
- Theories are instruments of selective attention which necessarily bracket off most
parts of complex reality.
Examples of paradoxes and problems, are:
More knowledge about healthy good vs. higher rates of obesity
More sustainable technologies available vs. growing CO2 emissions
We might not know our neighbours vs. growing amounts of friends on Facebook.
Who are interested in lifestyle and consumption issues?
- Governmental institutions (ministry, research institutes)
- NGO’s (consumer organisations related to health or environment)
- Companies
Sociology
- Social relations and social cohesion → heterogeneity and social institutions (multiple
influences and contexts)
- Social change and modernisation → dynamics
- Social inequality → patterns of material and cultural power and privileges.
Consumption vs. consumer
Economist & Psychologist (consumer):
- Rational decision-making
- Maximising utility – minimizing cost
- Preferences (as opposing taste) – purchases
Alan Warde (2017) considers consumption as:
“as a process whereby agents engage in appropriation and appreciation, whether for
utilitarian, expressive or contemplative purposes, of goods, services, performances,
information or ambience, whether purchased or not, over which the agent has some degree
of discretion”.
