The aim of this article is to bring together quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to examine, within a broadly Bourdieusian theoretical framework, connections between positions in social space and strategies agents deploy in their everyday life. The data are derived from a study of social structure in today’s Serbia, combining survey and interviews with selected respondents. Strategies are conceptualized as a continuum ranging from a more sustained and cumulative, or ‘strategic’, pole to the unsystematic, ephemeral ‘tactical’ pole, as suggested by Michel de Certeau. On the basis of interview data, four types of life strategies are identified (individualist reactive, individualist proactive, collectivist reactive, and collectivist proactive). These strategies are presented through their generic practices and the typical habitus of the agents, along with individual portraits as illustrations. In conclusion, some theoretical implications are derived from data analysis, including departures from Bourdieu’s model.
Abstract. We use survey data from Southeastern Europe to investigate determinants which explain thriving and surviving activities of households as their response to the changes caused by the latest global economic crisis of 2007/2008. Contrary to most of the literature that investigates these types of activities as mutually exclusive, our modelling strategy identifi es and then focusses on households that have used both of them in the period of crisis. Indeed, the thriving and surviving activities were often used simultaneously and they were mutually related as joint outcomes of a wider system of infl uences. We identify that both components of household strategies were systematically linked to the economic performance of households and to diff erent dimensions of social capital-generalised trust and informal networking. We also fi nd that diff erent social capital dimensions interact and build in their infl uence on the success of households-i.e. more engagement in thriving and less in surviving activities.
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