Conceptualizing Contemporary Health Lifestyles: Moving Beyond Weber

Abstract

The intent of this article is to move beyond the work of Weber and construct a concept of health lifestyles applicable to the current phase of modernity. Beginning with the early twentieth-century work of Simmel and Weber on lifestyles generally, we move to midcentury to examine Bourdieu's perspective and turn to Giddens for an analysis of late century conditions. We find that Weber's insight concerning the dialectical interplay of choice and chance remains the central feature of the lifestyle concept. We also suggest that in rapidly changing late or postmodern situations, lifestyles not only provide self-identity but also promote a sense of stability and belonging for an individual by providing an anchor in a particular social constellation of style and activity. Our discussion leads us to define health lifestyles as collective patterns of health-related behavior based on choices from options available to people according to their life chances. Consistent with Bourdieu's notion of habitus, we assign priority to chance (structure) over choice.One of the most important new developments in sociological theory is the increased attention given to lifestyles as a key sociological concept. Lifestyles are utilitarian social practices and ways of living adopted by individuals that reflect personal, group, and socioeconomic identities (Giddens 1991). Lifestyles consist of self-selected forms of consumerism, involving particular choices in food, bodily dress and appearance, housing, automobiles, work habits, forms of leisure, and other types of status-oriented behavior. Given the massive social, economic, technological, and political changes that have taken place in the late twentieth century, lifestyles have gained particular significance as individual and collective expressions of differences and similarities (Bourdieu 1984;Giddens 1991;Turner 1988). In fact, some sociologists have argued that lifestyle situations and milieus are more important influences on *Direct all correspondence to William C. Cockerham,

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