Lifestyle Movements: Exploring the Intersection of Lifestyle and Social Movements

Abstract

While the contentious politics (CP) model has come to dominate the field of social movements, scholars note the paradigm's shortcomings, especially its narrow focus on movement organizations, public protest, and political action. The conceptual wall between lifestyles and social movements has created a theoretical blind spot at the intersection of private action and movement participation, personal and social change, and personal and collective identity. We suggest that lifestyle movements (LMs) consciously and actively promote a lifestyle, or way of life, as a primary means to foster social change. Drawing upon our observations of a variety of LMs, we discuss three defining aspects of LMs: lifestyle choices as tactics of social change, the central role of personal identity work, and the diffuse structure of LMs. We also explore the links between LMs and social movements, CP, and conventional politics. Finally, we demonstrate that LM, as a new conceptual category, is applicable across a range of movement activities.

Tourism and health: using positive psychology principles to maximise participants’ wellbeing outcomes – a design concept for charity challenge tourism

“…Amnesty International), amongst others. Adopting a sociological perspective, charity challenges can be considered a form of lifestyle movement, that is, individualised collective action that consciously and actively promotes a lifestyle or way of life, as their primary means to foster social change (Haenfler, Johnson, & Jones, 2012); the events provide participants with a means to actively express their values on certain issues such as concern for the environment, human equity, sociocultural wellbeing or animal welfare, linked to their chosen charity.…”

Growing a lifestyle movement? Exploring identity‐work and lifestyle politics in urban food cultivation

“…Connolly and Prothero, 2008;Atkinson, 2012;Willis and Schor, 2012). Notions of political consumerism (Micheletti, 2003;Stolle et al, 2005), socially conscious consumption (Atkinson, 2012) and lifestyle movements (Haenfler et al, 2012) capture the creative ways in which individual consumercitizens express political and moral concerns without engaging in conventional political behaviours such as voting or protesting (Shah et al, 2007;Micheletti and Stolle, 2010). In these various manifestations of lifestyle politics, agendas of social change become embedded in everyday life and politics is enmeshed in daily life choices of individuals about how to dress, what to eat and which music to listen to (Giddens, 1991;Bennett, 1998;Stolle et al, 2005;Micheletti and Stolle, 2006).…”

College Students, Sexualities Identities, and Participation in Political Marches

“…Our measure for protest behaviors could also be improved upon. Our single item of attending a political rally or march does not address the more confrontational protest tactics of picketing, civil disobedience, or damaging people or property (Haenfler et al 2012). This item was also unable to distinguish the amount of marches a person attended in one's life just as it did not trace the goals of the political rallies.…”