The Challenging Marriage of Two Thorny Concepts

Abstract

The terms lifestyle and risk are so commonplace today that we tend to take their meaning (and social history) for granted. This is unfortunate, since neither of them is either value-free or unequivocal. Linking them – in an abstract sense as well as with regard to policy – is therefore bound to raise multiple questions regarding the definition of boundaries. If we recognise that lifestyle is not a matter of individual agency alone but also a question of structure and, similarly, if risk assessment is not just determining objects or incidences of risk but also about establishing the societal and environmental contexts within which specific negative outcomes are more likely to happen, then we are confronted with the challenge of how to approach the subject of lifestyle risk without falling prey to the temptation to impose normative expectations This paper takes issue with some of the ideas advanced in the article by Planzer and Alemanno published in EJRR 4/2010 “Lifestyle Risks: Conceptualization of an Emerging Category of Research” by considering the framing of the concept of lifestyle risk. The emergence of this concept is symptomatic of a general trend from both the right and the left of the political spectrum to re-emphasise individual responsibility for social welfare – what Planzer and Alemanno refer to as “financial solidarity”. Yet the best way to effect such financial solidarity, and more specifically to balance individual and state responsibility, is neither obvious nor uncontested. Accordingly, the notion of “lifestyle risk” is likely to become a battleground for determining the scope of state intervention, where one of the principal questions will be what gets classified as “lifestyle risk” and what does not, and how this changes over time.