Lifestyle Movement Research Articles

A Reconstructed Indigenous Religious Tradition in Latvia

In the early 20th century, Dievturība, a reconstructed form of paganism, laid claim to the status of an indigenous religious tradition in Latvia. Having experienced various changes over the course of the century, Dievturība has not disappeared from the Latvian cultural space and gained new manifestations with an increase in attempts to strengthen indigenous identity as a result of the pressures of globalization. This article provides a historical analytical overview about the conditions that have determined the reconstruction of the indigenous Latvian religious tradition in the early 20th century, how its form changed in the late 20th century and the types of new features it has acquired nowadays. The beginnings of the Dievturi movement show how dynamic the relationship has been between indigeneity and nationalism: indigenous, cultural and ethnic roots were put forward as the criteria of authenticity for reconstructed paganism, and they fitted in perfectly with nativist discourse, which is based on the conviction that a nation’s ethnic composition must correspond with the state’s titular nation. With the weakening of the Soviet regime, attempts emerged amongst folklore groups to revive ancient Latvian traditions, including religious rituals as well. Distancing itself from the folk tradition preservation movement, Dievturība nowadays nonetheless strives to identify itself as a Latvian lifestyle movement and emphasizes that it represents an ethnic religion which is the people’s spiritual foundation and a part of intangible cultural heritage. In the 21st century, Dievturība is characterized by conflicting aspects: on the one hand, a desire is expressed to contrast itself and its ethnic views from globalization tendencies in its activities, but on the other hand New Age concepts and a self-reflexive character has entered its discourse.

A Case for Promoting Movement Medicine: Preventing Disability in the LIFE Randomized Controlled Trial.

The movement profile of older adults with compromised function is unknown, as is the relationship between these profiles and the development of major mobility disability (MMD)-a critical clinical outcome. We first describe the dimensions of movement in older adults with compromised function and then examine whether these dimensions predict the onset of MMD. Older adults at risk for MMD (N = 1,022, mean age = 78.7 years) were randomized to receive a structured physical activity intervention or health education control. We assessed MMD in 6-month intervals (average follow-up of 2.2 years until incident MMD), with activity assessed at baseline, 6-, 12- and 24-month follow-up via accelerometry. A principal components analysis of 11 accelerometer-derived metrics yielded three components representing lifestyle movement (LM), extended bouts of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and stationary body posture. LM accounted for the greatest proportion of variance in movement (53%). Within health education, both baseline LM (HR = 0.74; 95% CI 0.62 to 0.88) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (HR = 0.69; 95% CI 0.54 to 0.87) were associated with MMD, whereas only LM was associated with MMD within physical activity (HR = 0.74; 95% CI 0.61 to 0.89). There were similar nonlinear relationships present for LM in both physical activity and health education (p < .04), whereby risk for MMD was lower among individuals with higher levels of LM. Both LM and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity should be central in treatment regimens for older adults at risk for MMD. clinicaltrials.gov Identifier NCT01072500.

The Digital Nomad Lifestyle: (Remote) Work/Leisure Balance, Privilege, and Constructed Community

This paper overviews key concepts about the digital nomad lifestyle, which is defined as the ability for individuals to work remotely from their laptop and use their freedom from an office to travel the world. This concept has found a lifestyle movement that sells itself via personal blogs, Instagram feeds, in-person conferences, news features, and numerous e-books. Based on interviews with thirty-eight self-described nomads, this paper overviews the digital nomad lifestyle around the themes of privilege, inequality, leisure, work, and community. Stebbins’ (International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, 1, 43–53, 2018) concept of serious leisure provides one theoretical perspective, in addition to other sociological theories of leisure, work, and community.

'Staged for Living'

We describe more than 19 months of ethnographic fieldwork with people who have embraced minimalism, a lifestyle movement focused on reducing modern life's clutter. We found that for minimalists, the home is a central but porous site for making and staging their values around objects. The home's porous boundary allows minimalists to reinforce their values around objects for others and themselves, but it also necessitates adopting strategies to assert their values when objects---entangled with others' values---move in and out the boundaries of the home. Drawing from our fieldwork, we introduce the concept of the porous boundary. "Porosity" impels us to consider the coupling of objects with values as we do boundary practices for the home. A porous boundary perspective, we argue, can open new design spaces in the development of novel technologies for the home.

Lifestyle Movements as Social Networks: The Connections between Everyday Politics and Larger Collective Action in an Indian Feminist Movement

The sociology of social movements has often drawn a fine line between individualistic “lifestyle movements” and more politically oriented collective action. Yet, this distinction belies the fact that seemingly individualistic movements can generate cognitive maps and associational ties necessary for wider mobilization. Drawing on a qualitative study of the Indian men’s feminist movement Men’s Action to Stop Violence against Women (MASVAW), we examine how an ostensibly individualistically oriented lifestyle movement can create the potential for collective action through forging social networks of like-minded individuals who can draw on local knowledge of specific situations to quickly mobilize their peers. Through this, we contribute to the literature on social movement networks by synthesizing theorizing on lifestyle movements with theorizing on activist social networks, demonstrating how networks can shift movements between different modes of coordination, from individualistic and everyday to collective and activist.

‘Not that kind of atheist’: scepticism as a lifestyle movement

This article examines atheist activists from a lifestyle movement perspective. I focus on how atheist activists adopt the term ‘sceptic’ as a distinct identity marker to represent their growing interest in other types of activism beyond atheist community building and criticism of religious beliefs. My data come from thirty-five interviews with Canadian atheist activists and participant observation in the province of Alberta. In contrast to previous social movement approaches to atheist activism, I deemphasize the importance of collective identity and instead attend to personal identity as the site of social change. My findings show that being a sceptic is a personally meaningful identity in the context of a relatively weak secularist collective identity. Moreover, atheist activists who also identify as sceptics wish to expand the boundaries of the atheist movement to include individualistic projects of personal affirmation based on science and critical thinking. This work contributes to our understanding of the everyday activities of activists who engage in individual action in the absence of a strong collective identity. In particular, this article expands our understanding of lifestyle movements beyond the current focus on socially conscious consumption. Instead, I return to the roots of lifestyle movement theory, that is, how one’s everyday choices serve as a form of protest. Finally, this work contributes to atheism scholarship, which has neglected the diversity of individual identities within atheist organisations and among atheist activists.

WHY ONLY SOME LIFESTYLE ACTIVISTS AVOID STATE-ORIENTED POLITICS: A CASE STUDY IN THE BELGIAN ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT*

Lifestyle politics are often defined as a political strategy used to avoid state-oriented politics. However, recent studies indicate that in some cases, lifestyle activists engage in actions that target the state. This study investigates why some lifestyle activists combine these forms of engagement, while others do not. We explore whether such differences can be explained by variations in activists' perceptions of the political opportunity structure. In particular, we consider whether perceptions of input structures and output structures offer relevant predictors for combining lifestyle politics with state-oriented actions. The article presents an in-depth case study of a Belgian environmental lifestyle movement organization, using a mixed methods approach including participant observation, qualitative interviewing, and surveys. The findings reveal that lifestyle activists' perceptions of the openness of the system matter, but that beliefs in the state's ability to act are more diverse and therefore have a stronger effect on activists' propensity for state-oriented action.

The politics of collective repair: examining object-relations in a postwork society

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we look at repair as an emergent focus of recent activism in affluent societies, where a number of groups are reclaiming practices of repair as a form of political and ecological action. Ranging from those that fight for legislative change to those groups who are trying to support ecological and social change through everyday life practices, repair is beginning to surface tensions in everyday life and as such poses opportunities for its transformation. We survey a few of the practices that make up this movement in its various articulations, to take stock of their current political import. While we suggest that these practices can be seen as an emergent lifestyle movement, they should not be seen as presenting a unified statement. Rather, we aim to show that they articulate a spectrum of political positions, particularly in relation to the three specific issues of property, pedagogy and sociality. These three dimensions are all facets of current internal discrepancies of repair practices and moreover express potential bifurcations as this movement evolves. Drawing on a diverse methodology that includes discourse analysis and participant observation, we suggest some of the ways in which this growing area of activity could play a significant role in resisting the commodification of the everyday and inventing postwork alternatives.

Identifying and explaining framing strategies of low carbon lifestyle movement organisations

Over the last decade we have seen the growth and development of low carbon lifestyle movement organisations, which seek to encourage members of the public to reduce their personal energy use and carbon emissions. As a first step to assess the transformational potential of such organisations, this paper examines the ways in which they frame their activities. This reveals an important challenge they face: in addressing the broader public, do they promote ‘transformative’ behaviours or do they limit themselves to encouraging ‘easy changes’ to maintain their appeal? We find evidence that many organisations within this movement avoid ‘transformative’ frames. The main reasons for this are organisers’ perceptions that transformational frames lack resonance with broader audiences, as well as wider cultural contexts that caution against behavioural intervention. The analysis draws on interviews with key actors in the low carbon lifestyle movement and combines insights from the literatures on collective action framing and lifestyle movements.

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

AbstractThis article elaborates how consumers engage with global socioecological issues on an everyday basis through adopting local lifestyles that comprise both consumption and production activities. Using urban food cultivation as an illustrative case, we highlight how devotion to co‐production can work as a counter‐hegemonic strategy of the political consumer. Building on qualitative data generated through 28 problem‐centred interviews with urban farmers and regular volunteers from a total of 12 different urban agriculture projects in New York City, the study discerns the motivational mechanisms and ascribed meanings underlying people's propensity to grow food in the city. Findings show that urban food cultivation is driven by entangled, nonprioritized motives that include personal desires as well as socioecological concerns. Moreover, urban food cultivation supports processes of reflexive identity‐formation while it allows its adherents to indulge in a shared ethos of re‐engagement with nature, meaningful work and authenticity. While not engaging in conventional protests or political processes, urban agriculture advocates are assured that by reorienting their everyday consumption practices and participating in local food cultivation, they collectively can induce social change.

I Was a Teenage Vegan: Motivation and Maintenance of Lifestyle Movements

Recent research has pointed to the rise of socially conscious consumption and of lifestyle movements or social movements that focus on changing one's everyday lifestyle choices as a form of protest. Much of this research addresses how adults maintain socially conscious consumption practices. Using interviews with youths who are vegan—strict vegetarians who exclude all animal products from their diet and lifestyle—I isolate the factors influencing recruitment into and retention of veganism as a lifestyle movement. I show that initial recruitment requires learning, reflection, and identity work, and that subsequent retention requires two factors: social support from friends and family, and cultural tools that provide the skills and motivation to maintain lifestyle activism. I also show how participation in the punk subculture further facilitated these processes. This work contributes to studies of youth subcultures and social movements by showing how the two intersect in lifestyle movement activism.

Lifestyle Medicine

As the lifestyle medicine movement continues to gain traction and strength, it is critically important that lifestyle medicine practitioners base their recommendations on the best available evidence. This review outlines ways of accomplishing that goal. The core concepts behind lifestyle medicine reside in many different bodies of information. These include nutrition, exercise physiology, behavioral medicine, psychology, and many more. Lifestyle medicine practitioners will need to be knowledgeable in all of these areas. A good place to start is with the evidence-based recommendations put out by major national bodies. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans and Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans also provide comprehensive, evidence-based information regarding these 2 critically important modalities. This review also discusses ways that scientific information is often distorted and how conjecture may sometimes be confused with proof. The review concludes with some recommendations for how lifestyle medicine practitioners can ground their recommendations on sound scientific evidence.

Using A New Accelerometry Method to Assess Lifestyle Movement Patterns of Americans: Influence of Demographic and Chronic Disease Characteristics

The objective of this study was to examine factors (e.g., medical conditions) that influence the balance of lifestyle movement patterns of Americans. 6,093 U.S. adults from the 2003-2006 NHANES were evaluated. Four mutually exclusive lifestyle behavior groups included: 1) meeting physical activity (PA) guidelines and having a positive light-intensity PA-sedentary (LIPA-SED) balance (i.e., LIPA ≥ SED); 2) meeting PA guidelines, but having a negative LIPA-SED balance (i.e., LIPA < SED); 3) not meeting PA guidelines, but having a positive LIPA-SED balance; and 4) not meeting PA guidelines and having a negative LIPA-SED balance. The majority of individuals with chronic disease (e.g., stroke, coronary artery disease, peripheral arterial disease, diabetes, emphysema, and arthritis) and other impairments (e.g., vision and hearing impairment) were classified in the least desirable lifestyle group. Results showed that, for example, those with chronic kidney disease, compared to those without chronic kidney disease, were 2.6 times more likely to be in the least desirable movement group compared to the most desirable lifestyle movement group. Initially, efforts should focus on creating a positive LIPA-SED balance and doing so among those with chronic disease.

Everybody’s Life is Like a Spiral: Narrating Post-Fordism in the Lifestyle Movement of the 1970s

What has been variously termed the post-Fordist turn in the social and economic organization of Western societies describes (among other things) the demise of a middle class professional culture and the emergence of a new lifestyle morality of expressive self realization. This study examines the role played by selection of lifestyle innovators in this process: through an interpretive study of narratives of moral change, the shift from the old professional morality to the new lifestyle morality is interpreted as a story of learned relaxation and impulsive release. Drawing material from over 83 lifestyle publications and 34 open-ended biographical interviews, the importance of this vanguard lifestyle movement is related to a wider historical consideration of the moral culture of the American middle class, and to an overview of theories of the post-Fordist turn.

Emerging Life-Style Movements: Alternative to Overdevelopment?

This essay looks at the actual and potential role of emerging alternative life-style movements in dealing with the crisis of overdevelopment in the advanced industrialized nations. It examines the problems posed by overdevelopment and shows how two alternative life-style movements - the North American Movement for Voluntary Simplicity and the New Life-style Movement in the Netherlands - represent positive responses to them. Their values, objectives, as well as their potential impact upon their societies are analysed and critically examined. In this critique, the authors consider the conditions under which alternative life-styles might be more widely adopted in First World societies in general.