Lifestyle Movements Research Articles

Do-it-yourself lifestyle movements in grassroots activist communities: A case study of Brisbane, Australia

Do-it-yourself lifestyle movements in grassroots activist communities: A case study of Brisbane, Australia

Lifestyle for social change? Exploring framing and lifestyle politics in the Chinese zero waste movement

The politicisation of everyday life and the proliferation of lifestyle movements have far-reaching consequences on processes of social change. Based on 45 in-depth interviews and virtual ethnography of lifestyle communities, this article reveals how sustainable lifestyle is interpreted and promoted in relation to pro-environmental social change in the ‘zero waste’ movement in urban China. Building on the framing perspective in social movement studies, I use ‘participant frames’ as a heuristic device to uncover bottom-up processes of meaning-making in lifestyle movements. The results reveal that frames constructed by citizen-consumers transitioned from a political and systemic diagnosis to a cultural and communal prognosis, and ultimately centre on a ‘call to action’ that emphasises individual and private actions. The ‘dissonance’ in framing, which involves promoting depoliticised actions while being motivated by political grievances and desires for systemic change, illustrates how citizens navigate structures of opportunities and constraints in China. Through deliberate depoliticisation, lifestyle activism leans towards constructive engagement with institutional actors rather than contentious confrontation and relies on the diffusion of sustainable lifestyle among the general public as the primary tactic for change. By incorporating methodological innovation and presenting new empirical findings from a non-Western context, this article advances the ongoing discussions surrounding political consumption and lifestyle politics.

Mediating lifestyle movements: the ethical ecologies of digital veganisms

ABSTRACT This article sets out a framework, ‘ethical ecologies,’ for researching and conceptualizing the role of media in lifestyle movements. Understanding lifestyle movements is important due to their growing prominence as a site of ethical and political agency, and media are integral in materializing this agency. The framework I develop to research these movements combines three bodies of work: media ecological scholarship (which emphasizes relations between media and social contexts), app studies (which foregrounds the mediation of consumption practices), and feminist STS (which elucidates how infrastructures materialize ethical possibilities). Using digital veganism as a case study, I combine interviews, documentary analysis, participatory action research, and what I describe as a ‘historicized’ app walkthrough, to trace how the move away from grassroots activist-produced media – and widespread use of apps and social media to support vegan practice – is entangled with its dramatic popularization. Yet, while veganism more visible, its position as a holistic philosophy with connections to wider social movements has been troubled by a socio-technical emphasis on vegan eating practice. Through this analysis of digital veganisms, I elucidate how an ethical ecologies approach can be utilized to reveal shifts in the mediation of lifestyle movements that have profound ethico-political implications.

Understanding polycentrically organized movements: An analysis of the Slow Food and Fair Trade movements in Europe

ABSTRACT The Slow Food movement and the fair trade movements have in the past been described as lifestyle movements and defined and understood in terms of their lack of explicit political commitments. In this article we consider the extent to which this view is still true today, drawing on the concept of polycentricity to describe and reflect on the activities of these polycentrically organized movements. The theoretically informed discussion we provide offers a nuanced account of each movement and its effort to engage in different kinds of activities in different contexts that all contribute to advancing its vision. We argue that while activities typical of lifestyle movements are still common in both movements, their overall orientations are more explicitly political than they perhaps once were. While some political activity is local and intended to bring about fairly limited reforms, both movements seek more transformative change at the national and EU levels.

How everyday life matters: everyday politics, everyday consumption and social change

Everyday life, a nebulous and contested concept, is increasingly featuring in accounts of socioeconomic transformation. This article reviews its connections with consumption, sometimes referred to as ‘everyday consumption’; and to political action, ‘everyday politics’. It brings together different theoretical and empirical agendas to explore intersections and shifts in ideas around transformation. The first section describes the ways in which everyday life has become associated with consumption, especially through studying practices and their relationship with ecological change. It argues that power, politics and resources are largely absent from these discussions. The second section therefore reviews literature on power, noting that influential theory, including feminist perspectives, practice theory and the work of Michel Foucault, all places emphasis on quotidian situations, interactions and instances, offering ways forward to addressing the absence of power in research on everyday consumption. The third section explores and compares the diverse literature on ‘everyday politics’, lifestyle movements, everyday resistance, prefiguration, life politics and subpolitics. The article groups these and other claims about how the everyday matters for social change into a set of common debates around resources, issues and themes, objects of study, and consequences. This helps identify some notable empirical findings, contrasting analytical claims, and suggests some priorities for future research.

The environmental politics of reproductive choices in the age of climate change

ABSTRACT The ethics of having children in the age of climate change is increasingly being discussed, but the political dimensions of individual reproductive choices in relation to climate change have been almost entirely ignored. This lacuna is addressed by drawing on a survey of 607 climate leftists who were factoring climate change into their reproductive plans and choices. Using a grounded theory approach, it identifies four dimensions of the connection between reproductive choices and environmental politics in the age of climate change: the parental investment in environmental politics; children as future environmentalists; the opportunity cost of parenting; and fertility as a socio-political tool. It adds reproductive plans and choices to the range of ways in which individuals conceive of themselves and act as environmental political actors, situating these results within the scholarship on eco-reproductive concerns, environmental micropolitics, environmental lifestyle movements, green parenting, and political demography.

Et bofællesskab og en bevægelse: en antropologisk analyse af økosamfundsaktivisme på tværs af skalaer

The commitment to work for a sustainable transition of society has increased greatly among grassroots in recent years. Hence, civil society has taken matter into its own hands instead of waiting for action to take place on a political and structural level. Activist movements with clear political agendas have traditionally been explored and researched as examples of civil society’s way of showing engagement. However, more recently social scientific literature has turned attention towards another kind of engagement. This type of engagement is represented by different lifestyle movements that have an interest in the practices of socalled everyday makers and practivists. This article follows this approach and explores activism from an everyday practical perspective through qualitative research studies of Danish eco-communities. Whereas studies of lifestyle movements often focus on individual sustainable practice, this article includes collective achievements where sustainable lifestyle is practiced with the purpose of making a successful community. The article shows how the (micro activist) change making collective practices that are taking place locally in eco-communities are represented by (the macro activist) networkers at a larger scale through their work for change outwards in society; on a national level in the Danish Association of Eco-communities (LØS) and on a global level in the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN). The article thus describes, how activism on different scales – practivism, microactivism, and macroactivism – are practiced in Danish eco-communities as well as in the Eco-Community Movement. The article thereby argues how these scales of activism mutually reinforce each other by ensuring that local eco-communities are liveable and that eco-community principles gain ground in ‘mainstream society’.

Changing the world one virgin at a time: abstinence pledgers, lifestyle movements, and social change

ABSTRACTOffering a contribution to cultural approaches to studying social movements, this paper explores how people incorporate social change efforts into broader self-projects. I use the contemporary abstinence pledge movement as an archetypal example of a lifestyle movement, a movement that advocates for lifestyle change as its primary challenge to perceived cultural problems. To capture the public face crafted by this movement, I coded complete website content for ten pledge organizations, as well as their print and social media presence. The data demonstrate: how pledge organizations explicitly target culture, rather than pressuring the state to enact policy change; how participants employ individualized tactics while still believing in their collective power to engender change; and that pledgers craft a moral self, engaging in ‘personal’ identity work. Expanding the lifestyle movement literature to think about outcomes and influence, I then show how pledgers contest perceptions of movement success, redefining effectiveness towards abstract, long-term, and subjective measures. I conclude by locating lifestyle movements in the context of late modernity and suggesting how theorists might use and further develop the concept in the future.

Consumption Governance Toward More Sustainable Consumption

This article deliberates on strategies of consumption governance toward more sustainable consumption. We discuss theoretical concepts stemming from various social science perspectives to (1) promote more sustainable consumption, (2) compare strategies stemming from individualist understanding of consumer behavior, and (3) call for a mix of strategies acknowledging collective dimensions of consumption to change consumer behavior in order to advance sustainable consumption. We thereby criticize overtly individualistic approaches and plea for acknowledging the collective dimensions of consumption that should be recognized in order to promote more sustainable consumption. We outline possible contributions of the collective dimensions in lifestyle movements and a mix of stakeholders that assist in achieving more sustainable consumption.

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.

Smartphone-enabled social change: Evidence from the Fairphone case?

There are two axioms that have shaped the degrowth discussion, namely one on the reduction of production and consumption and one on the necessity of value and attitude change in society to respect environmental limits. Surprisingly little research has focused on the role of technology in connection to value change, consumption behavior and degrowth. This gap is linked to a widely held assumption of technological innovation acting contrary to degrowth.In contrast, this paper suggests that technological innovation needs to be connected to degrowth. In particular, the fast evolution of information and communication technologies in recent years points to their importance for the global civil society. Given the scope of sustainability challenges connected to these technologies and smartphones in particular, this paper argues that a degrowth movement going hand in hand with technological development is only made possible, if sustainable alternatives for highly demanded products are offered.Specifically, this study draws on lifestyle movements as the nexus between consumption, degrowth and technology. Three core concepts are found to influence the attendance to degrowth-related consumer movements: a sustainable lifestyle, alternative forms of consumption and social commitment, all of which are assumed to have a positive effect. Empirically this paper draws on the case of the Fairphone, a company that applies sustainable characteristics to a smartphone. Data collected in a survey via online fora of the Fairphone from November 4–29, 2015 are analyzed using a structural equation modeling with partial least squares. Results indicate that a sustainable lifestyle represents the dominant factor explaining the involvement with the Fairphone. Surprisingly, the findings show that alternative consumption seems to negatively influence the involvement with the Fairphone and social commitment seems to play a minor role in the model. These aspects point to the Fairphone as a technical artifact, centered on a choice for a sustainable lifestyle. Future research needs to reach clarification on the relationship of alternative consumption and degrowth related movements and whether the negative effect is case specific or beyond. Furthermore, future studies need to delve deeper into lifestyle decisions as a leverage point towards degrowth, especially on lifestyles understood as a from of activism to change contemporary society.

Clothing and social movements: Tibet and the politics of dress

The ‘cultural turn’ in social movement studies has brought a renewed outlook on new social movements and lifestyle movements. In this development on the symbolic challenge of contemporary movements, research has expanded to both music and art. However, little is known about the role of clothing in movements and how activists use it for social change. In making the case for a greater consideration of clothing’s tactical use in identity work, this paper explores the case of the Tibetan Lhakar movement. I argue that for Lhakar activists, clothing is the materialization of the political consciousness of the movement and symbolically acts as a mechanism of communication in shaping its political goals. By using social media to observe individualized collective actions of wearing Tibetan clothing, the paper demonstrates how activists frame and create new political opportunity structures for civic participation in a one party state that controls all speech and movement.

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.

Civic, cooperative or contrived? a functional approach to political consumerism motivations

AbstractThe rise of political consumerism among young citizens as a means of promoting social change has sparked debate among scholars regarding the civic potential of such political practices enacted in the private sphere of everyday life. In particular, disagreement has centred on whether and the degree to which political consumerism privatizes politics and distracts citizens from collective engagement in the public sphere. The present research argues that understanding what drives political consumerism is key to resolving this debate. Accordingly, it draws across the multidisciplinary literature on political consumerism to identify the various symbolic motivations that underlie consumers’ use of ethical purchase considerations. Functional theory of attitudes is then applied as a framework for theorizing these motivations, and a scale is developed to measure value‐expressive, social‐identification and social‐approval motivations for political consumerism. The first two studies demonstrate the subscales are reliable and have good convergent and discriminant validity, and the third study demonstrates that increasing the salience of a particular motivation through the use of strategic messages alters how it relates to the use of ethical purchase considerations as well as broader involvement in a social cause. The significance of this research for understanding how political consumerism connects to broader participation in lifestyle movements is discussed.

Mobilising collaborative consumption lifestyles: a comparative frame analysis of time banking

AbstractIn this article, we elaborate how the framing of lifestyle‐based collaborative consumption impacts local mobilisation. We present time banking as a collaborative consumption lifestyle emerging from literatures on collaborative consumption and lifestyle movements. The cultural processes of meaning making and practices of framing, through which time banks mobilise constituents and entice collective action, are examined through naturally occurring text interpreted for diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framing. These three framing tasks further illuminate the change aimed for in local lifestyles. The data were collected from time banks in three European metropolitan areas. The findings highlight framing as a practice that challenges traditional monetised ideology of exchange in orthodox economic theory and the hegemonic understandings of consumption. This article advances the recent discussions on lifestyle movements engaging in meaning creation practices impacting the everyday actions of consumers in local communities.

Articulating the "Counter" in Subculture Studies

Articulating the "Counter" in Subculture Studies

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.

“My God Wants Me to Live Simply”: The Constructed Selfhood of Faith‐Based Simple Livers

This study examines how participants in the faith‐based voluntary simplicity movement, referred to here as “Simple Livers,” draw on the complex interactions of ideology and emotions as they construct a moral identity focused on social change. Drawing on qualitative data from participant observation and interviews, I examine the use of moral repertoires—combinations of principles, practices, and feelings, including guilt, pride, and frustration, grounded in both the Christian faith and the tenets of voluntary simplicity. I engage with the new literature on lifestyle movements to argue that the moral repertoires of Simple Livers reinforce these ideologies, resulting in the construction of an over‐conforming moral self.

Lifestyle Movements: Exploring the Intersection of Lifestyle and Social Movements

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.