Lifestyles and Social Stratification: An Explorative Study of France and Norway

Abstract

To compare France and Germany, we will take a new approach to the discussion on lifestyles and social stratification. Instead of anchoring our definition of social stratification in predefined concepts, such as social class and status, we will empirically explore the latent patterns of social stratification and lifestyles. Our strategy allows us to investigate whether social stratification is best measured by one, two, or more dimensions; and then to map the associated patterns of lifestyles onto this/these dimension(s).

As indicators of social stratification, we use education, household income, and occupational status; and to measure lifestyles, we use data from two surveys on lifestyles and cultural consumption (Media og kulturforbruksundersøkelsen 2004, Norway; and module Pratiques culturelles et sportives, Enquête Permanente sur les Conditions de Vie 2003, France). We limit our analysis to occupationally active respondents, 20–64 years of age.

We would expect our findings to differ somewhat between the two countries; but given that social stratification is a pervasive element of all modern societies, we would also expect to find common empirical patterns that may be of relevance to the way we conceptualize lifestyles and social stratification.

Citation

Elisabeth Birkelund, G. and Lemel, Y. (2013), "Lifestyles and Social Stratification: An Explorative Study of France and Norway", Elisabeth Birkelund, G. (Ed.) Class and Stratification Analysis (Comparative Social Research, Vol. 30), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 189-220. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-6310(2013)0000030011