ABSTRACT
Chapter 1, From a single style to multiple styles, defines lifestyle as a social form including “a set of practices, with unitary and relational meaning, which is a distinctive model shared within a collectivity, without having either a pre-existent cognitive-axiological system or a pre-determined socio-structural condition as generative elements, even though it may be influenced by them”. Here the concept of generative element refers to those factors and processes which may constitute necessary and sufficient, logical and temporal, antecedents to the development of an individual’s practices. However, when one speaks of a lifestyle, neither the cognitive-axiological framework nor the socio-structural conditions may be considered as the lifestyle’s generative factors. Five factors and contexts have favoured the multiplication of styles: the aestheticization of society; cities and metropolises; reference groups; “loisirs”; and consumption.
