ABSTRACT
The lifestyle concept has had a recurring fascination for social scientists. The hope, whether stated explicitly or not, has been to grasp at something closer to the essence of social life than the study of either individual behaviours or social categories will permit. However, realizing this hope requires some means of dealing with multiple aspects of individuals and social groups more or less simultaneously. How are multiple behaviours in different spheres integrated into coherent and meaningful organizations, and why do these integrations occur? In addition, implicit within the lifestyle concept is the notion of difference or variation - that individuals differ from each other in systematic and meaningful ways.
