Events

Abstract: The concept of health lifestyles is moving scholarship beyond individual health behaviors to integrated bundles of behaviors undergirded by group-based identities and norms. Health lifestyles research merges structure with agency, individual-level processes with group-level processes, and multifaceted behaviors with norms and identities, shedding light on why health behaviors persist or change and on the reproduction of health disparities and other social inequalities. I discuss my team’s US-based mixed-methods research on the development of health lifestyles in early life. Our quantitative demographic research models life course dynamics in health lifestyles, their relationships to social contexts, and their implications for health and development. At the same time, our quantitative sociological research shows how health lifestyles function as signals for status and identity and serve as cultural drivers of inequalities.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Hilary Term is convened by Dave Kirk and Jennifer Dowd.  For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.