Media Effects and Beyond

Chapter 10

Values, lifestyles and family communication

Fredrik Miegel

 

 

LIFESTYLE, IDENTITY AND VALUE

The empirical study of youth culture and young people's lifestyles is by no means an easy task. Depending on the purpose of the study, it can be conducted from quite different theoretical and methodological points of view. In this chapter I shall apply what might be called a value perspective. This is not a very original perspective, since several theories in the field combine lifestyle theory with a more or less developed value theory (see, for instance, Mitchell 1983; Kamler 1984). The reason for this is that behind most of our actions and attitudes lie a number of values, and since lifestyles are almost always empirically conceptualized ...