Community Influences on Lifestyles and Health

Regular Session:

Health depends on complex interactions between the characteristics of individuals and the environment in which they live and develop their social relations. From fields such as geography, epidemiology and sociology, place has been conceptualised in relation to its physical, socio-economic and geographical dimensions, but a less explored aspect has been that of the symbolic-cultural processes linked to the area of residence. Place is important for social life, as "it is a space occupied by people, practices, objects and representations" that affect social attitudes and behaviours (Gieryn, 2000: 465). Contemporary urban studies recognise the differences between cities and their neighbourhoods, which promote different lifestyles depending on cultural amenities (Zuckin, 1995; Glaeser, Kolko and Saiz, 2001; Clark, 2003). Moreover, cultural consumption opportunities transform places into different cultural scenes; as a set of amenities that foster the development of different cultural practices around a set of values, as reasons and motives that justify them and as criteria for mutual recognition and social identification. In this session we invite researchers to present papers on the comparative study of community influences that contribute to the reproduction of health-related lifestyles, with special interest in those cultural and symbolic dimensions of local communities. We also welcome papers that discuss or propose ways to improve causal inferences in sociological studies on communitarian influences avoiding the problem of "selection" and endogeneity (Kawachi & Subramanian, 2007).