9 Style, Lifestyle, Stylization of Life

Dr. Neeru Tandon

About the chapter

This chapter is about life, lifestyle and stylization of life. In it we will find the details regarding the above-mentioned terms and a comparison between the Style and Lifestyle.

1- Style Defined

Style (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Style is a manner of doing or presenting things.

Style may refer to:

• In arts and entertainment
• In literature, linguistics, and rhetoric
• Literary works
• In music
• In film and television

Generally style is defined as a “…distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories”. or”…any distinctive, and therefore recognizable, way in which an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made”. The idea of style has long been a mode of classifying works of art.

Artists in contemporary urbanized societies tend to be highly conscious of their own style, arguably over-conscious, whereas for earlier artists stylistic choices were probably “largely unselfconscious. Style is often divided into the general style of a time period, nation or cultural group, group of artists and the individual style of the artist within that group style. Any piece of art is in theory qualified of being analyzed in terms of style; neither periods nor artists can avoid having a style, except by complete in competence, and conversely natural objects or sights cannot be said to have a style, as style only results from choices made by a maker. It does not matter if the artist makes a conscious choice of style, or can identify his own style.

1.2 Concept of Style in Art

Western art, like that of some other cultures, has a noticeable predisposition to revive at intervals “classic” styles from the past. In critical analysis of the visual arts, the style of a work of art is typically treated as distinct from its iconography, which covers the subject and the content of the work. Classical art criticism and the relatively few medieval writings on aesthetics did not greatly develop a concept of style in art, or analysis of it, and though Renaissance and Baroque writers on art are greatly concerned with what we would call style, they did not develop a coherent theory of it, at least outside architecture.

The theorist of Neoclassicism, Johann Joachim Winckelmann, analyzed the stylistic changes in Greek classical art in 1764, comparing them closely to the changes in Renaissance art, and “Georg Hegel codified the notion that each historical period will have a typical style”, casting a very long shadow over the study of style.

Like many other terms for period styles, “Romanesque” and “Gothic” were initially coined to describe architectural styles, where major changes between styles can be clearer and more easy to define, not least because style in architecture is easier to replicate by following a set of rules than style in figurative art such as painting. Terms originated to describe architectural periods were often subsequently applied to other areas of the visual arts, and then more widely still to music, literature and the general culture.

Although style was well-established as a central component of art historical analysis, seeing it as the over-riding factor in art history had fallen out of fashion by World War II, as other ways of looking at art were developing, as well as a reaction against the emphasis on style; for Svetlana Alpers, “the normal invocation of style in art history is a depressing affair indeed”.

A rare recent attempt to create a theory to explain the process driving changes in artistic style, rather than just theories of how to describe and categorize them, is by the behavioral psychologist Colin Martindale, who has proposed an evolutionary theory based on Darwinian principles.

1.3 Individual Style

Traditional art history has also placed great emphasis on the individual style of an artist: “the notion of personal style—that individuality can be uniquely expressed not only in the way an artist draws, but also in the stylistic correlations of an author’s writing (for instance)— is perhaps a saying of Western notions of identity”. The identification of individual styles is especially important in the attribution of works to artists, which is a dominant factor in their valuation for the art market, above all for works in the Western tradition since the Renaissance. The identification of individual style in works is “essentially assigned to a group of specialists in the field known as connoisseur’s group. The exercise of connoisseurship is largely a matter of subjective impressions that are hard to analyze, but also a matter of knowing details of technique and the “hand” of different artists. Personal techniques can be important in analyzing individual style. Though artists’ training was before Modernism essentially imitative, relying on taught technical methods, whether learnt as an apprentice in a workshop or later as a student in an academy, there was always room for personal variation.

However the idea of personal style is certainly not limited to the Western tradition. In Chinese art it is just as deeply held, but traditionally regarded as a factor in the appreciation of some types of art, above all calligraphy and literati painting. Calligraphy, also regarded as a fine art in the Islamic world and East Asia, brings a new area within the ambit of personal style; the ideal of Western calligraphy tends to be to suppress individual style, while graphology, which relies upon it, regards itself as a science.

1.4 Manner and Style

“Manner” is a related term, often used for what is in effect a sub-division of a style, perhaps focused on particular points of style or technique. Many elements of period style can be reduced to characteristic forms or shapes that can adequately be represented in simple line- drawn diagrams. “Manner” is more often used to mean the overall style and atmosphere of a work, especially complex works such as paintings that cannot so easily be subject to precise analysis. It is a somewhat outdated term in academic art history, avoided because it is imprecise. When used it is often in the context of imitations of the individual style of an artist, and it is one of the hierarchy of discreet or diplomatic terms used in the art trade for the relationship between a work for sale and that of a well-known artist, with “Manner of Rembrandt” suggesting a distanced relationship between the style of the work and Rembrandt’s own style.

1.5 Style in Literature

Style in literature is the literary element that describes the ways that the author uses words — the author’s word choice, sentence structure, figurative language, and sentence arrangement all work together to establish mood, images, and meaning in the text. Style describes how the author describes events, objects, and ideas.

One easy way to understand literary style is to think about fashion styles. Clothes can be formal and dressy, informal and casual, preppy, athletic, and so forth. Literary style is like the clothes that a text puts on. By analogy, the information underneath is like the person’s body, and the specific words, structures, and arrangements that are used are like the clothes. Just as we can dress one person in several different fashions, we can dress a single message in several different literary styles:

1.6 Types of Literary Style

There are four basic literary styles used in writing. These styles distinguish the work of different authors from one another. Here are four styles of writing:

Expository or Argumentative style

Expository writing style is a subject-oriented style. The focus of the writer in this type of writing style is to tell the readers about a specific subject or topic and in the end the author leaves out his own opinion about that topic.

Descriptive Style

In descriptive writing style, the author focuses on describing an event, a character or a place in detail. Sometimes, descriptive writing style is poetic in nature in, where the author specifies an event, an object or a thing rather than merely giving information about an event that has happened. Usually the description incorporates sensory details.

Persuasive Style

Persuasive style of writing is a category of writing in which the writer tries to give reasons and justification to make the readers believe his point of view. The persuasive style aims to persuade and convince the readers.

Narrative Style

Narrative writing style is a type of writing where the writer narrates a story. It includes short stories, novels, novellas, biographies and poetry.

2-Lifestyle-

Reconfiguring identities in terms of ‘Lifestyle’ serves as a prerequisite in the case of modern, rather a postmodern man.’ ‘The term lifestyle has not only become part of contemporary common sense but is also central to contemporary consumer culture. The concept is employed in different ways across a range of academic and professional discourses. For example, in politics, marketing and advertising, people are often organized into particular lifestyle categories, while health professionals may associate lifestyles with specific forms of `healthy’ or `risky’ behaviors such as low-fat or high-fat eating (Berzano L.,Genova).’

2.1: Definitions of Life Style

It is not clear when the term life style was first mentioned in the literature, but the first definitions of the term go back to the 1920’s. When the sociologist Max Weber and – shortly after him – the psychologist Alfred Adler introduced the term, they also gave birth to its ambiguity. Later on the concept was introduced to marketing by William Lazer and hereafter modified several times. Even today the concept is still not well defined.

2.2. Contemporary Definitions of Lifestyle

According to contemporary dictionaries life style is:

“The particular way of life of a person or a group” (The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 1990)

“An individual’s way of life” (The Longman New Universal Dictionary, 1985)

“.A term originally used by Alfred Adler (1870-1937) to denote a person’s basic character as established early in childhood which governs his reactions and behavior”.

Obviously, in the time passed, no consensus about the meaning of life style has been reached. The definitions are all-vague and focus on different aspects of the distinctive modes of living of human beings.

2.3 Origins of the Life Style Concept

According to Alfred Adler every individual has his own distinct life style that can be more or less similar to life styles of other individuals, but never quite the same. Life style develops through the endogenous styled creative power of the individual during the first years of childhood and is neither due to heredity nor the environment.

“We must refute the causal significance of situation, milieu, or experiences of the child. (…) The same experience has never exactly the same effect on two individuals; and we learn from experience only to the extent that the style of life permits. “(Adler 1956, p. 178)

To Adler life style is the wholeness of individuality, which is hard to grasp.

“(…) We are not satisfied with the Gestalt alone or, as we prefer to say, with the whole, once all the notes are brought into reference with the melody. We are satisfied only when we have recognized in the melody the author and his attitudes as well, for example, Bach and Bach’s style of life.” (Adler, 1956, p.175)

Besides being the root of individuality, life style creates the unity of behavior – of ‘thoughts, emotions and actions, both conscious and unconscious’ – which reflects the ‘direction selected by the individual for his striving.’ In other words, it is a guiding principle that molds all experience and commands all forms of expression in pursuit of the unique goal of superiority of the individual (Adler, 1956, p.175).

The concept of life style was not as central and important to sociologist Max Weber as it was to Alfred Adler. Weber talks about the mode of life or the style of life as one of three determinants of social strata development.

“The following are the most important sources of the development of distinct strata:

• The most important is by the development of a peculiar style of life including, particularly, the type of occupation pursued.
• The second is hereditary charisma arising from the successful claim to a position of prestige by virtue of birth.
• The third is the appropriation of political or hierocratic authority as a monopoly by socially distinct groups.” (Weber, 1956, p. 429).

According to Weber, life style is closely linked to the type of occupation pursued, it is acquired through formal education, and it can be projected from everybody ‘who wishes to belong to the circle’ .As opposed to the definition of Adler, a certain life style applies to a whole group of people instead of one individual only. It is no guiding principle for the structure of life, but the structure itself. Moreover it is advisable to note that life style groups are not social strata per se, although life style is the most important factor in the growth of social strata. Only united with innate social standing and monopolistic authority life style demarcates the unclear margins of the social stratum, which implies that life style is different from these two factors.

All in all, according to Weber, life style is one of the demarcations of social standing. It is achieved by living your life in a certain way that is not inherited but learned and similar to other people.

2.4 Common Properties of Lifestyle:

The three common properties of life style are those that characterize every attempt at describing life style. These attempts can be either theoretical or empirical or both and will be called life style approaches. Even though the common properties are shared by all life style approaches each life style approach can apply the common properties in different ways.

2.5 The Unifying Aspect: Every life style approach tries to capture some consistency and unity between different aspects of the object(s) that the life style is being applied to. As Ansbacher puts it: ”The word ‘style’ includes the characteristic of cutting across ordinary boundaries and uniting what might otherwise be quite separate entities” (Ansbacher, 1967). For instance, to Alfred Adler the unity caused by life style is to be found within the individual. The different aspects unified are the different behaviors of the individual since life style is the unifying principle upon which all the behavior of the individual depends and with which it is consistent. In contrast, to Weber and Lazer the unity caused by life style is to be found within a group of people sharing the same life style. The different aspects unified are the different people that unite in one life style segment.

2.6 Marketing and Lifestyle

For the understanding and analysis of life styles many different disciplines must be applied, namely marketing, sociology, anthropology, psychology, demography, and social psychology.

In 1964 the sociologist William Lazer (1964) introduced the life style concept to marketing and consumer research. According to Lazer life style is a distinctive or characteristic mode of living that is applied by a group of people. It is a systems concept in so far as life style is shaped by the forces of living in a group with its specific culture, values, resources, symbols, license, and sanctions. In other words life style is the outcome of individuals joining a certain life style segment, an aggregate behavioral pattern of a group that is – among others – reflected in aggregate consumer purchases and manners of consumption. A lot of different definitions of life style have since entered the field of marketing, mostly as a post-assigned label for an inductively selected bundle of behaviors and cognitions. The focus on consumption, though, is a common topic of life style approaches in marketing.

The style of living or lifestyle is the unique and self-consistent unity in movement (thought, feeling, action) of the individual, created in early childhood in the context of genetic possibility and environmental opportunity (soft determinism), organized and given direction by the subjectively conceived goal, based upon guiding fictions and following guiding lines that are relied upon and reinforced through training, self-training, and the rehearsal of character.

2.7 Lifestyle and Individual Psychology:

In Individual Psychology, lifestyle is harmonious with the word personality in other psychological systems, but is contrasted to them not least because of its emphasis on the person’s characteristic way of movement. Adler first used the term life plan. He discarded this phrase at the suggestion of a student in favor of Weber’s phrase life-style. The new phrase was more apt to communicate Adler’s sense of the creative, artistic side of the development of the matchless individual.

[The child’s] opinion of life, which is at the bottom of his attitude to life and is neither shaped into words nor expressed in thought, is his own masterpiece. Thus the child arrives at his law of movement which aids him after a certain amount of training to obtain a style of life, in accordance with which we see the individual thinking, feeling, and acting throughout his whole life (pp. 187-188).

The style of life commands all forms of expression; the whole commands the parts. . . The foremost task of Individual Psychology is to prove this unity in each individual — in his thinking, feeling, acting, in his so-called conscious and unconscious, in every expression of his personality. This unity we call the style of life of the individual.

The style of life of an individual is wholly accomplished in earliest childhood and is not changed so long as the individual does not understand the unavoidable discrepancies [of his style] regarding the inescapable demands of social problems.

Anything that is not palatable to the style of life is rejected, forgotten, or saved as a warning example. The style of life decides.

[For] Adler, the construction of the “life style” is completed by the individual at about the age of four or five. His interpretations of what life is, what he is, what others are and what his relationships to others mean, is pretty nearly fixed by that age, and forms his total attitudes to life in all situations. New experiences are, from that time on, interpreted only from the point of view of his life style. This results in a biased selection of perceptions, with the exclusion, or at least depreciation, of all those experiences that do not fit his style of life. All thinking, feeling and acting of an individual support his style of life. Thoughts, feelings and actions that would undermine or contradict his life style are largely rejected (K. A. Adler, p. iv, Introduction, Adler, 1963).

2.8 Lifestyle consumer culture:

‘Lifestyle’ consumer culture indicates a flexible way of thinking which it is open to more and more consumer choices and not to morals and ethics. The term lifestyle is equally important to contemporary common sense and contemporary consumer culture. The concept is employed in different ways across a range of academic and professional discourses. For example, in politics, marketing and advertising, people are often organized into particular lifestyle categories, while health professionals may associate lifestyles with specific forms of `healthy’ or `risky’ behaviours such as low-fat or high-fat eating. However, these wider conceptions of lifestyle often assume that lifestyles, and the consumer goods, services and practices through which they are constructed, are freely chosen by individuals.

The theoretical significance of lifestyle as a sociological or cultural concept is frequently related to social, economic and cultural changes that are associated with the 1960s and/or 1970s onwards. These are usually explained in terms of a shift from modernity to postmodernity (or late capitalism) and/or a shift from Fordist to post- Fordist methods of production, both of which are associated with distinctive consumer cultures.

2.9 Lifestyle and Class differences: Many critics are of the opinion that lifestyle is still closely related to class differences. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu conducted extensive research into the tastes and preferences of different social groups in France in the 1960s, and mentioned the finer details in his book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Bourdieu 1984). Generally our ability to deal with lifestyle is clearly related to the amount of economic capital we have at our disposal, but for Bourdieu the unique ways in which classes consume cannot simply be explained by economic inequalities. He argues that our class position is not just shaped by the amount of economic capital we possess, but also by the amount of cultural capital. Cultural capital refers to the dispositions we bring to our consumption practices, demonstrated, for example, by the goods we choose to consume. Those who are rich in cultural capital not only legitimate their own dispositions as the legitimate dispositions (they have the power to do so because they possess symbolic capital), but also pass on these cultural resources to their children. Our reserves of cultural capital are largely inherited as through our upbringing in our families we learn to discriminate, classify and make sense of the world through what Bourdieu calls the habitus, a `system of dispositions’ through which we distinguish between what is, and isn’t, our kind of thing. Cultural capital is also legitimated through the education system: qualifications are the reward for demonstrating the `right’ kind of cultural dispositions.

2.10 The Literature on Lifestyle: Not only does Bourdieu’s work suggest that `some are more equal than others’ in their freedom to make individualized lifestyle choices (Dittmar 1992), it also shows how the importance of the idea of lifestyle in post-Fordist consumer culture coincides with the rise of new middle- classes, who are perfectly positioned to capitalize on the new emphasis on lifestyle. The new classes `take their lifestyles more seriously than their careers’ (Binkley 2004: 72). The new middle-class is `the new taste- makers’, who reject the seriousness and moderation of the old middle class in favour of a self- gratifying morality of consumption, based on credit, spending and enjoyment’, where people are judged by `their capacity for consumption, their “standard of living”, their lifestyle as much as their capacity for production’ Bourdieu’s work has proved an invaluable way of understanding how certain classes use lifestyle to distinguish themselves and make themselves `out of the ordinary’.

The literature on lifestyle, whether concentrating on individuals or classes seeking distinction or status through consumption, tends to underplay the value of `being ordinary’ in many people’s everyday practices. Ordinariness is not simply a way in which people understand their own lifestyles and identities, but is also a central feature of the forms and concerns of lifestyle media.

2.11 Cognition and Emotion

According to Adler cognition and emotion are part of life style and guided by the individuals goal in life. Weber talks about attaching meaning to behavior, which could be interpreted as the cognitions and emotions attached to the actions common for the group. Compared to Adler, though, these cognitions and emotions are less individualistic and guided by social interaction. Lazer’s concept of life style does not put emphasis on cognition and emotion.

When defining life style one question to be asked is whether man is seen as thinking and feeling creature. This question is central when classifying life style approaches. Cognition and emotion are mostly part of approaches based mainly on psychology, and are sometimes integrated in approaches based on sociology, but are never integrated in behavioristic approaches to life style.

3-Stylization of Life

3.1. Stylization of Life Defined:

Stylization of Life refers to a more specific meaning, referring to visual depictions that use simplified ways of representing objects or scenes that do not attempt a full, precise and accurate representation of their visual appearance (mimesis or “realistic”), preferring an attractive or expressive overall depiction. More technically, it has been defined as “the decorative generalization of figures and objects by means of various conventional techniques, including the simplification of line, form, and relationships of space and color”, and observed that “[s]tylized art reduces visual perception to constructs of pattern in line, surface elaboration and flattened space”. Stylized Representation has also been used by ancient, traditional, and modern art, as well as popular forms such as cartoons or animation.

3.2 Meaning of Stylization or Stylized:

“Stylized” may mean the adoption of any style in any context. Stylization is a natural method of rhythmic organization indecorative art, where the s ubordination of each pictorial element to the overall composition is particularly important. Stylization is most characteristic of ornamentation, in which the object depicted becomes a m otif of a pattern Stylization brings decorative features into easel art in literature and other arts, the intentional recreation of another person’s style in order to present a particular aesthetic and ideological position in a new artistic context.

The Soviet scholar M M Bakhtin has written for stylization in literature in clear terms: “The elements of another artist’s mode of expression are important to the stylizer, but only as an expression of a particular viewpoint.’ The role of stylization is defined by the function for which the other style is used in the work.

3.3. Literary stylization

Stylization has often served as a means of retreating into an imaginary, idealized world of the past or as a sign of dissatisfaction with the ordinary and commonplace and with traditional, ideological and artistic norms. Stylization is sometimes associated with a free interpretation of the content and style of the first of its kind. Stylization in the field of staging theatrical productions in the early 20th century was often used to overcome the dreariness and lack of style of theatre of the middle class. It was also used to bring contemporary theatre closer to the clear unity of folk and historical theatre.

3.4 Historical Value of Stylization: Stylization is a technique that’s been around for a very, very long time. In 1979, The Great Soviet Dictionary provided an excellent definition of stylization, explaining it as “the decorative generalization of figures and objects by means of various conventional techniques, including the simplification of line, form, and relationships of space and color.” To look at it from a different perspective, stylization is a deliberate step away from mimesis, which is defined as the close mimicry of reality (in art, this is very generally referred to as “realism,”). Rather than trying to represent the subject in a way that is close to reality, an artist can use stylization to create images.

3.5 Examples from art History:

Stylization is something that can be seen as ancient as cave paintings, as recognizable subjects were visually portrayed in a simplified manner. Part of this no doubt had to do with the fact that humanity was discovering the visual arts and experienced a learning curve over time when it came to more accurate mimicry of reality in drawing, painting, and sculpture. Stylization began to slowly give way to more realism in art. As Impressionism broke from academic tradition in the 19th century and brought a focus back to experimentation with colors and light, and stepped back from strict mimesis, it spurred a renewed interest in deliberate stylization and in using the portrayal of recognizable subjects as a platform in which to also revel in color, line, and shapes.

4-Summary

In order to be able to apply life style concepts to the area of transportation and travel demand more research on life style needs to be conducted. Life style research suffers from a lack of definitional consensus and a lack of explicit and detailed definitions. Most definitions of life style are so broad and vague that they cannot provide any guidance for operational zing life style. Therefore, a lot of applications of the life style concept to the area of transportation do not manage to operationalize life style in a valid way and go beyond describing demographic and socio-economic factors and patterns of behavior.

A new definition of life style is needed. The definition should distinguish life style from being a mere bundle of demographic, socio-economic factors and behavioral patterns. It should be broad and encompass the main elements of life style, namely the unifying quality, the differentiating quality, behavior, cognition and emotion, and social environment. At the same time, though, it is absolutely crucial that the definition is rigid and states the boundaries of life style in terms of the nature of those factors that constitute life style. These factors and their boundaries must be theoretically founded and empirically investigated in order to construct a concept of life style that can offer good guidance for traditional quantitative empirical studies of travel related life style or life style in general.

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