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Lifestyle Bundles: What Everyday Life Can Tell Us About Partisanship
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology.ORCID iD: 0009-0003-6759-4464
2026 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Individual lifestyle activities are often studied as isolated indicators of taste, social position, or political preference. Yet examining them in combination can reveal forms of social and political meaning that are difficult to see individually. This dissertation develops the concept of the lifestyle bundle to capture configurations of everyday practices whose meaning emerges relationally. From “latte-drinking liberals” to “bird-hunting conservatives,” lifestyles can cluster into recognizable constellations that shape perceptions of similarity and difference.

The dissertation asks three questions: what constitutes a lifestyle bundle, and how does it differ from related concepts such as taste or individual preference? To what extent can the clustering of everyday practices be understood in relation to material and instrumental forces? And what can lifestyle bundles reveal about social groups and their boundaries? Across four empirical studies, it shows that everyday practices are patterned by socioeconomic position and political affiliation, that their combinations vary across political contexts and groups, and that these configurations can function as recognizable markers of social and political distinction. Rather than treating individual activities as inherently political, the dissertation demonstrates how political meaning can emerge from their configuration within broader social contexts.       

The studies draw on survey and digital trace data from the United States and Sweden and combine quantitative, qualitative, and computational approaches. An integral methodological paper on technological reflexivity further examines how emerging computational tools can be used to study meaning in everyday life.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Stockholm: Department of Sociology, Stockholm University , 2026. , p. 50
Series
Stockholm studies in sociology, ISSN 0491-0885 ; 91
Keywords [en]
lifestyle bundles, partisanship, social distinction, everyday life
National Category
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
Research subject
Sociology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-259352ISBN: 978-91-8107-722-3 (print)ISBN: 978-91-8107-723-0 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-259352DiVA, id: diva2:2099644
Public defence
2026-10-23, Hörsal 9, hus D, Universitetsvägen 10 D and online via Zoom, public link is available at the department website, Stockholm, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2026-09-30 Created: 2026-09-08 Last updated: 2026-09-22Bibliographically approved
List of papers
1. Examining How Lifestyles Influence the Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Politics
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Examining How Lifestyles Influence the Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status and Politics
(English)In: Article in journal (Refereed) Submitted
National Category
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-259349 (URN)
Available from: 2026-09-08 Created: 2026-09-08 Last updated: 2026-09-11
2. Networks of Lifestyles: A Relational Perspective on Lifestyles Among Political Parties
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Networks of Lifestyles: A Relational Perspective on Lifestyles Among Political Parties
(English)In: Article in journal (Refereed) Submitted
National Category
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-259350 (URN)
Available from: 2026-09-08 Created: 2026-09-08 Last updated: 2026-09-11
3. Omnivorous Democrats, Consistent Republicans? Partisan Asymmetry in the Lifestyle Self-Presentation of U.S. Legislators
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Omnivorous Democrats, Consistent Republicans? Partisan Asymmetry in the Lifestyle Self-Presentation of U.S. Legislators
(English)In: Article in journal (Refereed) Submitted
National Category
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-259351 (URN)
Available from: 2026-09-08 Created: 2026-09-08 Last updated: 2026-09-11
4. Partisan Tastes or Ideological Divides? Everyday Interests and Political Identities in a Multi-Party System
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Partisan Tastes or Ideological Divides? Everyday Interests and Political Identities in a Multi-Party System
2026 (English)In: Journal of Computational Social Science, ISSN 2432-2717, E-ISSN 2432-2725, Vol. 9, no 3, article id 52Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Everyday interests expressed in leisure, media consumption, or cultural practices, increasingly intersect with political orientations, making them strong signals of individuals’ political identities. While most research on this phenomenon has focused on bipartisan systems, this study examines interest-politics alignment within Sweden’s multi-party context. Drawing on affective polarization literature, we extend prior work by systematically analyzing both the size (strength of associations) and shape (structural patterns) of this alignment. Furthermore, we analyze whether lifestyle polarization can be better explained by partisan identities or broader ideological orientations—a question that cannot be addressed in two-party contexts where these dimensions are confounded. Analyzing Swedish Twitter data (2010–2020), we examine how politically engaged users’ interests captured through the accounts they follow correspond to their political preferences, measured both as party associations and left-right ideological positions. Our findings show that multi-party systems do not shield against interest-politics consolidation. Patterns of everyday interests among politically engaged Swedish social media users reveal two dominant clusters that correspond closely to Sweden’s coalition landscape. Importantly, fragmentation in everyday interests aligns more strongly with ideological orientations than with party identities. We find that left-leaning individuals follow accounts associated with human rights, environmentalism, and cultural consumption, whereas right-leaning users favor finance, sports, and security content. Despite this polarization, certain interests cut across political divides, offering opportunities for dialogue across ideological lines. By disentangling partisan and ideological dimensions in a multi-party setting, the study contributes to research on affective polarization and cultural cleavages in European democracies.

Keywords
Computational grounded theory, Digital trace data, Lifestyle polarization, Political identities
National Category
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-258239 (URN)10.1007/s42001-026-00487-y (DOI)2-s2.0-105044568642 (Scopus ID)
Available from: 2026-08-21 Created: 2026-08-21 Last updated: 2026-09-10Bibliographically approved
5. Qualitative Research with LLM Chatbots: Technological Reflexivity for Interpretative Technology
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Qualitative Research with LLM Chatbots: Technological Reflexivity for Interpretative Technology
2026 (English)In: Qualitative Research, ISSN 1468-7941, E-ISSN 1741-3109, Vol. 26, no 1, p. 133-159Article in journal (Refereed) Published
National Category
Sociology (Excluding Social Work, Social Anthropology, Demography and Criminology)
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:su:diva-249911 (URN)10.1177/14687941251390794 (DOI)001611381400001 ()2-s2.0-105022131779 (Scopus ID)
Available from: 2025-11-24 Created: 2025-11-24 Last updated: 2026-09-10Bibliographically approved

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Ibrahim, Elida Izani

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910111213141512 of 15
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