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This paper explores the general relationship between peoples' health-related practices and their affiliation with different fields in the occupational structure. It argues that 'healthy behaviour' may be particularly induced in the field of service occupations (jobs where one is providing a service, rather than producing a physical product), rendering such practices an emerging capital in the sense advanced by Bourdieu. The paper presents an empirical elaboration of this theoretical argument by assessing comparative European data on health behavioural dispositions. Across occupational class levels, defined according to Esping-Andersen's post-industrial class scheme, service workers display dispositions suggesting greater possessions of health capital than their counterparts in the industrial hierarchy. In a multilevel analysis, considering societal context, the paper furthermore associates such endowments with post-industrial development. Elaborating on the general relationships identified, we suggest the rising importance of individual health investments to be considered as potentially instigating and reinforcing symbolic boundaries (social closure). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on 222 qualitative interviews conducted through a large ethnographic research project on transformed industrial landscapes in six countries, the main argument of the article is threefold. First, landscapes and narratives about past and present landscapes are relevant to the identity of class; second, the transformation of industrial landscapes is most emphatically expressed by nostalgia; third, the narratives are a transnationally constitutive element of class identity. The narratives of workers about the transformation and destruction of former workplaces express an identity crisis as seen in feelings of mourning and indifference. However, this does not indicate an erosion in the relevance of identity. Considering class as also having an emotional dimension, the article demonstrates that a class identity also evolves out of loss and longing. As nostalgia for a past now gone is a common narrative identity element in the research areas, it is considered as constitutive of a transnational class identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial share of Europe's population consists of immigrants and the children of immigrants. Using European Social Survey data, this study examines whether the gender-egalitarian values of immigrants are shaped by the gender relations in their origin country and whether they adapt their values to the standards of their residence country. The analyses show that immigrants originating from countries with very inegalitarian gender relations support gender equality less than members of mainstream society. However, immigrants adapt their gender ideology to the standards of their residence country, and the origin context loses force over time. Both acculturation within the first generation and acculturation across the generations play a role; but women tend to “assimilate” within the first generation and more thoroughly than men. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Smaller regional cities and former industrial cities throughout North America and Europe have experienced fundamental transformations of their economies over recent decades, and authorities have continually sought new functions for the postindustrial era. Following on from retail, office, and residential regeneration within many city centres, leisure and cultural policies have also been adopted. The British city of Swansea, which has developed such policies since the 1990s, is a regional city which typifies these processes. Drawing on large-scale surveys and in-depth interviews, the authors argue that four policy challenges are facing the development of a thriving leisure and cultural economy in smaller regional cities across Europe and North America. These challenges involve creating a leisure and cultural economy which: embraces a wide range and variety of attractions; appeals to a broad spectrum of social groups; adopts an appropriate spatial strategy; and overcomes friction between the different component parts of the leisure and cultural economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]