Class, Lifestyle and Substance Use among Adolescents: A Bourdieusian Perspective

Against the backdrop of the continuing controversy regarding the interlinkage between social class, lifestyle and substance use of young people, the article reports the findings of an effort to assess the impact of adolescents’ cultural and economic capital and lifestyle practices on substance use. Drawing on Bourdieu’s work on class, lifestyle and practice, young people’s substance use can be seen as the product of class-specific capital endowment and related highbrow or lowbrow lifestyles. However, research seeking to explain adolescent substance use so far has eschewed a stringent empirical attempt to examine the impact of capital and lifestyle in relation to the use of different substances. Taking this desideratum as a starting point, our research indicates that although effects of cultural and economic capital are present, the type of lifestyle is more important for understanding and explaining substance use by young people.