Anu Katainen:

Images of smoking and socio-economic patterning of the cigarette consumption

Smoking is an important factor behind the socio-economic differences in health. Moreover, the gap in smoking prevalence between socio-economic groups seems to be widening in most Western Countries. As salience of dependency in explaining smoking has partly replaced more cultural approaches, the social stratification of smoking and cultural and social factors affecting it have not been sufficiently analysed. While addiction is an important part of smoking, as a habit smoking also resembles other forms of consumption that vary according to the socio-economic background, such as eating and drinking. Many researchers have argued that class is too rigid a concept to understand the differentiation and complexities of modern societies and, in addition, class has been seen as having lost its position in identity construction. However, many consumption habits and lifestyle choices are related to the images of social groupings such as class, as Bourdieu and more recently Beverley Skeggs have shown. In the presentation, the images of smoking are analysed among daily smokers, quitters and occasional smokers from different socio-economic backgrounds. It is claimed that images of social groupings also affect the patterning of smoking habit, even when cigarette consumption is due to addiction. What is essential is the flux of those images during the cessation process and between different smoking populations.