"Dagarna är inte bara en transportsträcka till nästa stora händelse, det är idag vi lever också" : En intervjustudie med personer som strävar mot downshifting

Sammanfattning: The study is a qualitative study with interviews as a data collection method. A request from different facebook groups contributed to a targeted selection, which resulted in all interviewees having relevance in the subject. As sociology can be defined as scientific studies of society and human life, it is therefore relevant to investigate the phenomenon of downshifting more closely (Giddens & Sutton, 2013). The purpose of the study is to describe and analyze downshifting as a sociological phenomenon from the interviewees' stories.  The questions used to answer the purpose are:  What do the interviewees express that they have chosen to live a simpler life?  What do the interviewees think that a simpler life prepares for?  How can the pursuit of downshifting that the interview participants describe can be understood with the help of Fromm's concept of ownership and being?  How can the interview participants' opportunities to downshift be analyzed from a class perspective?   The results show that the interview participants chose to prioritize things like consumption, work, housing situation and digital downshifting in order to avoid the impression they do not say they need. Instead, they prepare space for social relationships, personal well-being and interests. These things come together by spending less time on one thing, freeing up time on other things. How the interviewees choose to prioritize their time varies where the interests and what the person wants to achieve with their life determines. With Fromm's (2003) theoretical concepts of life form and ownership, it emerges that the interviewees are critical of society and in terms of the importance of class Bourdieu's (1993) theory of cultural, economic, social and symbolic capital is used.