by Gary Griffin
The mode of social life resulting from the industrial revolution influences contemporary lifestyles. Modernity differs from all previous forms of social order because of its dynamism, global influence, and the degree to which it undercuts traditional customs and habits. The more tradition loses its hold, the more individuals are forced to negotiate lifestyle choices among a variety of local and increasingly global options. Modernity promotes a diversity of lifestyles, and even people in the lowest social classes have some choice. No culture eliminates choice altogether in day-to-day affairs, and even the poor have distinctive cultural styles and activities that require choices. People are likely to be pushed by social situations into choosing a particular lifestyle; in other words, it is necessary to adopt the appropriate lifestyle of a specific group or strata if one wishes to belong and move within it. A lifestyle involves a cluster of habits and orientations, and hence has a certain unity that connects options to a more or less ordered pattern. As such, an individual’s particular lifestyle choices tend to fit a pattern that makes alternative choices out of character.
Lifestyles not only fulfill utilitarian needs but also provide material form to one’s self-identity. Self-identity is not something that is just assigned to the individual by significant others or by the society. It is something that has to be routinely created and maintained through the activities of the individual. Everyone, to some extent, is forced to adopt a representative and reflexively constructed lifestyle. New conditions that transform time and space combined with certain disembodying systems, such as increasingly sophisticated and abstract money systems and the dissemination of technical knowledge throughout society, promote social change. As social life becomes more open, the contexts for action more plural, and authority more diverse, lifestyle choices are increasingly more important in the construction of self-identity and daily activities.
While postmodern conditions promote uncertainty and diversity in lifestyle choices, they also push people toward greater individual responsibility. Postmodern conditions are characterized by a fragmentation of traditional centers of authority and accelerated individualization. Although these processes would suggest that choice plays a greater role than chance in lifestyle selection, this is not necessarily the case. Choices are shaped by the individual’s life chances, which are grounded in a particular reality such as socioeconomic, gender, age, or racial. Life chances, therefore, remain an especially powerful component of lifestyle options, even though traditional social structures are undergoing a major transition. Not only do life chances constrain choices, but the revolving character of the postmodern society also complicates matters.
Lifestyles may provide relief in a rapidly changing world by reducing complexity, that is, lifestyle choices can promote a sense of stability and belonging for an individual by providing an anchor for the person in a particular social constellation of style and activity. Lifestyles, like institutions, can be seen as opportunity structures. People take what they need from them, while adopting them as the preferred way to live. Chance mitigates choice. Life chances, as depicted by Weber, are predominantly socioeconomic. When it comes to lifestyles, it would appear that most people engage in certain behaviors regardless of their socioeconomic position, but different social classes are likely to pursue different avenues in terms of quality, distinctiveness, and probabilities for success. On the other hand, there is little empirical evidence to suggest that the contemporary patterns of social behavior that are referred to as lifestyles are merely deliberate products of independent individuals.
Chance is then an especially strong component of a lifestyle.54 Individuals have life chances in society that can either make or break them; therefore, any concept of lifestyles needs to pay particular attention to chance. Life chances influence lifestyles through socioeconomic resources and perceptional boundaries derived from socialization and experience in a particular social milieu.
Most theories and concepts regarding lifestyle in the twentieth century are centered on the social stratification. The relationship between lifestyle and other forms of status, such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual preference have not been fully explored, and neither have other variables such as peer relations and the influence of advertising and mass media campaigns. However, variables such as age and gender may in fact induce age-specific or gender-specific lifestyles that transcend class boundaries; thus, socioeconomic status cannot be considered the sole determinant of a lifestyle.
The term lifestyle implies complexity and structure but nonetheless infers a unity, pattern, or integrated set of behaviors. The appropriate strategy is to identify these integrated sets of behaviors in relation to the groups that practice and reproduce them. This process is not a case of pure rational choice because the choices made are not completely autonomous. People may have control over their choices but not over the principles and conditions underlying those choices. 55
This consistency and routinization most likely prevails even in postmodern conditions where people are detached from the certainties and modes of living of the industrial age and subjected to evolving social circumstances with greater behavioral options. Moreover, lifestyles are opportunity structures in that people adopt them for the gains they feel they can acquire, which include both a material form to their self-identity and an anchor in a particular social constellation of style and activity. On the other hand, individuals do make choices that fit nonetheless to a structural scheme grounded within group behavior.
Many structural approaches emphasizing the effects of life chances on individuals tend to underestimate the creativity of social agents. In the same manner, many microsociological approaches concentrate on the perspective of the social agent and tend to underestimate the interdependence of patterns of social behavior and life chances that produce the structure of lifestyles. It is necessary to focus on a number of variables that must be analyzed if the typical structure of a pattern of behavior is to be reproduced. Lifestyles are grounded in life chances that include age, gender, race, and ethnicity, as well as the options those chances provide. The choice—chance relationship must be conceptualized as a complex form of interaction involving the interplay of the two.
A lifestyle is not simply a collection of behaviors nor is it merely a variable; today’s lifestyles are a recent postmodern phenomenon most clearly visible in the culturally and economically empowered middle classes. In fact, the very idea of what constitutes a contemporary lifestyle has been triggered by changes in middle-class ways of living. Lifestyles have significant implications for understanding class and gender relations, cultural orientations, self-control, and the role of lifestyle generally in an information society.
PROBLEMS WITHIN THE INFORMATION SOCIETY
Fortunately, the explosive technological changes characterizing the latter part of the twentieth century seemed to fit quite well with the post-industrial society concept. Daniel Bell’s 1973 book The Coming of Post-Industrial Society provided a ready-made model, and it was quickly recognized as the standard for many commentators on this subject. It is obvious that technology plays a critical role in the emerging social system described by Daniel Bell as the postindustrial society. However, the explosion of information technology such as computers and the Internet that began in the late seventies and continued through the eighties and nineties was not yet realized.
Recent developments in information technology must be considered to understand the current information society paradigm in which America now finds itself. The convergence of telecommunication technology with computers is a not a new trend, but the latest developments in this area as represented by the Internet are a recent phenomenon. Technological advancements such as those presented by the Internet do not serve to bring about social changes because social changes can only occur when people are involved. For example, social-networking sites may allow people to get together over the Internet through the use of the technology, but they do not guide the social relations that result from
the sites. So it is a given that the technological capabilities afforded by information technology must be available before certain social changes can occur. Who could have foreseen the technological changes that would occur in information technology that currently exists in contemporary society? Now there are desktop computers with capabilities that could not even be achieved by mainframes in the eighties and early nineties. In 1973, PC was not even a term. Furthermore, the Internet was in its infancy in 1973, and it certainly bore little resemblance to the Internet we have today.
Weber makes the pertinent observation that lifestyles are based on what one consumes and not on what one produces. For example, purchasing a product or service on the Internet is nothing more than an information-producing activity that results in the consumption of that product and/or service. The company providing the service and/or product must produce the information about the product (i.e., description, cost, etc.), and the buyer or individual must produce information in order to acquire the product (i.e., credit card information, delivery address, etc.). Internet usage presents individuals with opportunities to realize certain choices such as the ability to shop, to pay bills, to search for information, to use the phone, to play games with others from around the world, to communicate via e-mail, and to take educational courses online; these choices are in fact definable patterns of behavior that constitute a style of living in the information society. Furthermore, these choices are mitigated by life chances as defined by an individual’s social situation such as socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, age, race, marital status, and residential location.
Social class has not disappeared within the information society. It simply needs to be reframed to reflect the changing social structure that currently exists within the information society. Social class is a combination of education, occupation, and income within the information society as defined by Weber as socioeconomic status. Examination of the interaction of socioeconomic status with other social groups in terms an informatizationalized lifestyle reveals a stratification system that reflects differences in lifestyle choices within the information society. Given the current trends, two classes are likely to emerge—the service class and the information and knowledge class.
Not all groups within the information society are the same with regard one’s informatizationalized lifestyle. Differences in power and inequality exist among groups such as women, minorities, and the elderly within the information society, albeit for different reasons. Some argue that there is evidence that women may be achieving a higher status position within the information society. Almost no work has been done on the role of ethnicity in the information society. Minorities often lack social capital and that hinders social mobility within the information society. The elderly may enjoy less status within the information society than they did within previous phases of society. Now everything one needs to know is at his/her fingertips and with the rapid rate of change in the labor market, job skills become outdated quickly.
Does an informatizationalized lifestyle within the information society remain the same regardless of residential location—say rural versus urban? Geography does not play the same role within the information society, and it is no longer the controller of costs. Distance becomes a function not of space but of time, and the costs of time and the rapidity of communication become the decisive variables. Worksites are less meaningful. While this is primarily due to technological change, it also is related to the increasing role of information as a part of work. For example, a trader with a company in New York can now live and work in the Colorado mountains. This is clearly one aspect of geography in relation to an informatizationalized lifestyle within the information society.
But there is another perspective on the role of residential location. Those with the least access to computer and online services are people with low incomes who live in rural areas, those living in poorer central-city areas, blacks, single-parent households (particularly those headed by women), and those with limited schooling. With the technological advancement and the increased role of information in the information society, these differences may actually exacerbate the existing inequalities. Yet it is not just access to the technology that is perpetuating the inequality, it also has much to do with the skills and resources necessary to achieve access. To restate, one can now become a member of the information-poor class regardless of residential location.
The informatizationalized lifestyle of the information society is not conducive to traditional family relationships. Very little has been written, if anything, to give an account of social relations within the information society. However, the Internet serves as a medium to establish new interactions that are, in fact, social networks. Such is the case for online chat rooms and online data services. Now, more than ever before single people can meet others from around the United States, and, for that matter, from around the world. It seems plausible that traditional social relations in connection to the informatizationalized lifestyle of the information society will continue to change.
INFORMATION SOCIETY IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AMERICA
This chapter is significant for three reasons. First, it serves as a foundation for blending theories of lifestyles with certain aspects of Bell’s theories on postindustrial society into a more appropriate model of the information society that can be used to better understand the social changes that are reflected in the informatizationalized lifestyle currently found within American society in the twenty-first century.
Second, here we examine how choices are related to one’s life chances and how this is intertwined with social class and socioeconomic status. Given the current evidence supporting the information rich and the information poor thesis, inequalities clearly exist even in the information society. If Internet access is all that is required for equality in the information society, can it be assumed that some will not be better off than others? Given the history of capitalism in the United States, this hardly seems like a plausible hypothesis. Moreover, when one excludes the economic barriers that keep certain groups from owning and accessing the prerequisite information technology, is it a safe assumption that groups such as blacks, women, and the elderly will make the same choices as their counterparts?
Finally, the trends in the information society have certain policy implications. For example, current policies from the federal government are established to address the digital divide by bringing access to all by making Internet access affordable to every home. Part of this policy initiative is based on the belief that inequality stems from the unequal access to the Internet. A very different picture may emerge where it is not a lack access that dictates inequality but a lack of Internet usage. These implications would necessarily mean different policy initiatives to address not only infrastructure and access but also services and usage via the Internet (i.e., skill development).
The purpose of this chapter was to define the informatizationalized lifestyle that is emerging within the information society. As defined earlier, the in-formatizationalized lifestyle consists of many different observable activities and behaviors around Internet usage. Such choices are constrained by life chances that are structurally determined by gender, race, ethnicity, age, marital status, residential location, and socioeconomic status.
Daniel Bell and his work on postindustrial society are heavily driven by social changes within the techno-economic structure of society where property relations are determined by the relationship between the forces of production and the social relations of production. More specifically, Bell’s contribution to this study is found in his theory of postindustrial society that identifies technology as a lever for social change that is deeply tied to the economics of a highly skilled, highly professional, intellectualized, and services-based society. The Internet best represents the current technology that forms the basic technical infrastructure to support the informatizationalized lifestyle within the information society.
As previously stated, Weber observed that lifestyles w
ere based not so much on what people produced but on what they consumed. The consumption of goods and/or services indicates specific styles of living that are represented by the specific choices a person makes. Choices are constrained by a person’s ability to realize those choices based on that person’s life chances. In other words, lifestyle differences are based on an individual’s relationship to the means of consumption not the means of production. However, consumption is not independent of production. Consumption can then be regarded as a set of social and cultural practices that establish differences between social groups and not merely as a means of expressing differences that are already in place because of economic factors. Of particular interest are the differences between socio-demographic groups of Internet users in terms of their choices around Internet usage that in turn leads to or constitutes an informatizationalized lifestyle.
Informatization is the process of social change that results in an information society. Informatization contains technical, informational, economic, social, and cultural dimensions that are manifested in the way people live, work, and play in the information society that make up a style of living. However, the term informatizationalized was used as a way of establishing a term that implies changes that have taken place instead of changes that are in the process of taking place. The importance of this nuance lies within the ability to measure the lifestyle that is represented by the choices one makes around Internet usage.
As noted earlier, the use of and access to information technology throughout all levels of the information society is directly tied to economics. Access to the Internet has associated costs, hence the digital divide. Some assume that providing all people with access to the Internet can close the digital divide. However, simply giving the poor access to technology does not guarantee equality. Moreover, there is no reason to assume economic disparities will no longer exist in Internet usage once universal access is achieved.