Chapter 12
Late modernity, consumer culture and
lifestyles: toward a cognitive-affective
theory
Johansson Thomas
INTRODUCTION
Lifestyle is not a term which has much applicability to traditional cultures, because it implies choice within a plurality of possible options, and is ‘adopted’ rather than ‘handed down’. Lifestyles are routinised practices, the routines incorporated into habits of dress, eating, modes acting and favoured milieux for encountering others; but the routines followed are reflexively open to change in the light of the mobile nature of self-identity. Each of the small decisions a person makes every day — what to wear, what to eat, how to conduct himself at work, whom to meet with later in the evening — contributes to such routines. All social choices (as well as larger and more consequential ones) are decisions not only about how to act but what to be. The more post-traditional the settings in which an individual moves, the more lifestyle concerns the very core of self-identity, its making and remaking. (Giddens 1991: 81)
Theoretical and empirical discussions of consumer culture, lifestyles, the mass media, popular culture and youth culture are intimately connected to more fundamental philosophical and ontological questions concerning subjectivity, societal and cultural change and the meaning of life. The terms ‘lifestyle’ and ‘identity’ are currently in vogue (Featherstone 1987). They are used as conceptual tools for trying to grasp how societies and individuals are changing. In post-traditional societies lifestyle has become an issue for most people and, as Giddens points out, the more post-traditional the settings in which an individual moves, the more lifestyle concerns the very core of self-identity.
The concept of lifestyle is often associated with market research, consumer attitudes and consumer styles (Holman and Wiener 1985; Mitchell 1983; Pitts and Woodside 1984; Schwartz et al. 1979). One of the most influential books in lifestyle research during the 1980s was Arnold Mitchell's work The Nine American Lifestyles (1983). In brief, Mitchell conceptualizes and describes The Nine American Lifestyles on the basis of Maslow's well-known hierarchy of needs. Maslow's theory states that certain elementary physical needs have to be fulfilled before people will become concerned about activities and interests aiming at self-realization (Maslow 1968). Accordingly, Mitchell distinguishes between three different categories of lifestyle: need-driven lifestyles, outer-oriented lifestyles and inner-oriented lifestyles.
Mitchell's work has had a considerable impact on lifestyle research in Western countries (see, for example, Zetterberg 1983). One of the advantages of Mitchell's work is that he has developed a theoretical framework of lifestyle and empirical methods for measuring lifestyles. There are also several problems inherent in Mitchell's theoretical and methodological approach, however. (For a critique of Mitchell, see Johansson and Miegel 1992a: 19, 58.)
Although the notion of lifestyle has strong connotations to market research and consumer styles, it also has strong roots in sociological theory. In classical sociology, the notion of lifestyle was connected with the Weberian distinction between classes and status groups (Turner 1988; Weber 1922/ 1968). According to Weber, it is appropriate to use the term ‘class’ to designate a large number of persons with similar, economically determined living conditions and life experiences. In contrast to classes, status groups are determined by assessments of social honour or esteem. Status distinctions are often linked with class distinctions, but income and property as such are not always acknowledged as qualifications for status. Social status is normally expressed in the form of a specific style of life. As Weber puts it in an oft-quoted passage:
With some over-simplification, one might thus say that ‘classes’ are stratified according to the reproduction and acquisition of goods; whereas ‘status groups’ are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods and represented by special ‘styles of life’. (Weber 1922/1968: 193)
Through the consumption of goods and the creation of specific and distinguished lifestyles, status groups and societal hierarchies are made visible. Possessing wealth is not enough; it has to be put in evidence — for example, through the conspicuous consumption of clothes and jewellery or other accessories. However, as soon as the lower classes succeed in imitating the lifestyle of the higher classes by means of mass produced, cheap copies of former aristocratic status symbols, new symbols are appropriated and made into status symbols (Simmel 1904/1971; Veblen 1899/1979). This perpetual play between different classes and status groups creates a constant need for change, and for those new sensations and experiences which, according to Simmel, are so typical of modern city life in particular and modernity in general. This symbolic play and creation of different lifestyles is also gradually extended to large parts of the labouring population. Thus, according to modern lifestyle theoreticians, the creation of lifestyles becomes intimately interwoven with the twin processes of modernization and individualization (Blumer 1969; Johansson and Miegel 1992a; Zablocki and Kanter 1976).
The notion of lifestyle and the theoretical discussion of this concept is thus closely related to some of the most central sociological questions of the twentieth century, such as the differentiation of classes and status groups, the rise of a consumer society, the process of individualization and the increasing importance of self-identity. During the 1980s we have also witnessed a renewed interest in questions concerning lifestyle and self-identity (Feather-stone 1987; Giddens 1991; Johansson and Miegel 1992a, b; Reimer 1989). There are several reasons for this renewed interest in the lifestyle discourse.
Firstly, the cultural dimension has increasingly come to occupy a more central position in theorizing about different social phenomena. In order to understand central sociological questions such as the relation between different social groups, struggles for power, the relation between self and society, the process of socialization, etc., it is necessary to grasp the complex relationship between social processes and individuals' utilization of different symbols, artefacts, styles and tastes. Culture does not only have an ideological impact upon different types of social action, it also has a material impact. Cultural symbols are not only reflections of class relations, gender relations, etc., they also have an impact of their own on the formation and maintenance of these relations. In this sense, the notion of lifestyle is a powerful tool that can be used to study the relation be ween social and cultural processes.
Secondly, mass produced culture has come to play an increasingly greater part in the creation of identities and lifestyles of short or long durability. This particular function has become widely recognized in modern mass media research. In the intersection of everyday life, culture and the mass media, symbols are constantly being interpreted and transformed. The ‘whole way of life’ created and maintained in everyday culture no longer merely embraces the ‘original’ or ‘authentic’ culture, but also a wide array of mass media produced symbols and notions. It is also in this meeting between culture in the sociological or anthropological sense of the word, and culture as mass produced symbols and artefacts, that lifestyles are created and maintained. The concept of lifestyle may thus be used to analyse this intricate interplay between mass produced culture and the culture of everyday life.
Thirdly, the concept of lifestyle cuts across such important distinctions as those between public and private, social and personal, high culture and popular culture, global and local culture, and so on. Such dualistic conceptions of society, culture and human life have increasingly become criticized and questioned. A general theme in postmodern theories of culture and society is an emphasis upon the effacement of the boundary between art and everyday culture and the collapse of the distinction between high culture and mass/popular culture (Baudrillard 1987; Featherstone 1991). Also the dual conceptions of man and society are criticized, and replaced by other theoretical constructions within social theory (see, for example, Alexander 1988; Giddens 1991; Habermas 1987). Consequently, the lifestyle concept can be used to find new paths to the solution of old questions and new ways of theorizing sociological questions.
In this chapter, I will further elaborate and develop some of the theoretical issues and thoughts briefly touched upon in this introduction. I will begin by discussing the fundamental issue of the formation of self-identity and lifestyle in late modern Western societies. The relation between values and lifestyle plays a central role in the lifestyle discourse. I will therefore discuss the formations of personal as well as societal value systems. Finally, I will try to tie all the notions and ideas together in the fourth section, ‘Towards a Theory of Late Modern Identity and Lifestyle’.
SELF-IDENTITY AND LIFESTYLE
Introduction
Modernity confronts the individual with a complex diversity of possibilities and choices. The existential terrain of late modern life is thus characterized by an increased awareness of the opportunity to construct and reconstruct one's life history. Whereas tradition or established habit orders life into a relatively fixed numbers of channels, the late modern terrain offers a wide range of different lifestyle alternatives to individuals. However, even though lifestyle choices in late modern societies are multiplied and the individual's choices often seem arbitrary, it is always necessary to study the structuration of lifestyles within a specific social and cultural context. Lifestyles are constituted and maintained within a more or less structured field of different positions and movements (Bourdieu 1984). As Grossberg (1992: 99) puts it: ‘People are never only Black or female or working-class; people's identities are defined precisely by the complex articulations between different positions in a variety of systems of social difference.’
The development of lifestyle repertoires is also intimately related to fundamental existential issues, such as the reflexively organized construction and reconstruction of self-identity and life history, the creation of meaning in life and the development of a sense of ontological security. The conspicuous and imaginative character of lifestyle offers individuals a wide variety of means to strengthen and develop their self-identity and body awareness. However, it also offers them opportunities to hide their ‘real’ personality and socio-cultural origin and to create a kind of dream-world. Through the development of different lifestyles, individuals are articulating various kinds of needs, desires and life-plan calendars, but at the same time they are gradually integrated and drawn into a system of structurally and positionally determined social and cultural processes and formations (Berger etal 1974; Giddens 1991).
The development of lifestyles is therefore to be considered as the parallel and continuous processes of individualization and social and cultural integration. These two different aspects of lifestyle thus engender an accelerating lifestyle differentiation in late modern society. This characteristic duality of lifestyle was also observed by Georg Simmel (1904/1971) in his classic essays on the fashion mechanism and city life. According to Simmel, this double and sometimes contradictory urge for both individuality and cultural belonging is a typical characteristic of modernity (Frisby 1985; Nedelmann 1991).
Lifestyle and symbolic democratization: hiding in the light
Individual identity is formed and structured in relation to others. Contemporary child psychology, as well as research about infants’ early interactions with their parents, show that infants take active part in this developmental process, and thus also continuously populate the world with samples of their own inner lives (Stern 1985; Winnicott 1965/1987). The infant's growth takes the form of a continuous interchange between inner and outer reality. Or as Winnicott (1965/1987: 86) expresses it: ‘All the processes of a live infant constitute a going-on-being, a kind of blue-print for existentialism.’ It is through this constant interaction with, and reflection by, significant others that the self and the body-ego is formed and developed.
Adolescence and youth may be regarded as periods during which the individual has to work through his or her earlier life experiences in order to develop a sense of identity (Blos 1962; Erikson 1968; Kroeger 1989). A positive, more self-evident awareness of personal identity emerges. During late adolescence the capability to form one's own view of the past, present and future emerges (Blos 1962). It is also during adolescence and youth that people experiment with different roles and more or less consistent lifestyles. The growth and maturation of the body are central components during these developmental stages. The body is decorated and used in different ways to express identity and lifestyle choice.
A central aspect of lifestyle is its visibility. Through the development and choice of different lifestyles, individuals express parts of their self and identity. The conspicuous and visible character of lifestyle is also a key to the understanding of the differentiation of lifestyles in late modern society. By means of relating to others, young people gradually develop a self-identity. The visualization of different lifestyle characteristics plays an important role in this development. The experimentation with different lifestyles is primarily an experimentation with different group memberships and socio-cultural identities. Individuals thus enact their ‘private’ drama on the societal stage, and through the participation in various groups they transform it into a social and cultural experience. ‘All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages’ (Shakespeare, As You Like It: II, vii).
Central characteristics of late modernity are the rise of a consumer society and the growing importance of the mass media as agents of socialization (Featherstone 1991; Giddens 1991; cf. Chapter 1). A wide range of commodities and commercial leisure facilities are provided, and new images are constantly superimposed on the old ones. Images and symbols are used as means to mark boundaries and articulate identity and difference, but they are also used to create an ambiguous surface which is often disengaged from what Raymond Williams calls a ‘ whole way of life’, that is, everyday culture, class conditions, gender relations, and so on (Williams 1975). In a sense, this is a ‘postmodern’ vision of society and culture. In my view, however, lifestyles mediate between material and social conditions, on the one hand, and popular cultural products produced within consumer culture, on the other. Lifestyles are created in order to enhance the development of self-identity through their visibility, but they may also function as generators of an illusory transcendence of class (Ewen 1988; Johansson and Miegel 1992a). It is thus a ‘hiding in the light’ (Hebdige 1988).
During the nineteenth century, lifestyles were intimately connected to class and status. According to Weber, different status groups at the time could be distinguished on the basis of their material monopolies. Such honorific preferences consisted, for example, of the privilege of wearing special clothes, of eating special food and of playing certain musical instruments. This meant that in public life it was not very difficult to distinguish between different status groups (and their lifestyles), since they were rather conspicuous and easily identified through such symbolic signs (Heller 1970/ 1984; Sennett 1976).
At this time, lifestyles were well-integrated parts of the individual's self-identity. Status characteristics formed coherent and visible parts of bodily presentation, lifestyle and of the habitus (Bourdieu 1984). Marcel Proust describes how subtle variations in gestures and speech could be used to distinguish one status group from another.
… but I nevertheless had no hesitation in placing the stranger in the same class of society, from the way not only in which he was dressed but in which he spoke to the man who took the tickets and to the box-openers who were keeping him waiting. For, apart from individual characteristics, there was still at this period a very marked difference between any rich and well-dressed man of that section of the aristocracy and any rich and well-dressed man of the world of finance or ‘big business’. Where one of the latter would have thought he was giving proof of his exclusiveness by adopting a sharp and haughty tone in speaking to an inferior, the nobleman, affable and mild, gave the impression of considering, of practising an affectation of humility and patience, a pretence of being just an ordinary member of audience, as a prerogative of good breeding. (Proust 1920/1983: 32f)
During the nineteenth century, it was more or less easy to distinguish between people from different walks of life by their clothes, the way they used the language, and the style they embraced. Fashion was used in order to make status distinctions and to express membership in well-defined classes and status groups. Also in the early industrial societies which confronted Weber, Simmel and Veblen, class and status conditions were the obvipus points of departure in lifestyle analysis. If different persons belonged to a particular class or status group, they were regarded as having approximately the same lifestyle. In contemporary society, where individual variations in terms of lifestyle are supposedly much greater, this obviously provides an insufficient notion of lifestyle.
To identify the social position of a person by means of what clothes he or she wears is not as easy today as it once was. Although still very unevenly distributed, in pace with the growing prosperity in Western industrialized societies, individuals' incomes have become more equal. There are still great differences, of course, in access to economic capital, both between and within different classes and status groups. However, the welfare state has given most people enough money not only to satisfy their basic needs, but also to consume for pleasure. Discretionary income has grown. Therefore, one way of labelling late modern society is to describe it as a consumer society (Bell 1976; Featherstone 1991).
Style and fashion have become important matters for late modern humanity, not least among youth, and the style market supplies an infinite number of images and symbols by means of which one can try to construct what and whom one wants to be or become. This is not always synonymous with what one actually is or can become, however.
In late modern society, style is a very complicated phenomenon, and it functions in differing ways. One way it functions is as a generator of illusory transcendence of class. Stuart Ewen calls this process symbolic democratization. Thus, by developing a certain style in clothes or other material objects the individual can create a sense of partaking in what is seen as a desirable style of life, as it is presented by mass media (Ewen 1988; Schudson 1986).
By possessing the goods identified with the powerful, the free and the beautiful, the individual develops a feeling of having power, beauty and freedom. Prior to the consumer society, the symbols of power, beauty and freedom were possessed only by those who had actual power. In the modern consumer society, however, the very symbols, due to their mass production, have been made available to common humanity on a massive scale (Benjamin 1968; Ewen 1988). Real power, of course, is still in the hands of an elite. The increasingly equal distribution of power symbols, then, does not correspond with a more equal distribution of actual power. In this sense, symbolic democratization is a form of false consciousness.
If the style market constitutes a presentation of a way of life, it is a way of life that is unattainable for most, nearly all, people. It is very relevant. It is the most common realm of our society in which the need for a better, or different way of life is acknowledged, and expressed on a material level, if not met. It constitutes a politics of change, albeit a ‘change’ that resides wholly on the surface of things. The surfaces themselves are lifted from an infinite number of sources. (Ewen 1988: 16)
In late modern society lifestyle characteristics such as clothes and other artefacts constitute what Fredric Jameson has called a depthless culture; that is, the overproduction of signs and reproductions of images and simulations leads to a loss of stable meaning, and an aestheticization of reality. The consumer public becomes fascinated by the endless stream of bizarre symbols and images which takes the viewer beyond a stable perception of reality (Baudrillard 1987; Jameson 1991; Johansson 1992).
When analysing late modern culture, it is important that one does not fall into the ‘postmodern trap’, losing sight of everyday culture and material conditions. The increasing effacement of the boundary between everyday culture and mass produced culture, so well described by Stuart Ewen, creates an open symbolic space which is filled with dreams, desires, hopes, wishes, Utopias and so on. In analyses of late modern culture, identity and lifestyles, it is thus necessary to grapple with the dynamic relation between popular/ mass culture and everyday culture. Basically, lifestyles are produced and maintained in the intersection of popular/mass culture and the culture of everyday life.
The process of symbolic democratization has two aspects. It may create an illusion, an inhibiting factor on the individual's capability to analyse and influence his or her social and cultural position; the person may become an obedient, submissive, uncritical and conformable citizen. Alternatively, symbolic democratization may help one to develop one's self-confidence, personality and identity, which in turn may generate an awareness of one's capability to influence one's own situation, thus assuming at least some degree of real power. Popular or mass culture may be used to oppose the validated cultural capital of the bourgeoisie. ‘Bad taste’ may be turned into a weapon directed toward the legitimate culture (Fiske 1987; Johansson and Miegel 1992a, b).
The process of symbolic democratization is intimately interwoven with the process of individualization and youth culture (Johansson 1992). In late modern society, people often refuse to be labelled in terms of traditional categories such as class, status, gender and race. It is important for them constantly to reflect upon their possibilities in life, and their future destiny. The self consequently becomes an object of deliberate attention and thorough examination. It is important for individuals to feel engaged in what they do, and they therefore constantly ask themselves questions such as: ‘Is this right for me?’, ‘Do I feel emotionally engaged in what I am doing?’, ‘Is this the kind of life I want to live?’. This search for self-identity is to a large extent canalized into consumption of popular culture. The late modern world is thus characterized by the cultivation of consumer lifestyles based on conspicuous consumption (Denzin 1991; Ewen 1988; Featherstone 1991).
Self-identity and lifestyles are increasingly defined by a media-oriented popular/mass culture in which youth, health, sexuality and body appearance have taken on premium values. As earlier mentioned, the effacement of the boundary between everyday culture and mass produced culture creates an open space which may be filled with dreams and desires. But it may also lead to frustrations over unrealized dreams, hopes and desires. Symbolic democratization thus contributes to the creation of a ‘postmodern vision’ of transcendence, individuality and lifestyle experimentation. This ‘vision’ may result in a more reflexive and active way of relating to social and cultural conflicts and problems, but it may also result in a passive and conservative reaction (Denzin 1991). Thus, symbolic democratization may be a hiding in the light as well as a way of confronting the repressive features of late modern culture.
Ontological security, self-identity and lifestyle
In a post-traditional order the self becomes a reflexive project, that is, individuality, worth and dignity are not automatically given to us by nature, but assigned to us as tasks we have to solve (Giddens 1991; May 1958/1986). Individuals often feel bereft and alone in a world where they lack emotional and psychological support and the sense of security provided by a more traditional milieu. According to some social scientists, late modern individuals are therefore afflicted with a permanent identity crisis (Berger et al. 1974; Featherstone 1991). Identity and lifestyle become a life-long project (Featherstone 1991). However, when touching upon the subject of identity and identity crisis, it is important to point out that there are great variations between different individuals, different classes and status groups, men and women, etc.
In human life basic trust plays an essential role. Basic trust links self-identity to the appraisals and loving attention of significant others (Erikson 1968; Giddens 1991; Winnicott 1965/1987). Basic trust is thus developed through constant and reliable everyday interaction with significant others. From early childhood, habit and routine play a fundamental role in the shaping of the individual's self-identity. In a society characterized by increasing complexity, there is a corresponding growth in the need for assurances about the present and the future. According to Luhmann, trust accumulates as a kind of capital which opens up more opportunities for extensive action (Luhmann 1979). In his book Modernity and Self-Identity, Anthony Giddens has developed similar thoughts regarding trust and daily life.
The trust which the child, in normal circumstances, vests in its care-takers,
I want to argue, can be seen as a sort of emotional inoculation against existential anxieties — a protection against future threats and dangers which allows the individual to sustain hope and courage in the face of whatever debilitating circumstances she or he might later confront. Basic trust is a screening-off device in relation to risks and dangers in the surrounding settings of action and interaction. It is the main emotional support of a defensive carapace or protective cocoon which all normal individuals carry around with them as a means whereby they are able to get on with the affairs of day-to-day life. (Giddens 1991: 40)
The maintaining of certain habits and routines are thus a way of developing a crucial bulwark against threatening anxieties and insecurity. All individuals develop a framework of ontological security based on routines, habits and cognitive and emotional ways of interpreting the world and life itself. This process is closely related to the development and maintenance of an individual biography (Luckmann 1983; Schutz and Luckmann 1974). The biography of the individual is a designed project consisting of long-range life-plans regarding what the individual will do with his or her life and what he or she wants to become. When the individual, as Berger and his co-authors express it, ‘plots the trajectory of his life on the societal “map”, each point in his projected biography relates him to the overall web of meanings in the society’ (Berger et al. 197‘4: 76). Self-identity is thus not a psychological entity, but instead a psychosocial entity which relates individuals' aspirations, desires, goals and needs to societal and cultural structures of meaning. In this way self-identity is also intimately related to the development of lifestyles.
A lifestyle may be defined as a more or less integrated set of values, attitudes and actions which an individual embraces, not only because it constitutes a foundation for meaningful practices, but because it gives material form to a particular narrative of self-identity (Giddens 1991; Johansson and Miegel 1992a). A lifestyle has a certain unity important to a continuing sense of ontological security. Although the notion of lifestyle is often associated with the area of consumption, it is also related to the work context. Work conditions and material conditions strongly condition life chances in Weber's sense.
Life chances may also be understood in terms of the availability of potential lifestyles. A plurality of lifestyle choices do exist, but only within a socially, economically and culturally structured space of lifestyle (Bourdieu 1984). Lifestyles are structurally, positionally and individually determined phenomena (Johansson and Miegel 1992a). The range of feasible lifestyle alternatives in a society constitute a cultural pool of symbols, artefacts, habits and orientations. In this way we could talk about a potential space of lifestyles. In his book Playing and Reality (1971), Winnicott speaks of a potential space, which exists between inner psychic reality and the outer social world. Through playing and through use of cultural symbols, the child (and the adult!) try to bridge the incongruity between inner and outer reality. Culture is thus created in this continuous interplay between personal experiences and the outer social and cultural reality. Such a potential space opens up for longings, dreams and desires, but also for more objective goals and aspirations. Lifestyle choices may thus form an important part of an individual's life planning and development of a self-identity.
Self-identity and lifestyle: concluding remarks
Contemporary culture and society has been described in many different ways: as a post-industrial society, a narcissistic culture, a postmodern culture, a risk society and so on (Beck 1986; Bell 1976; Lasch 1985; Lyotard 1986). Although social scientists disagree concerning the description of contemporary culture and society, they agree that the formation of self-identity and lifestyle has turned into a complicated issue for modern humanity. In pre-industrial Western societies there was no problem of order, everybody being so clearly labelled (Sennett 1976). There was also a greater coherence between social, cultural and personal identity — they formed an integrated whole. In late modern culture individuals often deliberately scramble all the codes and symbols, by quickly shifting from one to another. They combine different styles and tastes and construct what could be called postmodern collages (Johansson 1992; Ziehe 1989). Through such combinations of different and often contradictory styles, people explore the symbolic possibilities in their culture. People's use of different popular cultural elements may lead to the creation of a kind of dream-world, i.e. a condition in which one has the possibility, in a symbolic way, to realize all kinds of dreams and desires. However, the consumption of popular cultural goods may also increase individuals' possibilities to reflect upon their own situation and consequently also to change their lives.
A central characteristic of late modern culture is thus the refusal to be labelled in terms of traditional categories such as class, status, gender, religion, race, and so on. This does not mean, however, that self-identity is fluid and ever-changing. Lifestyle and identity experimentation is always taking place within a cultural and social context. The effacement of the boundary between everyday culture and mass/popular culture has led to the creation of a potential space of lifestyles. Dreams and desires are mixed with more realistic goals for the future. These dreams, desires and goals are organized into lifestyles and different narratives of self-identity. Accordingly, a lifestyle constitutes a foundation for meaningful practices and gives material form to a particular narrative of self-identity. Lifestyle and self-identity are thus constructed through complex articulations between different positions in a variety of different systems of social difference.
Basic trust plays a central role in human life. Human existence is ordered through the maintenance of certain habits, routines, values, attitudes, and so on. People develop a framework of ontological security through the development of everyday routines and modes of social interaction. These routines may, of course, be reflexively changed. In fact, late modern culture is characterized by more or less constant changes of everyday routines and rituals. ‘The notion of risk becomes central in a society which is taking leave of the past, of traditional ways of doing things, and which is opening itself up to a problematic future’ (Giddens 1991: 111).
Late modern man is thus constantly engaged in the construction of reliable and coherent narratives of self-identity. The process of symbolic democratization has opened up an imaginative space of possible narratives of self-identity, but it also puts great stress on people. This may lead to an identity crisis, but may also be enriching and strengthening. The historical appearence of the performing self, which places great emphasis upon appearance, display and the management of impressions, has led to an ever-increasing popularity of autobiographies, soap operas, self-therapy, psychoanalysis, and so on (Denzin 1991; Featherstone 1991; Giddens 1991; Wouters 1992).
Although feelings of ambivalence, insecurity and disorientation will to some extent accompany each new round in the process of self-distantiation, articulating and emphasizing one's distinctive features still seems to have become a sport and an art, and increasing numbers of people seem to have become more and more aware both that they have to put their minds and hearts into it, and of how it is to be done. (Wouters 1992: 243)
THE SPACE OF LIFESTYLES: TOWARD A
COGNITIVE-AFFECTIVE THEORY
Lifestyles are formed and maintained through the constant interaction between different individuals and different groups of individuals. Late modern individuals put strong emphasis on appearance, the body look and the management of impressions (Featherstone 1990; Goffman 1969). Self-identity and lifestyles are constituted and developed through the presentation of self in everyday life. The potential space of lifestyles in a specific society may be conceptualized in many different ways. I will here discuss three different models of constructing the social and symbolic space of lifestyles. Firstly, I will present and discuss a power and status perspective on lifestyle, considering some crucial parts of Bourdieu's theory of lifestyles as it is presented in Distinction (1984). I will also account for Mike Featherstone's discussion of the new cultural intermediaries and symbolic production. Secondly, I will present and discuss an affective perspective on lifestyle, accounting for Lawrence Grossberg's theoretical discussion on popular culture, consumption and everyday life. Finally, I will discuss a cognitive value perspective on lifestyle and say something about an alternative way to conceptualize the social and symbolic space of lifestyles.
Pierre Bourdieu and the will to power
Pierre Bourdieu maintains that there is an ever-ongoing struggle for power and status, not only between, but also within different classes in society. This struggle concerns not only position in relation to matters of production (income, occupation, education), but rather, Bourdieu also defines a class or a class fraction in terms of such features as sex-ratio, geographical distribution, ethnic origin and so on. Struggles of this sort take place within what he calls a social space, where relations between the classes are structured in accordance with the amount of, and access to, the different forms of capital (economic, cultural and social capital).
It is the dominant classes and class fractions that primarily interest Bourdieu; that is where he finds the most accentuated struggle for power, the struggle for not only economic, but also cultural dominance. According to Bourdieu, the dominant class in a society has a monopoly on legitimate culture, defining it and determining what tastes are the best and what lifestyles are to prevail.
Other classes and class fractions constantly try to promote their cultural preferences and lifestyles so as to become legitimate and predominating. The struggle for dominance between classes and class fractions leads to continual changes in lifestyle. The symbolic battle is fought in different fields of cultural preference. The fields consist of different cultural goods within the areas of, say, music, art, theatre and literature. Bourdieu claims that the heart of these symbolic struggles is taste, and that the aim is to achieve acceptance of a specific taste as the legitimate one within a particular field of preference. The ‘right’ taste and lifestyle thus stand as symbols of power and status.
Thus, the social space of lifestyles is structured according to the rules of power. Consequently, the most powerful classes and class fractions are setting the lifestyle agenda. Even though Bourdieu is trying to avoid being a determinist, he presents a perspective of society and lifestyles where the Nietzschean will to power is determining all relations and lifestyle discourses. In Bourdieu's theory, the development of habitus and the individual lifestyle is only comprehensible when conceptualized within a specific social field of power relations. Thus, the cultural game of identity and the urge for individuality and authenticity is an illusion. It is the will to power that brings things and people together or separates them.
Distinction and pretension, high culture and middle-brow culture — like, elsewhere, high fashion and fashion, haute coiffure and coiffure, and so on — only exist through each other, and it is the relation, or rather, the objective collaboration of their respective production apparatuses and clients which produces the value of culture and the need to possess it. (Bourdieu 1984: 250)
When describing the dynamics of the symbolic field, Bourdieu touches upon the important relation between being and seeming (cf. May 1958/1986; Winnicott 1965/1987). This discussion has great similarities with what has been described as the process of symbolic democratization. The symbolic struggles over being and seeming deal with the distinction between ‘natural’ grace and style, on the one hand, and usurped airs and graces, on the other. People who exhibit external signs of wealth and status associated with a condition higher than their own often have a self-image too far out of line with the image others have of them. However, strategies of pretension and the creation of symbolic illusions are not merely imaginary phenomena. As Bourdieu (1984: 253) expresses it: ‘The reality of the social world is in fact partly determined by the struggles between agents over the presentation of their position in the social world and, consequently, of that world.’ A class and status fraction highly involved in this construction of reality is the so-called petite bourgeoisie.
The petite bourgeoisie is torn by contradictions between objectively dominated conditions and would-be participation in dominant values and lifestyles. They are committed to symbolic consumption and to taste. The presentation of a specific and distinguished social character is central to these groups. They are constantly occupied trying to modify the positions in the objective classifications by modifying the representation and principles of the ranks and status distinctions.
Following Bourdieu, Mike Featherstone argues that beside the new middle class in modern consumer society (for instance, managers, scientists and technicians), there has also developed an expanding group which he calls the new cultural intermediaries. Thus he describes this group:
These are engaged in providing symbolic goods and services that were referred to earlier — the marketing, advertising, public relations, radio and television producers, presenters, magazine journalists, fashion writers, and the helping professions (social workers, marriage counselors, sex therapists, dieticians, play leaders, etc.). (Featherstone 1991: 44)
Still following Bourdieu, Featherstone also calls this group the new intellectuals. They are important in the lifestyle discussion, because they may be regarded as a kind of professional lifestyle creator, constantly engaged in seeking new experiences. Therefore, the group is also called ‘the new heroes of consumer culture’, depending on their making lifestyle into a life project. Life is conceived as essentially open-ended, and they are fascinated by identity and the endless quest for new experiences.
The function served by these new intellectuals is to legitimize for intellectual analysis such traditional non-intellectual areas as sport, fashion and popular music, in this way supplying new symbolic goods and experiences to the adherents of lifestyles of the new middle-class audience which they themselves have partly helped to create (Featherstone 1987, 1990, 1991).
In the social and symbolic space constructed by Bourdieu, lifestyle and self-identity are closely associated with the will to power. As Nietzsche (1883/1977: 229) expressed it: ‘The world seen from within, the word described and defined according to its “intelligible character” — it would be “will to power” and nothing else.’ Lifestyle and self-identity are constructed within a fairly closed space, and identity games are turned into status games. Bourdieu is constantly occupied with demystifying and unveiling power structures and power relations. Lifestyles are embraced either in order to signify people's status and as a means of recognition, or as means of the creation of self-images and identities that are merely symbolic illusions. Bourdieu has been criticized on several different issues: lack of empirical relevance, theoretical obscurity, determinism, etc. (DiMaggio 1979; Fenster 1991; Fiske 1987; Rosengren 1991). In my opinion, however, the most constructive critique of Bourdieu's use of the concept of capital and his conceptualization of the social and symbolic space of lifestyles is to be found within the tradition of cultural studies (Fiske 1987; Grossberg 1992). We will therefore turn our attention to one of the authors within this theoretical tradition — Lawrence Grossberg.
Postmodern structures of feeling
In his book We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, Grossberg (1992) presents an analysis of popular culture, everyday life and postmodern sensibilites. Although there are many similarities between Pierre Bourdieu's and Lawrence Grossberg's lifestyle analyses, there are also some crucial differences. To a greater extent than Bourdieu, Grossberg emphasizes the importance of desire and affects in the creation of a symbolic space of identities and lifestyles. According to Grossberg, cultural formations — that is, structures that distribute, place and connect cultural practices and social groups —may be understood only if one grasps the ‘structure of feeling’ affecting people's practices and identities, or, as Grossberg prefers to call it, a particular sensibility.
A sensibility can be understood in a number of different ways. For the individuals living within it, it defines a historically determined and socially distributed mode of engagement with (or consumption of) particular practices. It determines the ‘proper’ and appropriate way of selecting cultural practices, of relating to them, and of inserting them into daily life. In other words, the notion of sensibility replaces and refines the concept of taste, for the sensibility of a particular formation determines the very meaning of ‘taste’ within it. Taste means entirely different things in different formations. (Grossberg 1992: 72)
Cultural practices may have different types of effect on the structuration of everyday life and the space of lifestyles: economic effects, libidinal effects, political effects, aesthetic effects, and so on. They may also bypass meaning altogether and act directly on the body of the consumer (Grossberg 1992). Practices and effects are connected to each other through the process of articulation. Articulation is a continuous struggle to locate practices within a shifting and dynamic field of forces. The effects of any practice are always the product of its position within a social and cultural context. It is only within specific contexts that identities and relations exist. Thus, a context is a structured field, a configuration of practices and relations between different practices.
When analysing lifestyles and identities, there are always different levels of structures that have to be taken into account. Cultural analysis involves an attempt to construct the specificity of an articulated context, according to Grossberg. However, in order to analyse a certain field of forces, it is necessary to describe the dominant sensibility structuring the field in question. Or as Grossberg (1992: 73) expresses it: ‘How the specific sounds, styles and behaviors of a specific alliance (e.g., surf music and surf culture, or trash music and skateboards, or the particular configuration of “mod” culture) make sense together depends upon the sensibility at work.’
Grossberg emphasizes that sensibilities may operate within the field of ideology or morality, but the dominant sensibilities often involve desire, fantasy and especially pleasure. Pleasure is indeed a complex phenomenon, and the term covers a great number of different relations: the fun of breaking the rules, the enjoyment of doing what you want, the temporary fulfillment of desires, etc.
Popular culture and consumption occupy a central position in Grossberg's analysis of late modern society. Popular culture is an important site of people's passions and desires. People spend a lot of time with popular culture, and it matters to them (Fiske 1987, 1989; Fornas 1990; Frith 1988). Popular culture is always more than ideological or a mark of class and status relations. It provides sites of relaxation, privacy, pleasure, fun, passion, desire and emotion. Popular culture often has a direct impact upon the body. It generates laughter, screams, tears, and other kinds of emotional reaction. Popular culture therefore seems to work at the intersection of the body and emotions (see Csikszentmihalyi and Larson 1984; Larson and Kubey 1985).
Affect is a central concept in Grossberg's analysis of popular culture and everyday culture. Affect operates across all our senses and experiences. ‘Affect is what gives “color”, “tone” or “texture” to the lived’ (Grossberg 1992: 81).
Affect actually points to a complex set of effects which circulate around notions of investment and anchoring; it circumscribes the entire set of relations that are referred to with such terms as ‘volition,’ ‘will,’ ‘investment,’ ‘commitment,’ and ‘passion.’ Affective relations always involve a quantitatively variable level of energy (activation, enervation) that binds an articulation or that binds an individual to a particular practice. Affect identifies the strength of the investment which anchors people in particular experiences, practices, identities, meanings and pleasures, but it also determines how invigorated people feel at any moment of their lives, their level of energy or passion. In this quantitative dimension, affect privileges passion and volition over meaning, as if simply willing something to happen were sufficient to bring it about (e.g., as one ad campaign continuously declares, ‘Where there's a will, there's an A’). (Grossberg 1992: 82)
So, popular culture is a crucial ground where people are influenced by others (individuals and/or social groups) and mass media. Through such affective investments people are also drawn into, and located within, various circuits of power and power relations. Thus, affect concerns both belonging and identification (see Simmel 1904/1971). People tend to feel at home when they care about something. As Grossberg (1992: 84) expresses it: ‘The very notion of “the popular” assumes the articulation of identification and care; it assumes that what one identifies with (including moments of identity) matters and what matters — what has authority — is the appropriate ground for identification.’ Consequently, self-identity and lifestyle are organized and structured on the basis of what Grossberg calls ‘mattering maps’, that is, emotional and affective structures that ‘tell’ people how to navigate their way through various moods, pleasures and passions (see Williams 1975; cf. also Bourdieu's concept of habitus).
People are always located within a social and cultural sphere, but the relationship between different individuals and various groups is never static. People and groups of people are continuously moving through the social sphere. However, daily life is always structured and constrained. Therefore, it is appropriate to conceptualize people's self-identity and lifestyle development in terms of structured mobility. Such a structured mobility defines the places and spaces, the stabilites and mobilities within which people work and live.
A structured mobility describes the ways fractions of the population travel across the surfaces of culture and the ways they anchor themselves into their imaginary depths. It is a historical organization, both spatial and temporal, which enables and constrains the ways space and place, mobility and stability, are lived. Consequently, it is neither a rigid system of places nor a predefined itinerary of imagined mobility. It is precisely the condition which makes both stability and mobility possible… It describes the sites people can occupy, the ways they can take up practices constituting these sites, and the paths along which they can connect and transform them so as to construct a consistent livable space for themselves. (Grossberg 1992: 109)
The individuals that Grossberg portrays are ruled by passions, affects and desires. The affective individual is always a multiple and multidimensional person, taking on the shape and colour of the affective structure through which he or she moves. However, coherence and stability is always possible, even though identity is also fleeting and changing. It is thus possible to talk about preliminary structurations of self-identity. The affective individual must always struggle to develop his or her self-identity and lifestyle. In so doing, he or she is constantly involved in the construction of new maps and in the movement between different sites of daily life. The affective individual is also always drawn into a complex network of power relations and political projects. Practices and cultural consumption produce pleasure and even empowerment, but also displeasure, boredom, insecurity and disempower-ment. Power describes a constantly changing state of play in this shifting and multidimensional field of forces, relations and sensibilities.
In contrast with Bourdieu's relatively closed and more or less stable social space of lifestyles, Grossberg's symbolic space is fairly open and transitional. The sensibility of postmodernity is characterized by an ironic nihilism where it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between reality and its images. Most traditional values and pleasures (love, family, sex, work, etc.) have turned into treacherous traps which never seem to deliver on their promise (Berman 1983; Grossberg 1992). It is no longer possible to speak of a singular group identity or a coherent self-identity, but instead of multiple identities and fluid communities. Consequently, lifestyles and identities are articulated and constructed within a multidimensional symbolic space.
A cognitive perspective on lifestyle
A common analytical approach in lifestyle research is the value perspective (see, for example, Johansson and Miegel 1992a; Reimer 1988, 1989; Reimer and Rosengren 1990). Social scientists often use and define the value concept in terms of cognitions. This view is radically questioned within philosophy. (see Chapter 10) However, in this section I will discuss a cognitive value perspective.
According to Rokeach, a value is an enduring belief (i.e. cognition), either prescriptive or condemning, about a preferable or desirable mode of conduct or an end-state of existence (Rokeach 1973). The values of an individual are organized into value systems. A value system is described as ‘an enduring organization of beliefs concerning preferable modes of conduct or end-state of existence along a continuum of relative importance’ (Rokeach 1973: 5).
Rokeach maintains that there is a group of conceptions more central to an individual than are his or her values. These are the conceptions individuals have about themselves. This self-identity proves itself in its ability to lend continuity to an individual's life history (cf. Giddens 1991). Rokeach's main thesis is that ‘the ultimate purpose of one's total belief system, which includes one's values, is to maintain and enhance … the master of all sentiments, the sentiment of self-regard’ (Rokeach 1973: 216).
Values constitute the most fundamental component of lifestyle. From this perspective, the lifestyle of an individual is basically an expression of his or her values. The lifestyle phenomenon can, therefore, be studied on three conceptually different levels: the value level, the attitude level and the action level (Miegel 1990; Johansson and Miegel 1992a: 71). The value level consists of the individual's general and abstract conceptions about material, aesthetic, ethical and metaphysical conditions and qualities. These conceptions are made concrete by the individual on the attitude level. The attitudes of an individual involve his or her outlook on specific objects, phenomena and conditions of reality. On the action level the individual, finally, manifests his or her attitudes in the form of different actions. The values and attitudes of an individual become visible and observable when they manifest themselves in action.
In order to construct a social and symbolic space of lifestyles, it is necessary to develop an understanding of the values and value orientations lying behind the development of such a space. Ronald Inglehart provides us with a theoretical understanding of how structural changes taking place in Western societies during late modernity contribute to changes in human values and competences, and how in their turn these changes affect the social and symbolic structure in society (Inglehart 1977, 1990). In accordance with this assumption, Inglehart maintains that the values of the Western public have undergone a change from an emphasis on material welfare and physical security, to an increased emphasis on quality of life values. The former type of value he calls material; the latter, postmaterial. His main thesis is thus that post-war Western societies have witnessed a gradual shift in their value structure, a shift from materialist to postmaterialist values.
The value changes result in an increasing emphasis on needs for belonging, self-esteem and self-realization, whereas changes in skills have led to more people having the skills needed to cope with politics on a national scale (cf. Giddens 1991; Habermas 1975).
Yet another important distinction with respect to the social and symbolic space of lifestyle, is between security and developmental values (Johansson and Miegel 1992a: 69; Rokeach 1973: 15f.). The security values serve the function of helping us to fit in and to adapt in an unproblematic way to society, avoiding conflicts and ensuring that one's actions and attitudes are justified. In Rokeach's terms such values represent ‘ready made concepts provided by our culture that such justifications can proceed smoothly’ (Rokeach 1973: 15f.). The development of security values are probably related to what Giddens (1991) discusses in terms of basic trust and ontological security. The developmental values, on the other hand, serve the function of fulfilling needs and desires to search for meaning, understanding, knowledge and self-realization. The individual's identity is not to be found in behaviour, values, attitudes, beliefs, etc., but in the capacity to ‘keep a particular narrative going’ (Giddens 1991). The biography that the individual reflexively develops is only one story among a number of potential stories about his or her development as a self.
In studying young people's popular culture consumption, one is likely to find indications of individuals' need and desire for security as well as their desire for development (Johansson and Miegel 1992a, b). In order to be recognized as being part of one's society and culture, one must have a basic knowledge and awareness of its fundamental values, norms, mores, language, and so on, whereas being recognized as a distinct individual requires that one develop and transcend common taste, competence and knowledge in at least some cultural area, and possibly in several. In most popular cultural phenomena there also exists a mainstream, expressing the values of security and belonging, and a number of more specific and distinct tastes expressing the values of transcendence and development. Thus, security and development are two basic aspects of human life. It is important to emphasize the fact that security and development always exist at the same time, and that they are intimately related to each other, expressing two fundamental aspects of human existence, like a Janus face.
The dimensions of postmaterialism/materialism and security/development, seem to capture some important aspects of late modern culture. However, there is an ongoing discussion concerning the validity of Inglehart's value conceptualization, and several attempts have been made to reconstruct Inglehart's materialist/postmaterialist dimension (Flanagan 1987; Reimer 1988, 1989). The dimension of security/development is also quite problematic and in need of a more penetrating theoretical elaboration (Johansson and Miegel 1992a: 227f.). The important achievement in these theoretical and empirical works, however, is the connection made between values and value orientations on the one hand, and lifestyles on the other. The often superficial actions and artefacts constituting a lifestyle have their origins in an individual and societal value structure. In order fully to understand the anatomy of the lifestyle concept, one must realize that behind all visible expressions and signs which we designate as a lifestyle, there exists a number of fundamental values (Johansson and Miegel 1992a; Miegel 1990).
The social space of lifestyle: concluding remarks
Bourdieu and Grossberg represent two different ways of constructing a social and symbolic space of lifestyles and identities. Whereas Bourdieu emphasizes power relations, constructing a rather stable and rigid social and symbolic system, Grossberg opens up a space for a more imaginative theoretical analysis of lifestyle and self-identity. Comparing Bourdieu and Grossberg, it is possible to use Mitchell's distinction between outer-directed and inner-directed lifestyles (Mitchell 1983).
People belonging to outer-directed lifestyles create ways of structuring everyday life that are geared to the visible, tangible and materialistic. Outer-directed lifestyles are arranged in a hierarchy placing the successful status-seeking American at the top, emphasizing the will to power. Inner-directed lifestyles are so named because their driving forces are internal, not external. People embracing inner-directed lifestyles often seek the new, resenting old values and lifestyles. They are oriented towards inner exploration, a quest for the mystical and new experiences, that is, towards new sensibilities and new structures of feeling. Both these perspectives and constructions of a social and symbolic space of lifestyles capture central aspects of the lifestyle discourse, but they are merely dealing with what could be called affective aspects of lifestyle such as the will to power and pleasure.
The construction of values and value orientations occupies a central position within the lifestyle discourse. I have touched upon two such constructions of value dimensions: materialism/postmaterialism and security/ development. However, it is probably quite difficult to construct a social and symbolic space of lifestyle, capturing the complexity of late modern culture, on the basis of such dualisms. Late modern culture is not an either/or culture, but a both/and culture (Reimer 1988, 1989, 1992). In order to construct a space of late modern lifestyles, it is thus necessary to reconstruct the different dimensions in question and find concepts that are less rigid and more relevant for a late modern context.
In several articles, Bo Reimer claimed that Inglehart's materialist/post-materialist dichotomy may be too rigid to capture the complexity of people's value orientations in late modern Western society (Reimer 1988, 1989; Reimer and Rosengren 1990). Using a combination of Inglehart's and Rokeach's measurements of values and value orientations, Reimer found that Rokeach's value set captures young people's values better than the Inglehart value battery (Reimer 1988). Following this, Reimer suggests that instead of treading the postmaterialist path, young people seem to move in a multitude of more individual and personal directions. ‘This movement may be regarded as a characteristic of what I prefer to call “postmodern structures of feelings”; feelings too diverse to be contained inside a materialist/post-materialist value construction’ (Reimer 1988: 357).
Reimer describes certain tendencies influencing young people in our time. The two characteristics of individuality and immediacy comprise major components in young people's lifestyles. Youth culture is characterized by an orientation toward new social formations and a reflexively grounded distrust toward earlier political solutions on the one hand, and an orientation toward life itself, pleasure and the fulfilment of desire on the other. Thus, there are both cognitive and affective reasons influencing the constellation of new formations and collectivities (see Ziehe 1989). The affective dimension has also gradually gained more attention from social scientists (Maffesoli 1991; Wouters 1992). According to Michel Maffesoli, it would be appropriate to speak about a collective narcissism emphasizing the aesthetic and involving a particular mode of life, of dress, of sexual manners, etc. In short, it is everything that could be described as collective passion.
… for while the official institutions and the professional sociologists may continue to use their eternal socio-professional categories, other signs of social affiliation are emerging to cut right across them: cultural practices, age groupings, participation in affective collectivities. In a word, we have now to deal with the practice of networks. (Maffesoli 1991: 12)
In order to construct a social and symbolic space of lifestyle in late modern Western socities, it is necessary to include both cognitive and affective dimensions (Giddens 1991; Grossberg 1992; Maffesoli 1991; Reimer 1988, 1989; Wouters 1992). Values and value orientations — that is, the cognitive dimension of lifestyle — are intimately interwoven with affects, desires and pleasure — the affective dimension of lifestyle. The development and maintenance of different lifestyle sectors — ‘time-space slices of individuals' overall activities, within which a reasonably consistent and ordered set of practices is adopted and enacted’ (Giddens 1991: 83) — is closely related to the development of different structures of feelings as well as to changes in the individual and societal value structure (Reimer 1988, 1989; Williams 1975). Pierre Bourdieu, Lawrence Grossberg and the value theoreticians mentioned in this chapter all discuss different aspects of the complex social and symbolic space of lifestyle. They identify different actors on the societal stage and different driving forces. An important question is this: Are these different approaches incompatible, or is it possible to integrate and synthesize them, formulating a more comprehensible theory of lifestyle in late modern society?
In the concluding section of this chapter I will try to draw the different threads together, and say something about the future of lifestyle research.
TOWARDS A THEORY OF LATE MODERN IDENTITY AND
LIFESTYLE
It would be mistaken to speak here of individuation alone. Individuation is only the indispensable personal stamp of all human existence. The self as such is not ultimately the essential, but the meaning of human existence given in creation again and again fulfills itself as self. (Buber 1965: 84)
The individual is always realizing his or her possibilities and choices within a more or less structured social and cultural environment. From the early days of life, habit and routine play a fundamental role in the shaping of self-identity. Routines are incorporated into habits of dress, modes of consumption, leisure time activities, working conditions, and so on. The maintenance of such habits and routines is a way of coping with threatening anxiety and insecurity (Giddens 1991). Basic trust and security are thus central aspects of human existence obtained through the constant interaction and loving attentions of early caretakers. Basic trust, routines and habits link self-identity to the appraisals of others. The routines followed are, however, reflexively open to change — thus, it is possible to abandon old routines and develop new ones. Trust functions as a protective cocoon, making it possible for individuals to cope with the expectations and demands of everyday life, providing them with a certain amount of trust capital. Trust capital makes it possible for individuals to take certain risks and to change certain parts of their self-identity and lifestyle.
The process of individualization — the historical process in which the individual gradually becomes separated from society — and the notion of individuation — a maturational process in which the individual has to work through his or her earlier experiences in order to develop a relatively stable identity — have come to occupy a central position in the lifestyle discussion (Johansson and Miegel 1992a: 29ff.). It is even appropriate to speak about an individualistic turn within lifestyle research. Researchers within this area have frequently showed a tendency to put too much emphasis on the sole individual (see, for example, Mitchell 1983). Individuality is never developed in a vacuum; it is always developed in a cultural and social context. ‘The tension of our lives would be even greater if we did not, in fact, engage in practices that constantly limit the effect of our isolating individualism, even though we cannot articulate those practices nearly as well as we can the quest for autonomy’ (Bellah et al. 1985: 151). The value of individualism is not equally embraced within the whole population. Men tend to place great importance on expressing and claiming their material and social status and their individuality, whereas women seem to put more importance on developing their individuality without abandoning their values of security and concern for others, for example (Chodorow 1978; Miller 1976, 1984). Basically, however, the continuity of self-identity — that is, the persistence of feelings of personhood in a continuous self and body — is only maintained through constant interaction with others. An elegant description of this process may be found in Gidden's book Modernity and Self-Identity:
The existential question of self-identity is bound up with the fragile nature of the biography which the individual ‘supplies’ about herself. A person's identity is not to be found in behaviour, nor — important though it is — in the reactions of others, but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual's biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the ongoing ‘story’ about the self. (Giddens 1991: 54)
In late modern Western society, the construction of this ongoing story of the self is closely related to lifestyle development and consumerism. Through the process of symbolic democratization a wide variety of symbols and signs have been made available to common people. As Willis expresses it: ‘Commercial cultural forms have helped to produce an historical present from which we cannot now escape and in which there are many more materials —no matter what we think of them — available for necessary symbolic work than ever there were in the past’ (Willis 1990: 19). These symbols and signs are constantly being reinterpreted and used to create more or less durable identities and lifestyles.
Using Winnicott's somewhat metaphorical language we could speak about a potential space of lifestyles (Ogden 1986; Winnicott 1971). A potential space is an intermediate area of experiencing that lies between fantasy and reality. The cultural experience is obtained through the interplay between fantasy — inner psychic reality — and actual or external reality. The potential space is filled with illusions, with playing and with symbols (Ogden 1986). Distinct forms of failure to create or adequately maintain the psychological interplay of reality and fantasy may occur: the dialectic of reality and fantasy may collapse in the direction of fantasy or collapse in the direction of reality, for example (Ogden 1986).
Winnicott's and Ogden's discussion of the potential space has important implications for the theoretical discussion of symbolic democratization and lifestyles. Through the process of symbolic democratization the symbols of power, beauty, freedom, etc., have been disengaged from their earlier rather restricted meanings and become available to common people. As mentioned above, this may lead to an illusory transcendence of everyday culture — that is, a collapse into fantasy — but it may also lead to symbolic work and creativity — that is, a dialectic process involving both fantasy and reality (Kinkade and Katowich 1992; Ogden 1986; Willis 1990; Winnicott 1971).
Lifestyle development and cultural consumption may thus lead to a more integrated and flexible self-identity, but it may also lead to a more fictive, disintegrated and illusory ‘story’ about the self. Popular/mass culture is, no doubt, something to be looked upon as a positive factor of pleasure and meaning in people's lives, but it may also conceal and disguise the real power relations in society. In order to understand people's use of popular culture and the function of lifestyles it is necessary to study these processes in a cultural and social context. One way of doing this is to construct a social and symbolic space of lifestyles (Bourdieu 1984; Grossberg 1992; Johansson and Miegel 1992a, b ; Reimer 1992).
The theoretical construction of a social and symbolic space of lifestyle is, no doubt, the most central question within lifestyle research today. Such a theoretical model may be used as a heuristic tool when empirically studying lifestyles in late modern Western society. In constructing such a space it is necessary to define driving forces (will to power, affects, cognitive development, and so on), actors (classes and status groups, affective collectivities, value collectivities, individuals, and so on) and the relations between these actors.
The most elaborate attempt to construct a social and symbolic space of lifestyle is to be found in Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction. There are, however, several limitations inherent in Bourdieu's theoretical construction: lifestyles and tastes are exclusively defined in terms of interaction between different classes and status groups; the social space constructed by Bourdieu is relatively closed and static; the struggle for power is the dominant driving force in people's lives and thus the ultimate value in life. These aspects of the social and symbolic space of lifestyle are, of course, of great significance, but it is also important to take into consideration other aspects of symbolic production and lifestyle development, for instance, the development of values, sensibilities, affects, and so on, not necessarily related to power and status relations (Johansson and Miegel 1992a).
A central thesis in this chapter is that in order to construct a symbolic space of lifestyle which adequately captures the essence of the differentiation of lifestyles in late modern Western societies, it is necessary to construct a cognitive-affective theory of lifestyle. A basic assumption in the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Lawrence Grossberg is that human behaviour and the formation of lifestyle collectivities are ruled by the will to power and/or passion, desire and affects. (Or, as Freud would have it, by Eros and Thanatos.) However, human behaviour and lifestyle development is also intimately related to people's striving for meaning, identity and ontological security. Individuals are continuously shaping and constructing a ‘story’ about the self— a biography. In doing so, they are guided by passions, desires and affects, but this exploration of identity implies a reflexive and cognitive monitoring of the self.
The complex process of lifestyle development thus involves a great variety of different mechanisms and driving forces. These processes sometimes lead to an increased fragmentation of self-identity, but the most fundamental power in human life is the striving for a sense of continuity and meaning (Antonovsky 1987; Giddens 1991; May 1958/1986). The development of one's lifestyle plays an important part in the formation of a more or less stable self-identity. Self-identity and lifestyle are always developed and maintained in relation to others. The construction of a social and symbolic space of lifestyle, therefore, serves the purpose of analysing and describing the various relations between individuals and between social and cultural formations in a society. Important concepts in a future theory of lifestyle are, therefore, space, values, desires, affects, power, capital and identity (see Giddens 1991; Grossberg 1992; Johansson and Miegel 1992a, b; Reimer 1988, 1989 ).
In his book Love's Executioner and Other Tales, the American psychiatrist and author Irvin Yalom has captured the essence of contemporary culture and identity (Yalom 1989). The needs and desires which people try to fulfil through consumption and lifestyle experimentation will never cease to influence their expectations in life. These desires are always going to be present, and they will never be fulfilled. Consequently, the search for a more adequate and general theory of lifestyle will always lead us toward the more fundamental and existential questions in life concerning life and death, love and hate, security and development, and so on.
So much wanting. So much longing. And so much pain, so close to the surface, only minutes deep. Destiny pain. Existence pain. Pain that is always there, whirring continuously just beneath the membrane of life. Pain that is all too easily accessible. Many things a simple group exercise, a few minutes of deep reflection, a work of art, a sermon, a personal crisis, a loss — remind us that our deepest wants can never be fulfilled: our wants for youth, for a halt to aging, for the return of vanished ones, for eternal love, protection, significance, for immortality itself. (Yalom 1989: 4)
SOME EMPIRICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS
This chapter represents an attempt to elaborate some of the theoretical concepts and views presented in Do The Right Thing. Lifestyle and Identity in Contemporary Youth Culture (Johansson and Miegel 1992a). Concepts such as identity, values and lifestyle have come to occupy a central position within contemporary cultural studies. In this final section, I will briefly touch upon three different problems in lifestyle and cultural research, and point towards some solutions to these problems.
The most important theoretical and empirical problem in a theory of lifestyle and identity is the construction of a social and cultural space. The most successful attempt made hitherto is to be found in Pierre Bourdieu's works (Bourdieu 1984, 1990). In my view, however, it is necessary to criticize and elaborate Bourdieu's conceptualization of the social space of lifestyles. In a future theory of lifestyles, concepts such as value, affect, desire and identity will have to occupy a central position. In order to construct such a theory it is necessary to operationalize the different concepts and to discuss the relation between them. Concepts such as desire and affects will, of course, present some difficulties in this respect. (For a discussion of the conceptualization and measurement of mood, affects, etc., see, for instance, Csikszentmihalyi and Larson 1984; Larson and Kubey 1985.) During the last two decades the concept of value has once again proved central in discussions of social and cultural development (Inglehart 1977, 1990; Johansson and Miegel 1992a; Miegel 1990; Reimer 1988, 1989, 1994; Rokeach 1973; Rosengren 1984, 1992).
Johansson and Miegel (1992a: 53ff), for instance, have discussed four different dimensions for conceptualizing values and value orientations: the material/postmaterial, the security/development, the material/aesthetic and the ethical/metaphysical dimension. Another important theoretical and methodological task will be the conceptualization and operationalization of the relation between desire and values. However, the work on formulating a social and cultural space of lifestyle and on developing adequate instruments of measurement has only just begun.
Another important issue in lifestyle and cultural research is the choice of methods. In order to study such complex phenomena as lifestyle and identity formation in contemporary society, it is important to combine different types of method (Johansson and Miegel 1992a). Quantitative methods must be used when studying social and cultural patterns and the formation of different groups and collectivities (Bourdieu 1984, 1990; Johansson and Miegel 1992a; Reimer 1988,1989). However, when studying the construction of self-identity, biography and the individual lifestyle, it is necessary to use qualitative methods such as interviews, ethnographic methods, observations, etc. (Johansson and Miegel 1992a; Willis 1977,1990). Lifestyle research may perhaps best be described in terms of a continuous oscillation between categorizations and particularizations (Johansson and Miegel 1992a: 301).
Finally, I will say something about the complex relation between everyday life and the production of dream-worlds within the media. The study of this relation brings to the fore the relation between the new cultural intermediaries and different audiences (Featherstone 1987,1990,1991). The new cultural intermediaries actively promote and transmit the intellectuals’ lifestyles to a greater audience. In order to study the relation between the mass media and different audiences, it is necessary, therefore, to study the reception of the products, transmitted by the cultural intermediaries, in specific social and cultural contexts. The ‘postmodern’ cultural products created and transmitted by these fractions will be received in different ways dependent on people's values, attitudes, habitus, cultural and economic capital, desires and sensibilities.
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