The contrasting social logics of sociality and survival: Cultures of classed be/longing in late modernity

Late modernity has been characterized as a space, place and ‘series of flows’, marking conditions of complexity, contradiction and diversity as the global economics of capital restructuring reach down into the local/e to radically disorganize prior social forms of collective and political identity and allegiance (Giddens, 1998). Individualization implies a de-coupling of self from the weight of group, community and tradition, thus more local, idiosyncratic and syncretic trajectories are now said to structure ‘biographies of choice’. My starting points for reflecting on this are Bourdieu’s conceptualization of the ‘social logics of the individual’ conceived as a thoroughly social subject. I use this idea to frame how two contrasting locales shape the subject within their respective interpersonal relations. Gender and class are central terms of the following discussion examining the newly improvized identities of the digitally enhanced and networked middle class, alongside the survival identities impelled by those ‘muddling through’ within disconnected locales.