Page 86 - CULTURE IN THE COMMUNICATION AGE

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FROM WAYS OF LIFE
TO LIFESTYLE

Rethinking culture as ideology
and sensibility

David C. Chaney

I begin with the proposition that the concept of culture has been a key inven-
tion of social thought in the modern era; but I shall argue that, in the course of
being extensively used, it has acquired new meanings. I shall further argue that
as part of this process implied relationships between cultural forms and social
forms have also necessarily changed. I shall argue that the concept of lifestyle is
a good example of a new social form. Quite what we mean by lifestyles and
some of the implications of this social form will be briefly explored. In par-
ticular I will suggest that a key element in the traditional discourse of culture,
the value of authenticity, is now being understood less as an inherent quality
of objects or actions and more as something produced in lifestyling. I will
further suggest that these arguments are more generally an exploration of the
implications of recognizing that the discourse of culture has been popularized.
I hope it is uncontroversial to begin by claiming that the concept of culture
has been one of the fundamental building blocks of the social sciences. In
trying to develop a language of social order and difference, social theorists have
found it essential to think of a structure of attitudes, values, and normative
expectations that lay behind or were implicit in the patterns of behavior that
were characteristic of life in a community.
In order to see the strength of this idea, three points need to be emphasized.
The first is that the orientations I have summarized as attitudes, values, and
normative expectations were not peculiar to individuals but were shared within
a community and formed a more or less coherent structure. That is, they
existed somehow independently of actors’ minds and persisted through gener-
ations. The second point is that, although these orientations primarily deter-
mined forms of social interaction, they were also made visible or expressed
in other aspects of communal life. These include religious ceremonies and

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