Is greater social diversity increasing or decreasing individual ability to shape one’s own life?

To answer the question I would like to have a closer look at the term ‘social diversity’, the dynamics of agency, or in other words individual ability and structure, and explain what I understand by agency. By using examples I will then examine some evidence supporting increasing or decreasing individual ability to shape one’s own life in the light of greater social diversity and finally by weighting up the evidence, drawing a conclusion and answering the question.

After the second World War, a homogenous society with clearly defined gender roles, almost full employment and increasing social security (e.g. healthcare, unemployment benefits), in other words strong gender, social and cultural structures, constrained the room for social diversity.
The simplicity and strong structure gave people a sense of security and stability with little room for individual agency to interpret their roles in society.
Increasing diversity of living arrangements e.g. lone parent households and multi family households, growth in divorces and remarriages, collective action which led to the creation of new cultural identities and gender related change of economic activity, resulted in an increasing social diversity with more room to shape identities and interpret roles in contemporary society. Also the shift from old class identities towards consumption-based identities combined with new technologies increased social diversity and last but not least the democratization of knowledge (the knowledge revolution) opened much more room for individuality and choices through new, own ‘expert’ knowledge!

But does the increased social diversity give us more freedom of choice, do we have more individual agency or are there strong old and even new constrains and powers which limits our choices?
Before, gender through its social and cultural structures, class through e.g. poverty and race and ethnicity structures influenced and constrained people and limited their autonomy. Although the power of these structures are less limiting today and through collective action structures and institutions like e.g. traditional medicine is challenged by complementary medicine, what does that mean regarding individual agency? Examples like increased local resistance to centralized political dominance in the European Union and action by consumer groups or individual consumers for better quality or lower prices indicate an increasing individual ability to shape and influence our own life but how much of these decisions are really ours, how much can we influence our identities, our role in society, make free decisions in educating our children free of the existing structures of the state and contemporary society or making our choices as consumers free of the influence of marketing strategies, in other words how much freedom do we really have in exercising individual agency?

Good examples to illustrate increasing individual ability to shape one’s own life today are the possibilities available to us in building and rebuilding our own identities today. Before, our identities were based on given structures like gender, family and work but the simpler, less complex and less diverse society 50 years ago was not only constraining but offered more certainty about who we were, what we could do and what was expected of us. Today we can choose what kind of living arrangement we want for ourselves starting by living at home much longer due to longer education before starting a career and regardless of gender, there is a variety of jobs available and also a big diversity of employment forms. The majority of women are in paid labour today, economically more independent and make their choices more freely e.g. between their professional careers and children due to more possibilities available in a greater social diversity due to less defined gender roles and a flexible, globalizing economy. Men are not the only bread winner in the living arrangements anymore and are given the chance to choose a different involvement at home e.g. in sharing the responsibility of child care. Through new technologies available, mainly in the IT sector, it is possible for us, to have multiple identities by joining virtual worlds in cyberspace or shaping our identities through consumption e.g. by visualizing or imagining – we need what we can buy (Baudrillard, 1988). So yes, there is more individual agency to shape one’s own life and identity. Through collective action it is even possible to influence the social structure but the main structures are strongly within our contemporary culture, economy and society and still limit our individual agency through the exercise of power which is clearly ordering our daily lives. The economical reality or in other words the contemporary economical structure and its developments often give parents little choice but to both work outside home. The price of more choice in living arrangements e.g. single parents is often a life close to poverty according to European standards, regardless of class. Although we can exercise much individual agency in choosing work and employment forms, living arrangements and identities, we are consciously or unconsciously constrained by structures of our culture and society like e.g. in Switzerland the lack of institutions providing child care which limits possible choices trough the fact that child care has to be organized privately depending on economical and family resources. Another fact is that women often do not earn the same salary as men for the same kind of work, again limiting the possibilities especially for single parents or parents in general.
The transformation in patterns of paid employment which resulted in a big increase of female participation in work outside the home and therefore changed the types of family forms and power distribution, tremendously increased social diversity and therefore the individual ability to shape one’s own life but in reality the choices are somewhat limited through to the fact that ordering of everyday life continues to be tied to the work of key social institutes in our society and their transformation is not up to the actual needs of the society.

Another example of the individual ability to shape one’s own life is the general knowledge we have today and through which we enjoy more diversity in our society with less expert authority and more insight regardless of class or position. As a knowledge society we begin to understand that our relationship with nature has to change. Through knowledge available and modern media we start to understand the impact of our action and the reaction by nature and through that knowledge and understanding we start, by exercising individual agency, to change our behaviour. We vote for tougher laws concerning the environment to reduce greenhouse gases and to fight pollution. We start to recycle our garbage and used products. We even have the power as consumers to choose between products and companies to suit our beliefs and concerns by exercising individual agency. I can boycott Nike because I have the knowledge that the running shoes I want to buy are produced in Asia by children. We can stop buying gas at Shell gas stations because of their plans to dismantle and dispose an oil platform in the North Sea.
We have the power to reduce pollution to live in a healthier environment, to force companies to adapt other policies then just shareholder value and to maximise earnings. A next step could be to demand new laws trough individual and collective agency which could ask companies to consider all the production costs of a product, including the today free natural resources like clean air and water which are becoming more and more limited and are uneven distributed and the pollution by long ways of transportation from the place of production to the consumer to get an overall fair price.
In an increasing globalizing world, where pollution, global warming and the ozone whole are no regional but a global problem, the impact of our individual and even collective agency, especially concerning environmental issues, is not as effective as we often wish. Developing nations with other cultures and structures e.g. China, have a huge impact on environmental issues like pollution and economical issues like for example labour and wages.

In our contemporary society, there is a very strong believe in the individual ability. Especially the generation of the now 30 year old, well educated run from project to project and love to be challenged, found a cultural newspaper today, go bankrupt tomorrow, organize city tours, lead cultural workshops for the youth, do art and write theatre pieces. This is an example of a CV out of many. At the moment this person is head of the Bolognia Institute at the University of Berne in Switzerland.
This is a good illustration of the possibilities and the amount of individual agency which can be exercised today and how much room the greater social diversity by a globalizing economy, by new structures above the nation states like e.g. free choice of workplace in the whole EU for all individuals regardless of the nationality etc. provides, but not for all of us. The key factor to participate and profit from the greater social diversity is knowledge and education which requires in most cases money. For these people I can answer with a YES. There is increasing individual ability to shape one’s own life but for a lot of others, especially in the south part of our planet, there is not. More and more not well educated individuals find it hard to get a job because of advanced technology like e.g. the use of scanners where customers in stores scan the price of their merchandise themselves and are billed at the end automatically replacing the cashier completely. This is one of many examples and not promising for the future.
To sum it up, greater social diversity in our culture is only increasing the individual ability to shape one’s own life for a well educated and wealthy ‘class’ of people. For the others, the economic reality limits individual agency or even decreases it.
(1641 words)

References
Baudrillard, J. (1988) ‘Consumer society’ in Poster, M. (ed.) Selected Writings, Cambridge, Polity Press.

The Open University (2004), DD100, Questioning identity: gender, class, ethnicity, Milton Keynes, The Open University

The Open University (2004), DD100, the natural and the social: uncertainty, risk, change, Milton Keynes, The Open University

The Open University (2004), DD100, ordering lives: family, work and welfare, Milton Keynes, The Open University

The Open University (2004), DD100, a globalizing world? culture, economics, politics, Milton Keynes, The Open University
The Open University (2004), DD100, knowledge and the social sciences: theory, method, practice, Milton Keynes, The Open University