Made-To-Order Lives: Upper-Income Families in the New Economy.

There is a gaping hole in the sociology of family about upper-income families, despite the fact that they are the group that has benefited most during the rise of the new economy. This talk, based on interviews and ethnographic work with eleven upper-income families in Silicon Valley, is designed to close this gap. My analysis of these families finds that their cultural and familial practices, which center on the themes of uniqueness and customization, mirror the underlying features of the new high-value economy, leading me to argue that these social practices and economic features are mutually constitutive. I go on to argue that while most people's economic security and sense of control is undermined by the volatile nature of the new-economy, upper-income families' structural position enables them to retain their economic security and thus their sense of control. Consequently, assumptions commonly held during the old economy continue to live on among upper-income families in the new economy, engendering psychic orientations and emotional senses of self, or "structures of feeling," that form the basis of new class divisions in the twenty first century. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]