"Lebensformen" und "multiple Risikogruppen": Neue Schichtungstypen für Wissens- und Informationsgesellschaften

Abstract: The present article has achieved three major goals which, each for itself, must be considered as unconventional and innovative and which, in conjunction, offer radically new ways for the conceptualization and for the analyses of contemporary 'social structures'. First, an integration between two strictly separated domains has been accomplished, namely between, on the one hand, recent frameworks of 'knowledge and information societies' and, on the other hand, of 'social indicator research'. Second, the notion of 'forms of life' has been specified in a manner which turns out to be not only highly systematic, but also applicable for the empirical conceptualization of 'knowledge and information societies'. Third, an entirely new way of aggregating existing social indicators has led to new types of social stratification which have been labeled as 'multiple risk groups' and as 'multiple support groups' and which could be supported empirically on the basis of a major representativesocial survey from Austria. In doing so, a viable research strategy has been gained through which 'forms of life' as well as processes of social exclusion and of social integration can be analyzed for contemporary 'knowledge and information societies'.;