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10. Social structure, cultural identity, andpersonal autonomy in the practice ofthe internet: the network society inCataloniaManuel Castells, Imma Tubella, TeresaSancho, Maria Isabel Díaz de Isla, and BarryWellmanThe uses of the Internet in everyday life are a good indicator of the diffusion,shape, and cultural specificity of the network society in a given social context.The interplay between social structure, social behavior, and the construction ofmeaning, as mediated by the Internet, expresses the process of social transformationthat results from the interaction between technology, culture, and society.In this chapter we will analyze this interaction on the basis of the data obtainedfrom a survey of a sample of 3,005 people, statistically representative of thepopulation of Catalonia older than 15 years. A significant feature of this surveyis that it was conducted by face-to-face interview on a sample of the entire population,of which almost two-thirds were not Internet users at the time of thesurvey, in the spring of 2002. This allows us to draw conclusions about the overalldynamics of the social structure, as we can compare users and non-users intheir demographics, social practices, and attitudes on a wide range of dimensions,while avoiding the biases introduced by an exclusive focus on Internetusers. Indeed, the study covered the entire set of behaviors in everyday life, andnot just the use of the Internet. It is a comprehensive study of Catalan society atthe dawn of the twenty-first century, in which we have emphasized the role ofthe Internet in the process of social structuration and social change.We will examine, in sequence, the differential use of the Internet accordingto position in the social structure; the interaction between networked sociabilityand the patterns of sociability in society at large; the uses of the Internet ineveryday life; the construction of cultural identity and the role that the Internetplays in the production of meaning; and we will conclude with an empiricalanalysis of the role of the Internet in the construction of autonomy as it is manifestedthrough the subjective projects of social actors. We must emphasize that233