From political to social generations

Abstract

Faced with the confused meanings of the concept of generation, this article defends the need to move from Karl Mannheim’s excessive emphasis on political and intellectual self-awareness as a pre-condition for generation formation to an enlarged social and cultural definition of generations. By developing the concept of social generations, we argue that rather than concrete groups, generations are better conceived as discourses with which individuals relate in order to build self-identification. Individuals living in similar historical contexts may share mental and practical dispositions, but must always position themselves in face of the narratives that have come to be dominant to describe a given generational location. Such a contention implies redressing Mannheim’s culturalist view through a reformulation of his hierarchical view of the scheme of generations. By replacing generation-units by dominant ideas, we contend that generations are better conceived as discursive formations in the Foucauldian sense.

Media and Generations in Portugal

“…Many have followed and proposed refinements of Mannheim's seminal contributions [10][11][12][13][14][15]. Some have combined Manheim's legacy with the contributions of Bourdieu [13,16,17].…”

“…Relating this index with the variable age in scale, an average negative correlation (−0.589) was also found. Likewise, in 2010, creating indexes for activities of communication 14 , information 15 , entertainment 16 , user-generated contents 17 , goods and service 18 , education 19 , and measuring the association with age groups, significant values were found in the measures of correlation 20 -except for the correlation with the indexes goods and services and age. The correlation was negative, in the sense that the levels of use were higher in the younger ages and would decrease in more advanced ages.…”

“…13 Treating it as numerical and, therefore, using a Pearson's r. 14 Chronbach's alpha of 0.7437. 15 Chronbach's alpha of 0.8027. 16 Chronbach's alpha of 0.8882.…”

“…The third quadrant (−X; −Y) points to a favoured trend associating the categories of young people (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24) and young adults, who are 23 Due to space limitations, no more were selected, particularly those with a poor explanatory power for the relationship with media (the case of gender). Moving this to a multivariate analysis of the same question and bringing in some of the sociographic variables 23 we have previously seen on this article to embrace greater sociological relevance and explanatory power vis-à-vis the different relationships with media, an interesting social phenomenon is observed.…”

“…The third quadrant (−X; −Y) points to a favoured trend associating the categories of young people (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24) and young adults, who are single or in non-marital partnership and have completed secondary education, a bachelor or master's degree, being closer to the Internet and videogames.…”