Generation
Generation is also a synonym for birth/age cohort in demographics, marketing, and social science, where it means "people within a delineated population who experience the same significant events within a given period of time.
[5] A familial generation is a group of living beings constituting a single step in the line of descent from an ancestor.
These changes can be attributed to social factors, such as GDP and state policy, globalization, automation, and related individual-level variables, particularly a woman's educational attainment.
[10] Social generations are cohorts of people born in the same date range and who share similar cultural experiences.
[11] The idea of a social generation has a long history and can be found in ancient literature,[12] but did not gain currency in the sense that it is used today until the 19th century.
"[13]: 19 Several trends promoted a new idea of generations, as the 19th century wore on, of a society divided into different categories of people based on age.
By the end of the 19th century, European intellectuals were disposed toward thinking of the world in generational terms—in terms of youth rebellion and emancipation.
[14] As the members of a given generation age, their "instinct of social conservation" becomes stronger, which inevitably and necessarily brings them into conflict with the "normal attribute of youth"—innovation.
Mannheim elaborated on the meaning of a generation's "location" (Lagerung), understood in a historical, economic and sociocultural sense.
Only where contemporaries definitely are in a position to participate as an integrated group in certain common experiences can we rightly speak of community of location of a generation.
[19] The theory has alternatively been criticized by social scientists and journalists who argue it is non-falsifiable, deterministic, and unsupported by rigorous evidence.
The concept of a generation can be used to locate particular birth cohorts in specific historical and cultural circumstances, such as the "Baby boomers".
Social scientists tend to reject the pulse-rate hypothesis because, as Jaeger explains, "the concrete results of the theory of the universal pulse rate of history are, of course, very modest.
Since they generally gather data without any knowledge of statistical principles, the authors are often least likely to notice to what extent the jungle of names and numbers which they present lacks any convincing organization according to generations.
According to the imprint hypothesis, generations are only produced by specific historical events that cause young people to perceive the world differently than their elders.
"Analyzing young people's experiences in place contributes to a deeper understanding of the processes of individualization, inequality, and of generation.
Amanda Grenier in a 2007 essay published in Journal of Social Issues offered another source of explanation for why generational tensions exist.
Grenier asserted that generations develop their own linguistic models that contribute to misunderstanding between age cohorts, "Different ways of speaking exercised by older and younger people exist, and may be partially explained by social historical reference points, culturally determined experiences, and individual interpretations".
[33] Karl Mannheim in his 1952 book Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge asserted the belief that people are shaped through lived experiences as a result of social change.
The contemporary characterization of these cohorts used in media and advertising borrows, in part, from the Strauss–Howe generational theory[18][35] and generally follows the logic of the pulse-rate hypothesis.
Cohen's open letter to the Pew Research Center, which outlines his criticism of generational labels, received at least 150 signatures from other demographers and social scientists.
