Generations on paper: Bourdieu and the critique of ‘generationalism’

Introduction

Although sometimes interpreted as one of the ‘elementary concepts’ of modern sociology (Jureit & Wildt, 2005), generation famously has many meanings, which have been widely discussed and profoundly criticized (e.g. Aboim & Vasconcelos, 2014; Kertzer, 1983; Laslett, 2005; Pilcher, 1994; Ryder, 1965; Spitzer, 1973). For at least 60 years, Karl Mannheim has been the dominant figure in generation studies. His essay ‘The problem of generations’ (Mannheim, 1952; German original, 1928) has become the canonical, unifying point of reference in the field. The concern here is not with Mannheim’s view of generations as such, including his well-known distinctions between ‘generation location’, ‘generation as actuality’ and ‘generation units’, or his famous discussion of ‘non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous’, ‘formative years’, and the ‘zeitgeist’. For the purposes of this article it is sufficient that, for Mannheim, like many subsequent sociologists, generations emerge only under special historical circumstances and are thus something ‘more’ than simply age cohorts; they are a group of people of similar age bonded by a shared experience that can eventually result in a distinct self-consciousness, a world-view and, ultimately, political action (Mannheim, 1952).

Pierre Bourdieu was arguably one of the most eminent figures in sociology and neighbouring disciplines in the last decades of the 20th century (e.g. Sallaz & Zavisca, 2007; Silva & Warde, 2010). In Bourdieu’s œuvre, the theme of generations was marginal – at least if we seek explicit discussions. Rather, Bourdieu discussed or referred to generations sparsely and unsystematically. Yet this has not prevented some of the recent generational theorists from trying to use Bourdieu’s account of generations as a starting point for developing a ‘sociology of generations’ (Edmunds & Turner, 2002a, 2005; see also e.g. Dumas & Turner, 2009; Eyerman & Turner, 1998; Gilleard, 2004; Gilleard & Higgs, 2005, 2011; McMullin et al., 2007; Turner, 1998, 2002). More precisely, it has been argued that, even though the importance of generation as an ‘explanatory factor’ in Bourdieu’s approach to cultural change has usually gone unacknowledged because his main emphasis was on class, for Bourdieu, ‘generational struggle seems to be especially important in major ruptures in taste and practice’ (Edmunds & Turner, 2002a: 13). Moreover it has been argued that members belonging to the same generation share not only common unifying experiences – usually thought to be a ‘formative experience’ during young adulthood – which separate them from older and younger groups, but distinct generational habitus (Edmunds & Turner, 2002a; Eyerman & Turner, 1998; Gilleard, 2004; Gilleard & Higgs, 2005; Mauger, 1990). This would mean that the characteristics of a generation would essentially be manifested at the corporeal level of its members.

Both claims – whether generation is an important factor for explaining the changes in a given field and to what degree generational differences are imprinted in and identifiable via habitus – are, in the end, empirical in nature and should be resolved case by case; but there might be also a deeper problem if the aim is to integrate Bourdieu’s account of generations into the more traditional view of Mannheim. It is not clear whether Bourdieu’s and Mannheim’s conceptions of generation are compatible with each other.

This article argues that, from the perspective of the task of integrating Mannheim and Bourdieu, Bourdieu’s use of the term ‘generation’ is not without its problems. First, the meaning of the concept of generation varies in Bourdieu’s texts, depending on the context. Second, and more precisely, Bourdieu seldom if ever used the concept of generation strictly in the same sense as Mannheim (1952) and later theorists, for whom generation means essentially a social or cultural generation, a potential source of collective identity produced by the shared youthful or young adulthood experience of a group of people of roughly similar age (see e.g. Bude, 1997; Burnett, 2010; Eisenstadt, 2001; Jureit & Wildt, 2005). For this reason, there is a danger that the attempt to integrate Bourdieu and Mannheim can lead to conceptual problems, namely, the confusion – and equation – of age cohorts with generations.

These problems notwithstanding, it is argued here that Bourdieu’s sociology has actually much to offer the ‘sociology of generations’, which has usually been built on Mannheim’s legacy alone. However, we must put aside those passages in which Bourdieu explicitly deals with generations and concentrate instead on the more general approach to the nature and genesis of social classes and groupings that Bourdieu developed (Bourdieu, 1985, 1987, 1991). This approach, which emphasized the role of continuous classification struggles in the processes of group formation and culminated in analysing the problematic relationships of representation, can be fruitfully applied also to social generations and generational classifications. The result is an even more ‘Bourdieusian’ picture of generations than Bourdieu himself ever painted.

The purpose of this article is therefore to show that, by applying Bourdieu’s insights into social groups and the issues of representational relationships, it is possible to provide a new perspective on the lively discussion of social generations. ¹ From this perspective, social generations are not seen as naïve, natural objects or as categories; rather the focus is on the variety of levels at which generations are discursively constructed and especially on the continuous classification struggles over the attributes and meanings of those very generations. This new approach to generations will be juxtaposed with so-called generationalism in its classical form. Generationalism refers to a simplified and exaggerated view of generations, a view that dates back to the early 20th century in Europe and to its intellectuals (including Mannheim), and is still found today, both in popular discourse and in academic studies dealing with generations. By adopting insights from Bourdieu, it is possible to arrive at a new way of conceptualizing generations that can serve as a welcome antidote to this exaggerated generationalism.

Bourdieu’s concept of generation

For Bourdieu, as for anybody else, there are three basic ways to use the concept of generation (for different conceptual demarcation, see Kertzer, 1983; Lüscher & Liegle, 2003; Lüscher et al., 2014). One is in reference to familial generations. This genealogical usage, unquestionably the oldest and most profound meaning of the concept (Nash, 1978), appears in the studies that concentrate on the relationships between parents and children. This meaning thus dominates much of the work in the fields of anthropology, sociology of the family, life-course, ageing, youth, social mobility and migration as well as discussions on education and socialization, and so on. A second usage is more collective. Generation, in this case, consists of a group of people born at the same time, or during a certain period. In this casual sense, without the characterization referring to shared experiences, ‘generation’ is synonymous with age group or birth cohort. In many studies, generation is actually used even more loosely when speaking of the ‘young generation’ when what is actually meant is youth as a life stage, referring to the banal fact that there are people of many ages. The third use of generation is in the sense of social generations where the underlying idea is to emphasize collective identity and the feeling of ‘us’ created by shared experiences. This third meaning is the only one that refers directly to a particular background theory, and its meaning is, in fact, modern: it emerged only during the late 19th century and has been used more widely only since the beginning of the 20th century when it began to be codified in theories and manifestoes (see Burnett, 2010; Jureit & Wildt, 2005; Kriegel, 1978; Wohl, 1979). All these meanings are, of course, connected, but for the sake of conceptual clarity they should be kept analytically distinct (Kertzer, 1983).

There are several points to bear in mind about Bourdieu and the concept of generations. One is that, in his entire œuvre, he never explicitly referred to or cited Mannheim’s ‘The problem of generations’ (1952). However, it is abundantly evident that Bourdieu knew the basic idea of Mannheim’s famous essay, especially as it is known that Bourdieu was familiar with Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge. Rather than coincidence, it can be argued, the reluctance to refer to Mannheim is simply that Bourdieu seldom, if ever, used the concept of generation in his texts in the same sense as Mannheim and other theorists, who discussed cultural or social generations in the meaning of collectivities produced by shared experience.

However, before going into the principal meanings of generation in Bourdieu’s work, it should be pointed out that there seems to be one passage that does touch upon the ‘Mannheimian’ meaning of generation. It occurs in the section in The Rules of Art (Bourdieu, 1996) in which Bourdieu is describing the French literary field at the turn of the 20th century by making reference to Robert Wohl’s study (1979). Bourdieu parodies and mocks the concept of generation, noting ‘the emergence of a very marked tendency to think of the whole social order in terms of a scheme of division into generations (following the logic which often makes intellectuals extend to the whole world the characteristics of their own microcosm)’ (Bourdieu, 1996: 126). Hence, it could be argued that Bourdieu looked askance at cultural generations because of the tendency of intellectuals to fall into the trap of scholastic fallacy. In other words, when making generational interpretations, intellectuals tend to universalize their own particular and limited experiences falsely, ‘the vision of the world that is favoured and authorized by a particular social condition’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 50). Thus, Bourdieu seems to have been consciously critical of traditional theories of social or cultural generations. ²

Apart from this, how did he use the concept of generation? There are three main passages in Bourdieu’s texts in which he explicitly discussed generations and where they play an important role.

The first usage occurs in connection with reproduction and the educational system, and the main source is Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). This meaning also appears in Bourdieu’s early ethnographical studies based on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Bourdieu, 1977: 155, 232). In these works, generation is used in the genealogical sense and refers to biological kinship, that is, the parental/child axis within the family along which education mostly takes place. But because the authors’ examination is not restricted to education given by the parents only, but takes into account the entire educational system, their perspective is also applied to the aggregate level when it is a question of cohorts.

Because the theme of Reproduction is socialization, it is hardly surprising that all the formulations used therein, such as ‘from one generation to another’ or ‘the rising generations’, refer to the genealogical – and not the social or cultural – sense of the concept, as the formulations in which ‘lineages or generations’ (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977: 27) are used as equivalents confirm. This is a common and standard use of generation in studies on socialization, reproduction and the transmission of values. It is important to note, however, that this use of the term is clearly different from Mannheim’s; in fact the meanings are diametrically opposed, even when the theoretical views behind them are considered (Demartini, 1985). Mannheim’s theory of generation units (1952) is generally seen as a form of conflict theory (when dealing with youth in relation to their parents), whereas in the theories of socialization, it is often assumed that parents can ‘successfully’ transmit their own attitudes and values to their children.

The second meaning of the concept of generation found in Bourdieu’s texts is perhaps the most characteristic of him. It is related to his field-specific studies – especially the fields of academia, art, and culture – and the changes and struggles in those fields. In the case of the academic field, Bourdieu referred explicitly to ‘academic generations’ when writing about the massification of higher education in France in the 1960s: ‘the conflict which divided the faculties did not oppose generations understood in the sense of age but academic generations, that is agents who, even when they are the same age, have been produced by two different modes of academic “generation”’ (Bourdieu, 1988: 147).

But what is the meaning of the concept of generation in these phrases? In the context of Homo Academicus, generation means essentially a cohort, all of whom arrive in a field at approximately the same time (e.g. college or university graduates). They thus share similar positions in the field and are therefore thrown into its ongoing struggles in order to gain access to the resources and the capitals by distinguishing themselves from older and already-established groups (such as professors) as well as from younger groups. Although they may make no direct references to the generational experiences, these generations may feel solidarity because they are comprised of actors who have arrived in the field at roughly the same time and under similar circumstances. This is also the reason why Bourdieu (1993a, 1996) occasionally emphasized that the formation of a generation has practically nothing to do with biological age – the same point of arrival in a field is sufficient. The weakness of this view is that generations become very hard to demarcate; in other words, the cut-off points between generations tend to remain obscure and, thus, there is actually an endless number of generations because nothing special is needed other than simultaneous arrival in the field.

The same meaning of generation can also be found in Bourdieu’s studies on the fields of art and culture (e.g. Bourdieu, 1993a, 1996). Nevertheless, Bourdieu did not provide a direct answer to the question of what makes these ‘literary’ or ‘artistic’ generations really generations instead of cohorts. ³ It is clear, however, that from the viewpoint of this second meaning, the time spent in the field was more important for Bourdieu than the biological age of the actor.

This notion brings us to the third type of passage in which Bourdieu used the concept of generation, namely, ‘“Youth” is just a word’ (Bourdieu, 1993b). This short interview is indeed Bourdieu’s most famous reference to the theme of generations – precisely because it emphasizes the importance of a given field and its structures over biological age.

In this text Bourdieu (1993b), in a sense, combined and unified the two meanings of generation discussed above. First, he referred to field-specific generations, in which the meaning is the same as in his analyses of the fields of culture and the arts. Second, Bourdieu referred to family generations (at an aggregate level) when discussing the inequalities between ‘the young’ and ‘the old’ with regard to ownership of resources. This meaning is similar to the one used, for instance, in his studies on reproduction. Finally, he again brought out a field-specific perspective when highlighting the role of the educational system in creating generations: ‘What is common to all young people, or at least all those who benefited to any extent from the school system … is that, overall, that generation is more qualified in a given job than the previous generation’ (1993b: 101). The use of the concept of generation to refer to the continuous replacement of older, ‘previous generations’, is again, then, equivalent to a cohort – just as in his other field-specific studies.

Ultimately, the conclusion is that Bourdieu was never particularly systematic in his use of the concept of generation, apart from the fact that he practically never used it in the same sense as Mannheim. This also applies to ‘“Youth” is just a word’. However, the most interesting part of the text is its title and the opening section in which Bourdieu argued that the classifications of age are arbitrary and subject to struggle:

One is always somebody’s senior or junior. That is why the divisions, whether into age-groups or into generations, are entirely variable and subject to manipulation. … My point is simply that youth and age are not self-evident data but are socially constructed, in the struggle between the young and the old. (Bourdieu, 1993b: 95)

Bourdieu’s position is that the fact that classifications by age may be arbitrary does not mean that people are not really of various ages – in the way, for example, that some are younger and others are older. The classifications of age nevertheless are simultaneously the product of the struggle between those very groups. It can be argued that what Bourdieu (1985, 1987) presented with regard to all social classifications applies here: class is never objective as such, but it does not mean that the attributes of those classes (or, to be more precise, the differences in locations in a given social space that constitute the basis on which the class is constructed) cannot de facto vary among individuals.

The argument becomes clearer if we change one word in the title of Bourdieu’s text: ‘“Generation” is just a word’. The quotation marks clearly express, one can argue, that the question is essentially about the name given to a particular age group. The word ‘youth’ in the original title could be replaced by any of the names by which the ‘young’ in question are called. If we want to understand what Bourdieu meant when he wrote about the arbitrariness of the classifications related to age, we must look more closely at the texts in which he analysed the social classifications and classification struggles at a more general level.

The genesis of social groups: Classes on paper

As is well known, Bourdieu (1984, 1985, 1987) emphasized that sociology should shift its focus from the ‘class struggles’ (in which classes are seen as unproblematic objects or ready categories in the world) to ‘classification struggles’ (in which the classes are seen not only as objects of classification struggles, but also as being produced by and constituted through those very struggles). Thus, classes – and social groups in general – are always only ‘classes on paper’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 10–11). A central part of the approach (and also a central part of the classification struggle itself) is connected with the question of representation. ⁴ Usually, there is somebody (the ‘spokesman’) who claims that he or she represents some larger group, but the larger group – the ‘represented’ – tends to remain undefined, a kind of blind spot, whereas the one who claims to be the ‘representative’ remains the centre of attention.

In general, Bourdieu viewed the processes of representation – the ‘alchemy of representation’ (Wacquant, 2005: 5) – as being connected with classification struggles, and he tried to show that classes are always products of ‘class-making’. In some ways, even representative democracy was the target of his critique, but it is enough for our discussion to consider cases in which the relationships of representation are even more problematic. A salient point here is that social groups or even classes do not have to mean just social classes, but may be more general concepts that refer to all types of social classifications, irrespective of the ‘content’ of those classifications. The issue is one of ‘principles of union and separation, of association and disassociation already at work in the social world such as current classifications in matters of gender, age, ethnicity, region or nation’ (Bourdieu, 1987: 14) – and, one could add, of social generations.

Before returning to the theme of social generations, now from this perspective, Bourdieu’s general argument warrants more detailed consideration. How did Bourdieu actually make the shift from class struggle to the classification struggle and how are issues of representation involved?

Bourdieu’s starting point was to make a clear break with Marxist class theories. A special priority was to reject ‘the intellectualist illusion that leads one to consider the theoretical class, constructed by the sociologist, as a real class, an effectively mobilized group’ (Bourdieu, 1985: 723). The key to Bourdieu’s own perspective is the social space in which individuals are located (Bourdieu, 1998: 1–13, 31–33). The attributes of those positions are not, however, dependent on individuals occupying the positions, but on where the positions are located and their interrelationships within the space. In this sense, it is possible to distinguish between classes. However, classes based on similar locations of social space are not ‘actual classes’ or groups but only ‘classes on paper’, which can have only ‘theoretical existence’ (Bourdieu, 1985: 725). All classifications consist in the act of classifying from a particular social position. Therefore the class is never purely ‘objective’ (see, however, Bourdieu, 2000: 93–122).

Bourdieu continued to distance himself from Marxist conceptions of class that tend to identify constructed classes with real classes. When Marxism

does make the distinction, with the opposition between ‘class-in-itself’, defined in terms of a set of objective conditions, and ‘class-for-itself’, based on subjective factors, it described the movement from one to the other … in terms of a logic that is either totally determinist or totally voluntarist. In the former case, the transition is seen as a logical, mechanical or organic necessity …; in the latter case, it is seen as the effect of an ‘awakening of consciousness’ … performed under the enlightened guidance of the Party. (Bourdieu, 1985: 726–727)

The quotation above is revealing from the perspective of social generations: in the sociology of generations, it is still usual to present a generation as analogous to class and to use Marxist terminology for the difference between ‘class-in-itself’ and ‘class-for-itself’ (e.g. Edmunds & Turner, 2002a). Thus, the problem of the ‘awakening of consciousness’ is relevant to generations as well. There are no magical solutions to the issue, only vacillation between voluntaristic and deterministic extremes.

In a way, Bourdieu’s approach provides a solution to the problem by emphasizing that articulation of consciousness by the ‘spokesperson’ always comes first and that the group is more likely to be dependent on the representative than vice versa: ‘the group can only exist through delegation to a spokesperson who will make it exist by speaking for it, i.e., on its behalf and in its place’ (Bourdieu, 1985: 740). For Bourdieu, the transition from ‘theoretical’ class to ‘actual’ class is possible only through delegation and representation: class exists if and only if there is someone who can plausibly represent it (Bourdieu, 1987: 14–15). It is still a symbolic class, however, because the actual individuals presumably behind the representative do not form any kind of ‘class-in-itself’ (not to speak of the other Marxist alternative).

According to Bourdieu, ‘the existence or non-existence of classes is one of the major stakes in political struggle’ (Bourdieu, 1987: 9). The struggle takes place on the symbolic level, and the question of right is essentially to produce common sense (see Bourdieu, 2000: 97–98) through categorization (that is, making explicit classification) of issues relating to the social world (Bourdieu, 1985: 729). For Bourdieu, ‘groups are not found ready-made in reality. And even when they present themselves with this air of eternity that is the hallmark of naturalized history, they are always the product of a complex historical work of construction’ (Bourdieu, 1987: 8).

An important part of the process of ‘class-making’ is devoted to designation and labelling, a ‘quasi-magical power to name and to make-exist by virtue of naming’ (Bourdieu, 1985: 729). To create a unified group requires a symbolic work of construction. To name something or someone, as the habit of bestowing nicknames clearly shows, means that one possible point of view is foregrounded over all other viewpoints as the only legitimate way of viewing the individual or group in question (Bourdieu, 1988: 26). The act of nomination, in turn, is closely connected with the question of representation. Bourdieu calls for ‘a historical analysis of the genesis and functioning of representation, through which the representative makes the group that is represented’ (Bourdieu, 1985: 740; original emphasis). The class can exist ‘in and through the corps of mandated representatives who give it material speech and visible presence’, eventually ‘uniting the members of the same “class on paper” as a probable group’ (Bourdieu, 1985: 742).

Against generationalism

Before going into the peculiarities of the process of representation in social generations, it is useful to introduce a way of thinking about what can be called ‘generationalism’, a kind of opposing side of the spectrum in contrast to the generational analysis suggested here, which is sensitive to questions of representation. Generationalism dates back to early 20th-century Europe and the generational theorists of that period, who, for the first time, formulated and codified the modern concept of social or cultural generations (Burnett, 2010; Jureit & Wildt, 2005; Kriegel, 1978; Wohl, 1979). Besides describing the characteristics of generationalism, it will be argued that notions in accordance with original generationalism still have a foothold today in the way sociologists tend to think about generations.

But what was and is generationalism? Generationalism refers to the views about generations found both in popular discourses on generations ⁵ as well as in scientific theories and studies that are in many ways simplifying and exaggerating. In Bourdieu’s (1985) terms, generationalism represents a ‘substantialist fallacy’ (see Hilgers & Mangez, 2015). Generationalism can be described as having the following characteristics.

Those who embrace generationalism perceive generations as ‘ready-made’ and unproblematic entities or categories that have an existence of their own. Generationalism proposes that a generation is a priori an overriding and primary explanatory factor in the social world. In particular, it contrasts generation with social class and presents these as mutually exclusive forces. Generationalism tends to overemphasize the characteristics of the different generations it claims to describe and hence produces mere caricatures. On the basis of these differences, at its worst it instigates artificial confrontations between the ‘generations’. In addition, generationalism is a special form of historicism, by which generations are interpreted as collective actors and the succession of generations as the primary engine of history.

Described this way, generationalism is not a straw man but an existing view of generations, even though the characteristics above are presented in condensed form and even though all generationalists do not have to share all the characteristics. ⁶ As mentioned above, generationalism essentially originated with the birth of the entire modernist way of thinking about social generations – or, to put it the other way round, the entire modern way of thinking about social generations was effectively produced by the original generationalists. The concept of generationalism comes from Robert Wohl’s superb analysis of the great European generationalists in The Generation of 1914 (Wohl, 1979; see also Hazlett, 1998; White, 2013). Obviously, the terms ‘generationalism’ or ‘generationalist’ can also be found elsewhere, but the terms are usually used more as general and neutral references to the generational theorists and their advocates.

A modern meaning of the concept of generation emerged only at the turn of the century in a process that culminated with the ‘golden age’ of the concept of generation, events that took place in Europe after the Great War, especially in the 1920s. At that time, the concept was codified in numerous theories and manifestoes that emphasized the priority and importance of youth and especially youth experiences as the basis for the idea of generations.

In early twentieth-century Europe generationalists were almost always literary intellectuals living in large cities. They were members of a small elite who were keenly aware of their uniqueness and proud of their intellectual superiority. What concerned these writers or would-be writers was the decline of culture and the waning of vital energies; what drove them together was the desire to create new values and to replace those that were fading; what incited them to action was the conviction that they represented the future in the present; what dismayed them was their problematic relationship to the masses they would have liked to lead. (Wohl, 1979: 5)

Wohl (1979) presented a long list of central figures of European generationalists of the time: young intellectuals, authors, poets, historians, artists and social scientists. Among the most interesting from the point of view of sociology were François Mentré (France), Antonio Gramsci (Italy), José Ortega y Gasset (Spain), Wilfred Owen (England), Wilhelm Pinder, Edward Wechssler, and, of course, Karl Mannheim (Germany). John Downton Hazlett (1998) in turn has listed and examined generationalists from the USA. However, because the American generationalists (such as Randolph Bourne and Malcolm Cowley) were well aware of their European ‘colleagues’ and their writings, it is reasonable to regard generationalism as essentially a European phenomenon with strong roots in the experiences of the First World War.

At the end of his analysis, Wohl summarized his views of generationalism and its characteristics. For him, the generational idea formulated by generationalist intellectuals

suggested a biological determinism that had no basis in social fact; it implied that stage of life was a prison from which there was no escape and that communication across the chasm of age was impossible; it postulated that the differences between age-groups were more important that the differences within them; it demoted the mind and called into question its autonomy by explaining ideas as the direct and unmediated product of experience; it obscured the importance of social divisions by subordinating class interests to generational values; it vastly exaggerated the importance of literary intellectuals by locating in them the conscience and dynamic vanguard of society at large; and it prevented those who fell under its spell from seeing that all lasting historical action takes the form of the transformation of that which already exists and results from the collaboration (as well as the conflict) of different age-groups. (Wohl, 1979: 236)

Hazlett gave his own criteria for generationalism, which can be seen as supplementing Wohl’s. According to Hazlett, ‘generationalism is like all forms of historicism; it contains an animism by which collective history is perceived to embody a will independent of individuals’ (1998: 8–9). In addition, generationalism ‘infuses history with a suprapersonal meaning, but it also seeks to predict the direction of history on the basis of the continual replacement of older generations by rising generations’ (1998: 10). Most generationalists ‘share a quasi-religious belief in zeitgeists that give rise to generational tasks and historical trends’ (1998: 12). In the end, generationalists ‘attribute internal differences within generations to arguments over the shared “reality” that both provides their common bond and separates them from other age groups’ (1998: 13).

The list of characteristics presented at the beginning of this section, which tried to condense the essential features of generationalism, is based on these two broad descriptions given by Wohl (1979) and Hazlett (1998). In any case, generationalism is in many respects an exaggerated (cf. Bude, 2000) view of the generations – with respect to the characteristics of and differences between generations, their internal unity, the explanatory power of generations over other factors, the peculiarity and importance of events experienced during youth and young adulthood, and the role of generations as the engines of history and social change. In a word, generationalism raises the status of generations in some way or another to a mythical level.

But what, then, does generationalism not take into account? The answer is, above all else, the process of the symbolic construction of generations and the problems connected with the relationships of representation. Generationalism does not take note of the fact that, for a given generation, the precondition of its existence is that someone represents it. In other words, there always has to be someone who articulates the generational experience in the first place, and it is only after that that the generational consciousness among wider circles can be formed. Thus, it is impossible for generationalists to see that generations are never generations ‘in-themselves’, but always only generations ‘on paper’. As Wohl (1979: 5) has stated, and as Bourdieu showed earlier, social generations, just like all other social groups, are never born: they are made.

It should not be forgotten that Wohl’s study is the very source cited by Bourdieu in the unique instance when he made a direct reference to the concept of generation as it is understood in a cultural or social sense (Bourdieu, 1996: 126, 368). That remark, however, is loaded with irony or even hostility, which is in accordance with interpreting ‘generationalism’ as a special case of a more general sin typical of elitist intellectuals – and of which Bourdieu constantly warned – namely, the sin of scholastic fallacy.

How would an influential contemporary conception of generations by Edmunds and Turner (2002a) look if we compared it with the generationalism discussed here? Below, three similarities between Edmunds and Turner and original generationalism will be presented in an order that allows us to conclude with the most important issue. ⁷

First, it seems that Edmunds and Turner clearly overestimate the importance of generation as a factor that structures society and explains historical processes, as indicated by statements such as ‘the globalization of culture is itself the product of the 1960s generation’ (2002a: 118) and ‘the cultural history of the western world in the second half of the twentieth century is the legacy of this large, active and problematic generation’ (2002a: ix). In short, it seems as though they have forgotten not only the other structuring principles of society and social change, but also the two temporal factors – the effects of age and time period – that are, as is well known, logically interdependent on generation and from which the effect of generation is difficult to isolate (Hardy & Waite, 1997). What is even more alarming is that, when speaking of generations in general and the ‘1960s generation’ in particular, Edmunds and Turner concentrate almost entirely on the role of intellectuals, without building a bridge to wider contexts. Intellectuals surely have had cultural influence, but such alleged influence should be analysed and assessed in a wider framework. If this is not done, then the danger of falling into the trap of ‘scholastic fallacy’ is great.

Second, to elaborate on the earlier point, Edmunds and Turner’s purpose is clearly to show the explanatory power of generations over other social factors. They particularly emphasize the primacy of generation over social class and present the two as mutually exclusive. They state, for instance, that ‘twentieth-century thought has not been shaped by class, but by generational experience. Because generations rather than class shaped knowledge, Mannheim’s view is more sociologically relevant than the legacy of Marx and Gramsci’ (Edmunds & Turner, 2002a: 69). This goal of elevating the status of generation always to be considered as a primary explanatory factor was also essential to the original generationalists.

Third and last is the most important problem: the approach constructed by Edmunds and Turner does not allow them to discuss the crucial question that is essential for all studies of social generations if the task is defined as the ‘study of generational cultures and consciousness’ (2002a: 6). The question concerns the relationship between a generational movement or a vanguard (i.e. an ‘elite’) and the generation postulated behind that elite (i.e. the ‘mass’), which the elite is thought to represent.

The inability to address this question is illustrated by the passages in which Edmunds and Turner (2002a) identify the ‘baby boomers’ (a term obviously referring to an entire age group) with the ‘1960s generation’ (a term referring mainly to the people around the radical ‘generational movements’ of the 1960s, that is, a minority, perhaps culturally significant, but in fact, a small portion of the age group) as well as by the hybrid concept of ‘generational cohorts’ (Edmunds & Turner, 2002a: 14, 16; see Fietze, 2003: 442–445). The integration of cohort analysis and generational analysis cannot mean equating the concepts of cohorts and social generations. Rather what is required is the careful examination of the relationship between them. The means for bridging the gap between cohorts and generations could, in fact, be found in the same approach for which generationalism has been criticized above, that is, in Bourdieu’s general analysis of the emergence and construction of social groups and classifications in symbolic struggles.

Generations on paper: The politics of social generations

Bourdieu’s view, which emphasizes the role of classification struggles, has so far been contrasted only indirectly with generationalism, the idea that generation is an unproblematic category or group and is therefore incapable of being used to examine the relationships of representation. The argument here is that Bourdieu’s approach to the nature and genesis of social groups can also be used to analyse generations and generational classifications. His approach, which can be applied to all kinds of social groups and classes, emphasized the need to concentrate on the relationship of representation because classes can exist only through their representatives. On the other hand, the very relationship of representation is problematic because rarely is the relationship totally unambiguous (who can legitimately represent whom and by what authority), and often there are opportunities for misuse. This approach and its general ideas about the problems related to representation fit almost perfectly with the idea of social generations and especially the process by which generational consciousness is constructed. Here, the question of representation touches upon the relationship between the ‘vanguard’, which proclaims itself the ‘spokesman’ for a generation, and those who are thought to be ‘represented’, that is, the entire group of peers. In this last section, some of the main issues related to representation and classification struggles that are particularly characteristic of social generations will be discussed.

In order to exist as a class or a group, someone has to represent – or claim to represent – the class or group in question, a truth that also applies to social generations. Generational consciousness, a shared feeling of belonging to a certain generation, requires that the members of a generation ‘not only have something in common, they have also a (common) sense for (a kind of knowledge about) the fact that they have something in common’ (Corsten, 1999: 258). A salient point is that generation as this kind of collective identity based on shared experience is possible only if someone articulates or formulates the very existence of the generational experience and its meaning to the people first; only then can others begin to identify themselves with that generation. Usually, however, it is not clear to what degree the ‘representatives’ of a generation reasonably and legitimately represent an entire generation as they claim.

Such doubt is sufficient to make the perspectives of politics and struggle essential here. There is always someone – usually some kind of social movement or elite, intellectual faction – who articulates the generational experience. By defining itself (‘us’), however, it usually extends the interpretation to encompass the entire group of peers, that is, the whole ‘generation’. The person or group that has proclaimed itself to be the voice of a generation will probably not make divisions and exclusions within the age group; this would not only be illogical with regard to the general idea of a generation, but also would presumably work against the spokesperson’s interests (see Hazlett, 1998; Wohl, 1979). This, of course, has nothing to do with how large a group of people the generational interpretation may really touch.

Thus, it is appropriate to ask, should the ‘sociology of generations’ make a shift in focus similar to what Bourdieu suggested for the study of social classes, that is, to move from ‘class struggles’ to ‘classification struggles’? In the case of generations, this would mean a shift from the perspective of ‘generational conflicts’ (in which generations are seen as relatively unproblematic, ‘ready-made’ groups) to a perspective sensitive to the struggle over the definitions and classifications of people in terms of generations that are never purely descriptive, but are loaded with many kinds of normative attributes and meanings. This would also mean that generations, as with all kinds of classes, are fundamentally only ‘generations on paper’. Even though the analogy between social class and generation has a somewhat dismal history, the tradition should not be broken if it enables us to avoid repeating simplified conceptions of generations.

The question of the limits of generational interpretations can also be understood as ‘the question of the existence and the mode of existence of collectives’ (Bourdieu, 1985: 741). The power of designation emphasized by Bourdieu is an essential feature in social generations: a generation cannot function as a form of collective identity if there is no idea about how to identify the generation. Hence a basic means of investigating generational consciousness is to find out with what names and labels people themselves identify. Well-known, frequently used and strongly established terms express the level of institutionalization of a given generation (cf. Becker, 2000: 118).

This aspect reveals a fundamental side of social generations that can be captured by the notion of the symbolic or discursive dimension of generation, which consists of all the reflective articulations of generational experiences: speeches, manifestoes, writings, labels, terms, and so on, which are explicitly concerned with generations. Discourses can be seen as a mediating level between generational experiences and consciousness – a level which was largely ignored by Mannheim and the line of thought following him until recently (Aboim & Vasconcelos, 2014; Bohnenkamp, 2011; Corsten, 1999; Foster, 2013; Hörisch, 1997; Jureit & Wildt, 2005; Purhonen, 2007; White, 2013). From this perspective, it can be argued that social generations tend to produce themselves (and others as well) by their discourse about those generations. The generational consciousness of people is always more or less formed and coloured by the articulations and representations of social generations presented in the public (or even the scientific) discourse. Without resorting to the mythology of an ‘awakening of consciousness’, an emphasis on designation and the entire discursive generation-making can shed light on the process by which a generation becomes a group and an object of identification. Therefore, the perspective implies that the discursive dimension of social generations – alleged articulations and interpretations of generational experiences and identities and all the struggles connected to them – should become the fundamental object of the ‘sociology of generations’.

As for social generations, there are two basic relationships through which the processes of representation should be analysed and studied. The first is the supposed relationship of representation between the individual actor (thought of here as the ‘representative’) and the generational movement or other concrete group behind the actor. The second is the supposed relationship of representation between the movement or the group (thought of here as the ‘representative’) and the entire generation itself that is postulated as being behind the group or movement. This latter relationship between the generational movement members and all other age-group peers has constituted a real problem to all generationalists and classic generational theories. In Mannheim’s terms (1952), the relationship in question is between a certain, politically mobilized ‘generation unit’ and the broader ‘generation location’ from which generational units can potentially emerge. Mannheim himself maintained that the former represents the latter: each generation unit tries to expand its influence on the direction of the whole generation location, and thereby the ideas developed inside the generation unit can attain wider influence. According to Mannheim, this can happen if the ‘basic integrative attitudes and formative principles represented by a generation-unit … formulate the typical experiences of the individuals sharing a generation location’ (Mannheim, 1952: 307–308).

It would, however, be a mistake to think that a given generation unit or movement could somehow directly or unproblematically represent the entire generation location (the ‘generation’ itself being thought of as behind), or that its attitudes, values, or other characteristics could be generalized as attributes of the whole age cohort. Yet this is precisely the purpose of Mannheim’s ultimately teleological theory of generations: for Mannheim, the question was always one of actualization of ‘potentialities inherent in the location’ and, ultimately, of Aristotelian ‘generation entelechy’ (1952: 309; see Zinneker, 2003: 40–41). Indeed, it is possible to emphasize that generation units or movements are specifically different from other members of the age cohort precisely because they mobilize and others do not.

An essential element of the politics of social generations is related either to the maintaining or to the contesting of this relationship of representation. In other words, the validity and actual limits of generational interpretations and classifications become critical issues for the politics of generations. From the point of view suggested here, the politics of social generations means struggles over the definitions, classifications and meanings of generations. Of course, there are also other aspects in the politics of generations, in particular aspects that relate to the other meanings of the concept (i.e. family generations or mere cohorts). However, struggles over classifications and definitions of generations are elementary because the stake in these struggles is, above all, the existence and constitution of those very generations.

The sociology of generations should try to avoid treating age cohorts (such as ‘baby boomers’) as unified, homogenous groups and making false generalizations on the basis of the attributes of small numbers of elites only. Rather, the very relationships between the elites of a generation and other parts of the age cohorts should be taken as the object of careful analysis. In the case of the ‘baby boomers’ and the ‘1960s generation’, the focus should be on the relationship between the radical 1960s social movements and the whole mythical package it bears (often regarded as a symbol of an entire generation) and the entire age cohort (of which some – if not the most – regard those political symbols of the 1960s with indifference or even open hostility). Even though the ‘old radicals’ of the 1960s may have had a dominant position in interpreting, remembering and giving their generation a public voice, it should be remembered that they represent only a small minority of the age cohort. ⁸

However, the processes of generational articulations can also be different compared to the case of generational manifestoes and other self-definitions by the elite. Such is the case with those generational interpretations that come from ‘outside’ and are particularly meant to label a given social movement as a ‘generational movement’. To interpret a social movement as a generational movement can be seen as a strategy to belittle and nullify the movements’ political agenda and its significance in general (in the same belittling sense of such sayings as youth protests ‘come with the territory’, ‘boys will be boys’, and so on). In this case, the process is reversed when compared to the logic of generational manifestoes. In fact, generational interpretations seem to have two kinds of functions: interpretations that seek to promote the value of the group in question (usually one’s own), and interpretations intended to reduce the value of a specific group (usually a group of others). Which of the two functions is in question seems to be largely determined by who is presenting the generational interpretation. If the interpretation applies to oneself, then there is seldom a tendency to degrade one’s own position. In any case, it should be evident from this discussion that the concept of generation is fundamentally bound up with cultural and political struggles since generational interpretations and labels are hardly ever disinterested, but rather normative and motivated by certain political ambitions.

Conclusion

The suggested Bourdieusian perspective of generations ‘on paper’ provides an antidote to generationalism – a simplified picture of generations, which originally dates to early 20th-century Europe and its intellectuals, and which is still found in many sociological studies today as well as in popular discourse. For the original generationalists, the concept of generation served as an alternative to the concept of social class, a new way to think about social change and progress. Since then the concept of generation has been paired with the idea of the zeitgeist or some other controversial way of defining what is essential (meaning what it is that creates generations) at a given point in time and in a given culture. Thus, as a product of classification struggles, the idea of generation is fundamentally a contested concept. The concept also has clear elitist connotations; the idea of some kind of vanguard (‘the elite’), which represents an entire generation by proclaiming itself to be its spokesman, automatically creates a counterpart, namely the others in the peer group, who are thought to be represented (‘the masses’). The approach suggested here provides reflexivity that can be used to challenge a naïve view of generationalism and highlight the importance of analysing the processes of generation-making in symbolic struggles.

This article has presented a number of reservations about the concept of generation. It is even possible to argue that at the heart of the concept is a totalizing tendency that causes trouble with intra-generational differences and produces caricatures of different generations. This is not to argue, of course, that the concept of generation is worthless. What it does indicate is that the close analysis of the relationships of representation, the analysis of differences within the age cohorts that are hidden under totalizing generational labels, and other concrete questions related to classification struggles that the approach makes it possible to study are all of a kind that have to be resolved empirically, case by case.

The suggested approach cautions us always to be careful and precise when dealing with the concept of generation. If someone claims that their experiences are typical of their generation, we would do well to consider the possible motives, interests, context and validity of these claims. On the other hand, it is important to note that the approach offered here does not mean that social generations are completely reducible to the symbolic or discursive levels only. In the end, generations are also something more, namely demography. Generational articulations that have gained support could hardly be completely arbitrary with respect to age. To paraphrase Bourdieu (1985: 725), some age cohorts are more probable generations than others. This is perhaps one important reason behind the problems with the concept of generation, but perhaps it is also the reason why the concept has inspired such passionate discussion.

The approach does not imply that generations are somehow less ‘real’ as a factor in structuring society or as a sociological concept (cf. Foster, 2013). Nevertheless, bypassing the fact that the concept of generation is also a political concept in this discursive and classificatory sense would mean a step back into the company of the early 20th-century generationalists. Yet it may be impossible to have a ‘sociology of generations’ that would be totally free of generationalism – at least if we do not want to dispense with the idea of generations altogether. The issue already mentioned above, namely that in the end generations are always dependent on age in some way, has to do with this question. If there is no linkage of any kind between age and the concept of generation, there are hardly any reasons left to call this particular principle of classification a ‘generation’.

The other reason why an approach emphasizing the discursive dimension of generation and the importance of classification struggles may never win the battle with generationalism is that, in the logic of its own perspective, generationalism itself is a part of common sense and thus, of social reality. Perhaps paradoxically, this means that generationalism should be counted as part of the research object – the phenomenon of social generations themselves. Consequently, it would be difficult to make any distinction at all between ‘folk generationalism’ and social generations if the generational consciousness of people is in accordance with generationalism.