Generation

This photograph depicts four generations of one family - an infant, his mother, his maternal grandmother, and his maternal great-grandmother.

Generation (from the Latin generāre meaning to beget^[1]), also known as procreation, is the act of producing offspring. In a more generic sense, it can also refer to the act of creating something inanimate such as electrical generation or cryptographic code generation.

A generation can also be a stage or degree in a succession of natural descent as a grandfather, a father, and the father's son comprise three generations. A generation can refer to stages of successive improvement in the development of a technology such as the internal combustion engine, or successive iterations of products with planned obsolescence, such as video game consoles or mobile phones.

In biology, the process by which populations of organisms pass on advantageous traits from generation to generation is known as evolution.

Familial generation

It is important to distinguish between familial and cultural generations. A familial generation is defined as the average time between a mother's first offspring and her daughter's first offspring. The generation length is 25.2 years in the United States as of 2007^[2] and 27.4 years in the United Kingdom as of 2004^[3].

Cultural generation

The U.S. baby boom generation is seen here as the widest bulge of the 2000 Census data.

Cultural generations are cohorts of people who were born in the same date range and share similar cultural experience.

The idea of a cultural generation, in the sense that it is used today gained currency in the 19th century. Prior to that the concept "generation" had generally referred to family relationships, not broader social groupings. In 1863, French lexicographer Emile Littré had defined a generation as, "all men living more or less at the same time."^[4]

However, as the 19th century wore on, several trends promoted a new idea of generations, of a society divided into different categories of people based on age. These trends were all related to the process of modernisation, industrialisation, or westernisation, which had been changing the face of Europe since the mid-eighteenth century. One was a change in mentality about time and social change. The increasing prevalence of enlightenment ideas encouraged the idea that society and life were changeable, and that civilisation could progress. This encouraged the equation of youth with social renewal and change. Political rhetoric in the 19th century often focused on the renewing power of youth influenced by movements such as Young Italy, Young Germany, Sturm und Drang, the German Youth Movement, and other romantic movements. By the end of the 19th century European intellectuals were disposed toward thinking of the world in generational terms, and in terms of youth rebellion and emancipation.^[4]

Two important contributing factors to the change in mentality were the change in the economic structure of society. Because of the rapid social and economic change, young men particularly, were less beholden to their fathers and family authority than they had been. Greater social and economic mobility allowed them to flout their authority to a much greater extent than had traditionally been possible. Additionally, the skills and wisdom of fathers were often less valuable than they had been due to technological and social change.^[4] During this time, the period of time between childhood and adulthood, usually spent at university or in military service, was also increased for many people entering white collar jobs. This category of people was very influential in spreading the ideas of youthful renewal.^[4]

Another important factor was the break-down of traditional social and regional identifications. The spread of nationalism and many of the factors that created it (a national press, linguistic homogenisation, public education, suppression of local particularities) encouraged a broader sense of belonging, beyond local affiliations. People thought of themselves increasingly as part of a society, and this encouraged identification with groups beyond the local.^[4]

Auguste Comte was the first philosopher to make a serious attempt to systematically study generations. In Cours de philosophie positive Comte suggested that social change is determined by generational change and in particular conflict between successive generations.^[5] 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. Other important theorists of the 19th century were John Stuart Mill and Wilhelm Dilthey.

Karl Mannheim was a seminal figure in the study of generations. He suggested that there had been a division into two primary schools of study of generations until that time: positivists, such as Comte who measured social change in fifteen to thirty year life spans, which he argued reduced history to “a chronological table.” The other school, the “romantic-historical” was represented by Dilthey and Martin Heidegger. This school emphasised the individual qualitative experience at the expense of social context.

Mannheim emphasised that the rapidity of social change in youth was crucial to the formation of generations, and that not every generation would come to see itself as distinct. In periods of rapid social change a generation would be much more likely to develop a cohesive character. He also believed that a number of distinct sub-generations could exist.

Jose Ortega y Gasset was another influential generational theorist of the 20th century.

Since then, generations have been defined in many different ways, by different people. Generational claims can often overlap and conflict. Often generational identification has a strongly political implication or connotation.

List of generations

Western world

There have been many conflicting attempts to enumerate the generations of the western world.^[6] There is more agreement in the earlier parts of chronology through the early part of the Baby Boomer generation, while from the latter part of the Boomer generation on, there are significant differences, especially between those systems partially based on population dynamics and statistics, and that based on cyclic sociological theory of Strauss and Howe. The former system is more of an attempt at locating generational boundaries based on population trends and parentage and follows a roughly 15 year generations in order for the likely parentage of one generation for those two generations junior; while the latter Strauss and Howe theory is an attempt to conform the recent population trends in contemporary United States to perceived historical cycles of sociological changes in Anglo-American historical records, and follow a roughly 22 year generational interval. The Population Reference Bureau has published the "20th Century U.S. Generations".^[7] The publication uses population and census data to define generations. It includes impacts of cultural values on generations. The following is a list of widely accepted cultural generations, sorted by region:

• The Lost Generation, primarily known as the Generation of 1914 in Europe,^[8] is a term originating with Gertrude Stein to describe those who fought in World War I.

• The Greatest Generation, also known as the G.I. Generation, is the generation that includes the veterans who fought in World War II. They were born from around 1901 to 1924, coming of age during the Great Depression. Journalist Tom Brokaw dubbed this the Greatest Generation in a book of the same name.^[9]

• The Silent Generation born 1925 to 1945, is the generation that includes those who were too young to join the service during World War II. Many had fathers who served in World War I. Generally recognized as the children of the Great Depression, this event during their formative years had a profound impact on them.

• The Baby Boom Generation is the generation that was born following World War II, about 1946 up to approximately 1964, a time that was marked by an increase in birth rates. The baby boom has been described variously as a "shockwave"^[10] and as "the pig in the python."^[11] By the sheer force of its numbers, the boomers were a demographic bulge which remodeled society as it passed through it. In general, baby boomers are associated with a rejection or redefinition of traditional values; however, many commentators have disputed the extent of that rejection, noting the widespread continuity of values with older and younger generations. In Europe and North America boomers are widely associated with privilege, as many grew up in a time of affluence.^[10] One of the features of Boomers was that they tended to think of themselves as a special generation, very different from those that had come before them. In the 1960s, as the relatively large numbers of young people became teenagers and young adults, they, and those around them, created a very specific rhetoric around their cohort, and the change they were bringing about.^[12]

• Generation X is the generation generally defined as those born after the baby boom ended, and hence sometimes referred to as Baby Busters^[13], with earliest birth dates seen used by researchers ranging from 1961 to the latest 1981 at its greatest extent.^{[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]}

• Generation Y is also known as Generation Next, Millennials, or Echo Boomers.^[24] The earliest suggested birth dates ranging from mid to late 1970s to the latest in the early 2000s.^{[15][16][17][18][19][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]} Today, many follow William Strauss and Neil Howe's theories in defining the Millennials. They use the start year as 1982, and end years around the turn of the millennium.^[32][33]

• Generation Z, also known as Generation I or Internet Generation, and dubbed the "Digital Natives," is the following generation.^[34][35][36] The earliest birth is generally dated in the early 1990s.^{[37][38][39][40][41][42]}

Eastern world

• In China, the after-eighty generation (Chinese: 八零后世代 )(short form: 八零后) (born-after-1980 generation) (also sometimes called China's Generation Y) are those who were born between the year 1980 to 1989 in urban areas of Mainland China. These people are also called "Little Emperors" (or at least the first to be called so) because of the People's Republic of China's one-child policy. Growing up in modern China, China’s Gen Y has been characterised by its optimism for the future, newfound excitement for consumerism and entrepreneurship and acceptance of its historic role in transforming modern China into an economic superpower.
• In South Korea, generational cohorts are often defined around the democratization of the country, with various schemes suggested including names such as the "democratization generation", 386 generation^[43][44] (also called the "June 3, 1987 generation"), that witnessed the June uprising, the "April 19 generation" (that struggled against the Syngman Rhee regime in 1960), the "June 3 generation" (that struggled against the normalization treaty with Japan in 1964), the "1969 generation" (that struggled against the constitutional revision allowing three presidential terms), and the shinsedae ("new") generation.^[44][45][46]
• In India, generations tend to follow a pattern similar to the broad western model, although there are still major differences, especially in the older generations.^[47] According to one interpretation, Indian independence in 1947 marked a generational shift in India. People born in the 1930s and 1940s tended to be loyal to the new state and tended to adhere to "traditional" divisions of society. Indian "boomers", those born after independence and into the early 1960s, tended to link success to leaving India and were more suspicious of traditional societal institutions. Events such as the Indian Emergency made them more sceptical of government. Generation X saw an improvement in India's economy and they are more comfortable with diverse perspectives. Generation Y continues this pattern.

Other generations

The term generation is sometimes applied to a cultural movement, or more narrowly defined group than an entire demographic. Some examples include:

• The Beat Generation, a popular American cultural movement that most social scholars say laid the foundation of the pro-active American counterculture of the 1960s. It consisted of Americans born between the two world wars who came of age in the rise of the automobile era, and the surrounding accessibility they brought to the culturally diverse, yet geographically broad and separated nation. The Beat Generation is between the Lost Generation and the Baby Boomers.

See also

• Generationism
• Intergenerationality
• Generational accounting
• Intergenerational equity

External links

• Generations and Population
• Resources on the Generations

References

• William Strauss and Neil Howe (1991) Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584-2069, ISBN 0-688-11912-3