Mannheim (1972) The Problem of Generations

Generations: membership is based upon consciousness belonging to one generation. Unlike concrete groups (i.e. family, tribe, sect), membership of a generation is not deliberate. The ties between members of a generation have not resulted in a concrete group; "the unity of a generation is constitutied essentialy by a similarity of laction of a number of individuals within a social whole.

An additional component of generational membership is "participation in the common destiny of this historical and social unit (118). For example, the peasants of Prussia and young people in China share a potential capability for being sucked into the vortex of social change, yet does not necessarily mean they will equailly take part or be exposed [is there a FURTHER distinction then in taking part and being exposed?].

Membership of a generation is important because "individuals who beolng to the same generation, who share the same year of birth, are endowed to that extent with a common location in the historical dimension of the social process" (105).

Understanding a generation as a "social location"
"The fact of belonging to the same class, and that of belonging to the same generation or age group, have this in common, that both endow the individuals sharing in them with a common location in the social and historical process and thereby limit them to a specific range of potential experience, predisposing them for a certain characteristic mode of thought and experience and a characteristic type of historically relevant action" (106).

Much like your class membership determine your access, it also determines your approach to material, the world, events, etc. For example, events affect everyone. Yet they affect everyone differently depending upon the timing of the event; the youngest politically aware generation during 9/11 and the oldest generation were socialized differently by 9/11. Whereas for older individuals the event either solidified or weakened PRIOR beliefs, for those most young the event was the primary socializing event they had yet encountered, and from there-on-out the way they view preceding events will be colored by their influential 9/11 experience. The same could be argued for those whom it was most salient for (those living in NY or those who lost someone) also look through a lens drastically colored by the tragedy. "The fact that people are born at the same time, or that their youth, adulthood, and old age coincide, does not in itself involve similarity of location; what does create a similar location is that they are in a position to experience the same events and data, etc., and especially that these experiences impinge upon a similarly "stratified" consciousness" (112). "...mere contemporaneity becomes sociologically significant only when it also involved participation in the same historical and social circumstance" (113). This is why the same age groups of Chinese and Germans are necessarily socialized the same. "Early impressions tend to coalesce into a natural view of the world. All later experiences then tend to receive their meaning from this original set, whether they appear as that set's verification and fulfillment or as its negation and antithesis" (113). "If we bear in mind that every concrete experience acquireds its particular face and form from its relation to the primary stratum of experiences from which all others receive their meaning, we can appreciate its importance for the further development of the human consciousness" (114).

The "polar" components of life shift, depending on the generation. All later experience recieve their meaning from the primary experiencetial stratum of earliest experiences of mankind.

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Two ways in which the past is incorperated into the future:
(1) as consciously recoginized models on which men pattern their behavior (for example, revolutions after the French Revolution modeled themselves after the FR)
(2) as unconsciously condensed merely implicit or virtual patterns.
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Two types of memories:
(1) appropriated (rake memories from someone else)
(2) personially acquired (personal memories, derived from experience): the knowledge gained from personally acquired memories is the only knowledge that "sticks" (111). "...one is old primarily insofar as he comes to live within a specific, individually acquired, framework of usable past experience, so that every new experience has its form and its place largely marked out for it in advance" (111). "In youth, on the other hand, FORMATIVE FORCES ARE JUST COMING INTO BEING, and basic atiudes in the process of development can take advantage of the molding power of new sitiations" (111).

SOCIAL REJUVENATION (112)
The only way to "start fresh" is by a new birth. "Their being young, the "freshness" of their contact with the work, manifest themlves in the fact that they are able to re-orient any movement they embrace, to adolt it to the total situation" (footnote 112).

Stratification of life experiences.

Teacher-pupil reciprocal relationship (116):
Older generations are able to absorb some of the younger generations' concerns; especially those old enough to relinquish their original approach.
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Generational units:
generational units represent a much more concrete bond than the actual generation as such. i.e. romantic-conservative youth v. liberation-rationalist youth of the same generation. "youth experiencing the same concrete historical problem may be said to be part of the same actual generation; while those groups within the same actual generation which work up the material of their common experiences in different specific ways constitute separate generation-units" (120).

generational-units have a more binding tie on its members (122).

What produces generational units?
the Gestalt principle?

We always see things already formed in a special way; we think concepts defined in terms of a specific context. Form and context depend, in any case, on the group to which we belong. To become really assimilated into a group invovles more than mere acceptance of its characerist values--it in volves the ability to see things frm its particular "aspect" to endow concepts with its particular share of meaing, and it experience psychological and intellectual impulses in the configuation characteristic of the group. In means, futher, to absorb those interpretive formation principles which enable the individual to dea with new imporessions and events in a fashion broadlt predetermined by the group (122).

thus generational units can form based on the heighten participation in an event, where others in your generation lay low. End result? a number of generational-units making up one generation.

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