Mannheim's Sociology of Generations: An Undervalued Legacy

Abstract

ABS'I'RAC'I' Mannheim's 1923 essay 'The Problem of Generations' has often been described as the seminal theoretical treatment of generations as a sociological phenomenon. Yet in practice scant attention has been paid to the sociology of generations by British sociologists. This is despite the notion of generation being widespread in everyday language as a way of understanding differences between age groups and as a means of locating individuals and groups within historical time. This paper aims to raise the profile of the sociology of generations within British sociology. It is shown that Mannheim's essay can be read as a text which contributes to our understanding of key sociological issues, in addition to 'the problem of generations'. These issues include the nature of time, the relationship between biology and the social, and socio-psychological connections of language and knowledge. The notion of generation is widely used in the everyday world to make sense of differences between age groupings in society and to locate individual selves and other persons within historical time. We speak, for example, of 'my generation' and of 'the older generation'. We describe those who grew up in, say, the 1960s, as belonging to 'the sixties generation'. We speak of 'a few generations ago', 'a new generation' and of 'the generation gap'. Despite the notion of generation being in such common currency, contemporary sociologists have paid scant attention to the significance of generation. Yet, a longstanding tradition of theorizing the nature and significance of biological age groupings for processes of social change and continuity can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers (Nash 1978). More recent contributions have come from Ortega y Gasset, with his notion of vigencias (Spitzer 1973) and from the French Annales school, via the concept of mentalities collectives (Esler 1984). However, it is Mannheim's (1952 [1923]) 'The Problem of Generations' which is