Literature – Wild Years
Week 1
Mannheim – The problem of generations
The sociological problem of generations
As far as generations are concerned, the task of sketching the layout of the problem undoubtedly falls to
sociology. It seems to be the task of Formal Sociology to work out the simplest, but at the same time the most
fundamental facts relating to the phenomenon of generations. Within the sphere of formal sociology,
however, the problem lies on the borderline between the static and the dynamic types of investigation.
Concrete group – social location
To obtain a clear idea of the basic structure of the phenomenon of generations, we must clarify the specific
inter-relations of the individuals comprising a single generation-unit. It is possible in general to draw a
distinction between generations as mere collective facts on the one hand, and concrete social groups on the
other. Organizations for specific purposes, the family, tribe, sect, are all examples of such concrete groups.
Their common characteristic is that the individuals of which they are composed do in concrete form a group.
A concrete group is not a community, because it can exist without its members having concrete knowledge of
each other, and it does not cease to exist as a mental and spiritual unit when physical proximity is destroyed.
But it is in no way comparable to associations such as organizations formed for a specific purpose. By a
concrete group we mean the union of several individuals through naturally developed or consciously willed
ties. Although the members of a generation are undoubtedly bound together in certain ways, the ties between
them have not resulted in a concrete group. Class-position can be defined as the common ‘location’
(Lagerung) certain individuals hold in the economic and power structure of a given society as their ‘lot’. One
is proletarian, entrepreneur or rentier, and is constantly aware of the nature of his specific location in the
social structure. It is possible to abandon one’s class position through an individual or collective rise or fall
in the social scale. Membership of an organization lapses as soon as we give notice of our intention to leave it;
the cohesion of the community group ceases to exist if the mental and spiritual dispositions on which its
existence has been based no longer works to operate in us or in our partners; and our previous class position
loses its relevance for us as soon as we acquire a new position because of a change in our economic and power
status. Class position is an objective fact. The unity of generations is constituted essentially by a similarity of
location of several individuals within a social whole.
The biological and sociological formulation of the problem of generations
Similarity of location can be defined only by specifying the structure within which and through which location
groups emerge in historical-social reality. Class-position was based upon the existence of a changing
economic and power structure in society. Generation location is based on the existence of biological rhythm in
human existence. Individuals who belong 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.
Anthropology and biology offer no explanation of the relevance primary factors have for the shaping of social
interrelationships in their historic flux. The sociological phenomenon of generations is ultimately based on the
biological rhythm of birth and death. But to be based on a factor does not necessarily mean to be deducible
from it, or to implied in it. If a phenomenon is based on another, it could not exist without the latter; however,
it possesses certain characteristics peculiar to itself, characteristics in no way borrowed from the basic
phenomenon. The sociological problem of generations therefore begins at that point where the sociological
relevance of these biological factors is discovered.
The tendency inherent in a social location
Belonging to the same class and belonging to the same generation have 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. This negative delimitation,
however, does not exhaust the matter. Inherent in a positive sense in every location is a tendency pointing
, towards certain definite modes of behaviour, feeling and thought. It may be said in general that the
experiential, intellectual, and emotional data which are available to the members of a certain society are not
uniformly 'given' to all of them; the fact is rather that each class has access to only one set of those data,
restricted to one particular 'aspect'. But where the intellectual material is uniform or at least uniformly
accessible to all, the approach to the material, the way in which it is assimilated and applied, is determined in
its direction by social factors.
Generation status, generation as actuality, generation unit
A generation in the sense of a location phenomenon falls short of encompassing the generation phenomenon
in its full actuality. The location as such only contains potentialities which may materialize, or be suppressed,
or become embedded in other social forces and manifest themselves in modified form. To share the same
generation location, i.e., to be able passively to undergo or actively to use the handicaps and privileges
inherent in a generation location, one must be born within the same historical and cultural region. Generation
as an actuality, however, involves even more than mere co-presence in such a historical and social region. A
further concrete nexus is needed to constitute generation as an actuality. This additional nexus may be
described as participation in the common destiny of this historical and social unit. Membership in the same
historical community is the widest criterion of community of generation location. We shall therefore speak of
a generation as an actuality only where a concrete bond is created between members of a generation by their
being exposed to the social and intellectual symptoms of a process of dynamic de-stabilization. They share the
same generation location without being members of the same generation as an actuality. Romantic-
conservative youth, and liberal-rationalist group, belong to the same actual generation but form separate
'generation units' within it. The generation unit represents a much more concrete bond than the actual
generation as such.
The origin of generation units
The first thing that strikes one on considering any generation unit is the great similarity in the data making up
the consciousness of its members. The data as such, however, are not the primary factor producing a group –
this function belongs to a far greater extent to those formative forces which shape the data and give them
character and direction. The profound emotional significance of a slogan, of an expressive gesture, or of a
work of art lies in the fact that we not merely absorb them as objective data, but also as vehicles of formative
tendencies and fundamental integrative attitudes, thus identifying ourselves with a set of collective
strivings. Fundamental integrative attitudes and formative principles are all-important also in the handing
down of every tradition, firstly because they alone can bind groups together, secondly because they alone can
become the basis of continuing practice. They are the primary socializing forces in the history of society, and
it is necessary to live them fully to participate in collective life. Modern psychology provides more and more
conclusive evidence in favour of the Gestalt theory of human perception: even in our most elementary
perceptions of objects, we do not proceed towards a global impression by the gradual summation of several
elementary sense data, but we start off with a global impression of the object. There may be a few reasons
why the functioning of human consciousness should be based on the Gestalt principle, but a likely factor is the
relatively limited capacity of the human consciousness when confronted with the infinity of elementary data
which can be dealt with only by means of the simplifying and summarizing gestalt approach. The way in
which seeing in terms of Gestalt modifies the datum as such always corresponds to the meaning which the
object in question has for the social groups as a whole. We always see things already formed in a special way;
we think of concepts defined in terms of a specific context. Form and context depend on the group to which
we belong. The social importance of these formative and interpretive principles is that they form a link
between spatially separated individuals who may never come into personal contact at all. Whereas mere
common 'location' in a generation is of only potential significance, a generation as an actuality is constituted
when similarly, 'located' contemporaries participate in a common destiny and in the ideas and concepts which
are in some way bound up with its unfolding. Within any generation there can exist several differentiated,
antagonistic generation-units. Together they constitute an ‘actual’ generation. The generation-unit is not a
concrete group. Individuals outside the narrow group but nevertheless similarly located find in them the
satisfying expression of their location in the prevailing historical configuration. It occurs very frequently that
the nucleus of attitudes particular to a new generation is first evolved and practised by older people who are
isolated in their own generation (forerunners), just as it is often the case that the forerunners in the
development of a particular class ideology belong to a quite alien class. Not every generation location creates
