June 2015 – Holley Sociology

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s recent statement that he won’t perform in colleges any more, for this sociologist, highlights how important decades and time are in modern society. When do generations come to an end, and where are the boundaries that separate them? What stops an older generation and starts a new one? When a famous Boomer generation entertainer is suddenly rejected by Millennials, surely light is being shed on these questions.

What is the cause of this rupture? Its protagonist blames the younger generation’s changed values and outlook. “They’re so PC,” he says. What Seinfeld means by political correctness is less important than the fact that he identifies the younger generation as having a changed view of the world. Here we find two generations on the cusp of change, with the older one discovering that the younger does not appreciate it. For Jerry Seinfeld, the young are incomprehensible for not understanding the satirical use of racism and sexism which was the common currency of Boomers. In return, Millennials think his attempts at humor just aren’t funny. Two generations have parted ways. The “Seinfeld Show,” a comedy adored by the generation of the late eighties and early nineties has, for Millennials in the mid twenty-teens, descended into cultural insensitivity and irrelevance.

Seinfeld’s honest and heartfelt frustration about this alteration is nowhere more evident than in the fact that his own fourteen-year-old daughter rejects him. “That’s racist. That’s sexist. That’s prejudice,” she hurls at her 61-year-old father. Clearly they no longer share the same cultural terrain. He expostulates “They just don’t know what they’re talking about.” For her part, his daughter holds her ground; she isn’t budging.

Whether it’s a college audience or your own children, eventually a cultural gap opens up that separates whole generations. How long is a generation given to be itself and live on top of the wave? Recent research seems to show that cultural generations last about eighteen years (see my blog post “Generations: A Mystery to Social Science”). But until we get sociological research with representative samples of generations, we must catch at what straws of information we can. The separation of generations that sincerely baffles a famous person like Jerry Seinfeld shows us the sociological process going on here.

Source: Cavan Sieczkowski The Huffington Post 8th June 2015

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/08/jerry-seinfeld-college-politically-correct-racism-sexism_n_7534978.html

It is now widely understood that generations exist. Their patterns of change are regularly reported by the Pew Research Center, and their consumer preferences are sought by marketers. People recognize that generations have contrasting styles of life and ways of doing things.

But the existence of generations poses multiple problems for social science, most basically why generations even exist at all. Let’s look at the theoretical problem here. People’s lives are separated into successive phases during which they do different activities; modern people don’t just grow up and repeat the same thing all their lives. In different generations these phases remain pretty similar. Young people, for example, pursue the same general activities that they have done in every generation.

But generations become really important because at specific moments they alter these patterns in significant ways. For example, Pew Research found that young people have increasingly delayed their marriages or don’t marry at all. The chart below shows that each generation is clearly identifiable by name, as is the year when most of its generation is aged 18 to 32 years old – the peak point of its activities.

The problem here is how all generations go through the same phases of life but handle them in contrasting styles. There are two puzzles then. First, why do generations accept the same sequence of life phases in the first place? Why are activities segregated and why should they be pursued in a strict order? And second, what makes generations different from each other? Why is each one distinct from the previous? Is it possible that generations construct their own lives, and if so, by what means do they become the authors of their own collective style?

Social science should be able to answer big questions like these. Can it simply be an accident that modern society gives birth to these different generations? Unfortunately for us, social science is completely stumped; generations remain a huge unsolved mystery. It’s not politics or institutions that create them; no formal organizations or policies can be found that design contrasting generations. And it’s not the economy that appears to be creating them either. Economic inequalities exist within every generation, but these don’t stop people from sharing much of the same outlook, priorities, aesthetics and preferences as their peers.

The discipline that is best positioned to answer these questions is sociology. Generations are voluntary, based on attraction not coercion, and become effective by using temporary informal associations. These are all sociological qualities. But past sociology suffers from obstacles to recognizing generations; specifically, it holds onto concepts which actively deny that generations exist.

For example, ‘socialization’ theory states that parents create children who are photocopies of themselves. But to be part of their own distinct generation, children cannot be reproductions just like their parents. The existence of generations tells us, logically, that parents regularly fail to socialize their children. Different generations keep on appearing. Have parents failed?

An alternative sociology suggests itself. Perhaps social science could see generations, not as a problem, but as something that carries out a purpose or function for society. Maybe our society loves its generations and supports those parents who peddle back on the “socialization” and let generations come into being.

This possibility has fascinating implications. Perhaps generations can reshape society. This suggests that we live in a world full of exciting creative possibilities. A new and improved sociology that understands generations may be the first social science to shed light on this remarkable feature of modern society.

Month: June 2015

Boomers Versus Millennials: Are There Generational Cultures?