How Long Is a Generation?

Author(s): Bennett M. Berger

Source: The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Mar., 1960), pp. 10-23
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 HOW LONG IS A GENERATION?

Bennett M. Berger

ALL OF THE RECENT TALK in the United States about the

;\ 'beat generation' and its meaning for our 'age' may well prove
w Xto have been worthwhile after all if it provokes, among British
and American sociologists, serious interest in the study of the problem
of generations, a problem which, from Comte down to Mannheim and
Ortega y Gasset, has consistently interested serious conanental thinkers. 2
For Mannheim and most other European students of the sllbject, the
sociological importance of generations lies in the assumption that they
are the agents or 'carriers' of major cultllral changes; changes in the
'spirit of the age' or the formulation of a new teitgeist are in large part
the work (in Ortega's fateful view, the 'mission') of rising generations.3
While Britsh and American sociologists have in general neglected the
problem of generations so conceived, survey researchers frequently use
age-groups as one of the basic variables in terms of which they interpret
their data. This essay is an attempt to analyse the peculiar place the
generation concept has come to occupy in the vocabulary of American
cllltllral discourse, and by so doing, to render the concept more useful
for the pllrposes of empirical sociological analysis.
Webster, following Herodotus, defines a generaiion as the period of
time it takes for father to be succeeded by son, 'usually taken to be
about thirty-three years', and Mannheim says that most students of the
problem of generations agree that a generation 'lasts' about thirty
years.4 Presllmably, then, if one begins at some arbitrary point, one
would expect there to be roughly three 'ages' in a century-but only if
a change in the spirit of the age follows the rising of each new genera-
tion.5 Clearly, however, this has not consistently been the case. In
England it is commonly held that the last 'age' of the nineteenth century
(the one we call 'Victorian') 'lasted' for some sixty years. But regarding
the sixty years of our own century in the United States, it is now
usual to suggest that there have been at least four distinct cultural
'periods' or 'ages'. Before World War I there was the 'age' of tycoons
and moguls. The war was followed by the period known simply but
eloquently as 'the twenties', or, in its roaring version, as the 'jazz age'.
October I929 ushered in the 'proletarian decade' and the collective
cultural expersence with Marxism that American intellectuals have still
IO

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 HOW LONG IS A GENERATION?

not fully exorcized. The second world war marked the 'transition' (all
ages, of course, are 'ages of transition') to this 'age of conformity' which
is said to be characterized by a generation of 'organization men' and
'suburbanites'. And if, as some halre remarked, the recent summit con-
ferences, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the passing of Senator Mc-
Carthy and the waning of his ism symbolize yet another turning point,
then perhaps the emergence of still another 'age' is imminent. From a
'Victorian age' spanning about 60 years, we seem to have reached a
point where a change in Zeitgezst may be expected at approximately ten-
year intervals.
I say seem. Are generaisons shrinlcing? Is the character of our 'age'
so ephemeral that it is gone almost before it has had time to take shape?
Certainly the aplomb with which intellectuals play the game of naming
the age and the generation would lead one to think so. Certainly, too,
the view has been cogently argued. The apparent tendency for the
time period referred to by the term 'generation' to shrink, and the
corresponding tendency for the duration of an 'age' to contract have
been explained as the cultural consequences of the increased pace of
technological change and the repeated cataclysmic social upheavals to
which our century has been witness upheavals which create sudden
discontinuities between the age groups upon which they have had a
sharp impact and the age groups to which they are only 'history'.6
When C. S. Lewis says that Dr. Johnson is closer to Seneca than he is to
us, he is suggesting that the changes wrollght by the past two hllndred
years are more profound than the changes in the previous two thollsand.
Neumann, in a shorter historical vaew, says that 'The cavalcade of
thirty years nowadays includes more changes than three centuries
before did', and Lionel Trilling has recently called attention to the
'enormous acceleration in the rate at which the present is superannuated
as the past'. If we accept these views for the moment, it may certainly
seem sensible to expect the concept of the generation to telescope as
critical events and experiences crystallize at an accelerated pace to
create new 'generational mentalities' which are subsequently mani-
fested as 'the spirit of the age'.7
But even putting aside the circular logic that usllally lies behind this
lQind of formulation, there is really very little evidence to suggest that
recent generations are coming to maturity in qliicker succession than in
previous centuries. At the same time, however, one cannot avoid being
struck by the rapidity with which intellectual 'movements' are given
generational identities; intellectuals seem to crouch ready and waiting
to spring upon each political and cllltural event with interpretations
suggesting imminent and momentolls changes in the temper of the
time, and magazines both big and little, stand ready to print them.
But to imply, as I have, that this is not a generational phenomenon is
not to suggest that it has nothing to do with age-groups and conceptions
I I

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 BENNETT M. BERGER

of age; it has: the length of adolescence is increasing in the Unsted

States. And along with this 'stretching' of youth have come great
increases in the numbers of intellectuals, and in the specialization,
decentralizaiion, and bureallcratization of intellectual life.

I. YOUTH IN AMERICA

Far from generations coming to maturity more rapidly today than in

previous centuries, what little evidence there is seems to suggest the
opposite. The age at which one 'enters' adolescence appears in general
to be getting lower, whereas the age at which one 'becomes' a 'mature'
adult appears in general to be getting higher; the period of adolescence
is thus expanded. Children dance, drink, date, go steady, become
sexually aware and variously delinquent earlier today than thirty years
ago.8 At the other extreme, the increasing edllcational requirements for
occupational mobility upward lengthen the years spent in school, and
to that extent postpone the assumption of full adult responsibilities by
students. And even when stlldents marry early and take on some
responsibilities, there is a sense in which a student, no matter what his
age, is not quite completely an adult. Mannheim calls attention to the
'youthful' funciions of student life when he remarks that evidence shows
that late exposure of matllre persons to a broad, liberal education pre-
cipitates an apparent seizure by 'adolescent' traits; they pass through
stages of tumult, vehemence, exhilaration, dollbt, confusion, despair
and so on.9
Evldence from novels (that first and last resort of the sociologist in
search of data) suggests that for intellectllals especially, the resoluion
of moral and political perplexities into a mature and lasting Weltan-
schauang takes a longer time to formulate. If we compare nineteenth-
century Ellropean novels with contemporary American novels which
deal with groups of young people struggling to 'find themselves', a
modern reader is rather startled to discover inadvertently and perhaps
rather late in, say, a George Eliot or Dostoevski novel that some
marvellously mature, ariiclllate, and aware character is 20 or 2I years
old; these nineteenth-century fictional figures in Middlemarch, The Idiot,
and many others are characteristically between I8 and 22 years old.
Their counterparts in contemporary American novels are usually in
their late twenties and freqllently as 'old' as their late thiriies.
This extension of 'youthfulness' is rife in American culture. 'Yollth'
groups today usllally include members in their middle and late thirties;
the 'junior' chamber of commerce includes 3s-year-old business men,
and our 'young writers'-as Seymour Krim has shown are as often as
not middle-aged.l° An English actress, generalizing lightly about
American men recently, no doubt exaggerates but makes her point
clearly when she says
I2

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 HOW LONG IS A GENERATION?

I find it difficult to separate the men from the boys. American men always
look seven or eight years younger than they really are. When an Englishman
is 30 years old, he looks 30. And he's prettny well settled in his ways. When I
meet a young American, I sort of pat him on the hand tinking he's a
college lad. Then I find he's married and has four children.

What all this suggests is that Americans are members of the 'yollnger
generation' from the time they begin to stay out at night to the time
they begin to grow bald and arthritic, and find the stairs steeper, and
the co-eds younger looking. The ease with which high school sub-
bohemians mix with their 3s-year-old mentors in the same cool coffee
shop milieu symbolizes the extended dllraiion of 'youth' in Amersca-
a period prone to cultural pronouncements, movements, 'statements',
rebellious olltbursts, revolutionary flurries, and so on. In a recent public
debate, Philip Selznick argued the view that the radical behaviour of
students is largely a function of their temporary alienation-temporary
because it is their youth and immaturity which alienate them from
participation in the major adult institutions, and not something perma-
nent in their psychological make-up. What I am suggesting is that the
extension of cultural definitions of 'youth' to a period covering at lease
20 years and sometimes longer, extends the period in which 'youthful'
(i.e. 'irresponsible') behaviour is posiiively sanctioned. Understanding
this may help explain the apparent proliferation of 'new' teitgeist and
'new' generation 'movements', which, if not the creaiions of precisely
'young' men, are the creations of yollthful men with a longer time to be
young. It may also, for example, help explain the notorious failure of
perpetually 'promising' American novellsts to 'fulfil their promise'
simply because acceptable models of intellectual 'matursty' become
difficult to find: as the chronological age associated with 'maturity' goes
up it becomes only too easy to identify maturity with loss of vigour,
idealism, and principle in short, with 'compromise'. 11 And besides, the
generation that students of culture trends are interested in is usually the
'younger' generation-- which may encourage intellectuals and other
creative people to identify themselves with the 'rising' group.
It may, of course, be that the extension of 'youth' is related on
the one hand to the demographic fact of increased life expectancy in
industrialized societies, and on the other hand to the political fact that
bureaucratization and party control of democratic processes in in-
dustrialized parliamentary societies subject young men to long periods
of training, that is, waiting, for positions of power and responsibility.
Over a hundred years ago, Comte believed that increases in life span
would slow down the rate of social change becallse the period of
dominance of any single generation would increase with increasing
length of life; as the generation grew older its increased conservaiism
would, according to Comte, dampen the forces making for change
inherent in the 'rising' generaiion. What Comte failed to foresee was
I3

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 BENNETT M. BERGER

that the gerontocracies of western Europe and the United States (how
ma2zy more fatal attacks of the degenerative diseases can our political
elite sllstain?) would, apparently, not only result in the extension of the
definition of youth, but intensify the 'youthfulness' and the resentments
of the already balding 'younger' generation.

2. INTELLECTUALS: NUMBERS, DECENTRALIZATION,

SPECIALIZATION

Clearly, if the concept of the generation, which is a temporal abstrac-

tion, is to have any utility for the empirical analysis of cultural pheno-
mena, it must be kept analytically distinct from structural or locational
(income, occupation, religion, ethnic status, etc.) concepts which also
affect 'perspective' or 'point of view'.l2 Thus, although the extension of
the period of time in which youthfulness is culturally defined as appro-
priate helps explain the apparent proliferation of divergent geitgeist,
there are other social processes bearing upon the strllcture of intellectual
life which also help foster this heterogeneity.
The rapidly increasing numbers, both absolute and proportionate, of
intellectuals in the United States comes to mind first. S. M. Lipset has
recently called attention to this fact in an attempt to explain the
relative isolation of Amencan intellectuals (-a-vis Europeans and
others) from the sources of power.la But the fact is relevant to the point
under discussion here; for if it is too much to expect American econo-
mists to be able to formulate a joint statement of economic policy, it
would be even more arrogant to expect Amerscan intellectuals, who
must number in the hundreds of thousands, to be able to formulate a
'spirit' common enough for all or even most to subscribe to. And it is
surely more difficlllt for Americans to do this than English or French or
German-or Australian intellectuals, whose numbers are so much
fewer. And even in countries with relatively few intellectuals, the prob-
lem is by no means a simple one. The multiparty political system of the
continent represents, perhaps, only the crudest dimension of experience
which may fragment a single generation, and Mannheim's laboured
discussion of 'generation units' is testimony to the difficulty in which
analysts of generations find themselves the moment they attempt to
comprehend not only the 'unit;y' of a generation but its diversity also:
The 'age' of the tycoons and moguls was also the 'age' of the muck-
rakers; the 'roaring twenties' was also the 'age' of Harding, Coolidge,
Babbit and the 'Booboisie'.
In addition to the increase in the numbers of intellectuals, the cultural
life of the Uxtited States is much more centralized than that of most
European nations. French culture means Parisian culture; the revolt of
England's 'Angry Young Men' has been a revolt against the cultural
domination of England by the London-Cambridge-Oxford 'axis' and
I4

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 HOW LONG IS A GENERATION?

the classes it represents. New York does not come near to dominating
the cultural life of the Unlted States in the sense that London and Paris
dominate the cultural life of England and France.

While New York may be said to be the intellectual capital of the United
States, there are important groups of intellectuals scattered round the
country whose combined number is far greater than those in or adjacent
to New York. Important schools of wtiters and painters exlst in various
parts of the country . . . (and) The two leading universities in the country
. . . are located in Metropolitan Boston and San Francisco.l4

One consequence of this, as Lipset himself observes, is to limit the

extent to which American intellectuals are acquainted urith each other
even when they happen to be in the same 'field'. Not only size, then,
but the geographical dispersion of American intellectual communities,
fosters the development of simultaneous multiple 'generations' and 'ages'
based both upon the multiplicity of intellectual cliques and the influence
*ofregionalism: the 'proletarian decade' dates also the public emergence
of the Southern Agrarian movement, conservative and anti-industrial;
and, of course, organization men and 'suburbanites' coexist, indeed,
even interact with the 'beat generation'.l5
But perhaps more important than the size and decentralization
of American intellectual communities for the heterogeneous cultural
character of the 'age' and 'the generation' is the bearing of occllpation
upon chronological age. Diffierences in the meaning of age in terms of
occupation are probably most clear in athletics; a prizefighter is an old
man at 30, a baseball player at 35, but a presidential candidate is
young at 50. Factory workers begin losing their hopes for the future
(such as they are) at around 35. The 30-year-old Ph.D. student is
indeed an 'old' stlldent, but one successful year later, this 3I-year-old
professor is ayoung professor. These are only the most striking examples,
but instances collld be multiplied of the difference in average age at
which the incumbents of diffierent social and occupaiional roles are
considered 'young', 'mature', 'old', etc., that is, differences in the age-
range within which they tend to or are expected to produce their best
or most representative work. Novelists, for example, often prodllce their
best work in their twenties or early thirties. Musicians and painters on
the other hand usually 'mature' mllch later; painters, for example, are
still 'young' in their foriies. 16
What this means is not only that members of the same age-groups
may experience their most productive or representative period in
different decades, but also that what they produce may be affected by
different series of events. For these reasons it is essential, when using
the concept of the generation in a cultural sense, to specify generaiions
of what, because it is only in a demographic sense that people in the
same age-group constinlte a homogeneous unit, and because the
B I5

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 BENNETT M. BERGER

character of any cultural generation depends in part upon the relation-

ship of 'youth' to years, and upon the average length of its vital or
effective period-which differs according to occupational milieu.l7
There are, in short, literary generations, political generaiions, musical
generations, etc.; the length of each fluctuates, and the age-range
which constitutes the 'yollnger' generation in one may be considerably
older (or yollnger) than the age-range constituting the 'yollnger'
generation in another, to say nothing of the internal differentiations
which may fragment a single cultural generation however defined.
What I am suggesting, then, is that if the concept of the generation is
to be rendered useful for the sociology of cllltllre, the temporal location
of a group mllst first be kept analytically distinct from its structural
location; second, when considering them together, we should be aware
that the impact of structural (e.g. occupational) factors on the nature
of the temporal location may, under some conditions be such as to
fragment the cultllral sunity' of a generaiion beyond recognition jllSt as
under other conditions the unity of a generation may be such as to with-
stand the divisive inflllence of, say, class factors.
These tendencies toward divisiveness and heterogeneity do not, of
course, go on unopposed. The increasing numbers of intellectuals is
accompanied by their increasing organization (for example, into pro-
fessional associations), which restrains the tendencies toward hetero-
geneity. The increasing decentralization of intellectuals is accompanied
by better communications among them, which acts as a brake on the
tendency toward ideological fragmentation which geographical disper-
sion often encourages. (A remarkable feature ofJack Kerouac's novel
On the Road is its suggesiion that a network of bohemian communities
exists between San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and New York, each
ready to accept to its bosom the bohemian travellers of the Road.)
Finally, the tendency to specialization, which encollrages the ordertng of
common bodies of data into increasingly different theoretical frames of
concepts and meanings, is countered both by interdisciplinary tenden-
cies (such as those represented in universities by comparative literatllre
departments, integrated social sciences departments, and the new
hybrid physical and natural science disciplines) and by the processes of
mass culture which act to break down the divisiveness of specialization.
But to note that these countertendencies exist is not to attribute to them
equal importance; it seems to me that at the present time, for reasons
which will be made apparent below, that the divisive influences are
stronger than the integrative ones.
In any case, it must seem odd that American intellectuals should be
so preoccupied with the naming and Exing of 'generations' and 'ages' in
a culture which is apparently so ill suited to being characterized in this
way. Mannheim gives us the beginning of an explanation when he
WIWiteS 18

I6

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 HOW LONG IS A GENERATION?

. . . the mentality of a period does not pervade the whole society at a

given time. The mentality which is commonly attributed to an epoch has
its proper seat in one (homogeneous of heterogeneous) social group which
acquires special significance at a particular time, and is able to put its
intellectual stamp on all other groups....

I call it only a beginning because Mannheim goes on to explain geitgeist

essentially as a function of the antagonisms between generations, and
writes off the frequently polar responses of what he calls 'units' of the
same generation as an example of the dialectical principle which is
synthesized by a common 'generational mentality'.I Indeed, Mann-
heim ignores the implications of his own specific insight when he raises
(in a footnote) the question of 'why have generations become so con-
scious of their unity today?'-and then drops it. One is tempted to be ill-
mannered enough to answer the rhetorical question: for the obvious
propensity of intellectual groups to identify themselves as 'generations'
(something that has grown even more pronounced since Mannheim
noted it in the twenties) suggests that other modes of identification
may have become less viable or, at the very least, less fashionable.
Structural identifications such as those of class, party, ideology, race,
etc., belong, in industrial societies, to a milieu of confict in which the
function of the identification is to foster the solidarity of the group so
identified against other classes, parties, ideologies, etc. Generational
identifications, on the other hand, although usually incapable of
eliminating the structural sources of conflict, belong to a milieu of
intregration, and foster the structuring of conflict in terms of age-groups
rather than in terms of other kinds of interest.20 Such a mode of identi-
fication, by implying that age is a more significant source of disagree-
ments among men than party or ideology, suggests that in due course
these disagreements may disappear; that, for example, the 'radicalism'
of youth is more youthful than ideological, and that as the age-basis of
commitment wanes, so will the commitment itself. This view permits one
the luxury of managing one's opposition rather than combating it; political
problems become administrative ones, conflicts over leadership become
problems of succession; victory and defeat become questions of who
co-opts and who is c-opted.
But that generational identifications are apt to be spurious (Harold
Rosenberg states tartly that 'belonging to a generation is one of the
lowest forms of solidarity', op. cit., p. 244) in a complex industrialized
society is indicated not only by the inherent structural heterogeneities of
any age-groups in such a society (which I have discussed above), but by
the interesting fact that the very characterzzation of 'the age' and 'the
generation' has itself become an object of conflict. The 'spirit of the age'
is no longer merely something that 'emerges' naturally (ifindeed it ever
did) out of the work of a generation's intellectual elite (as Ortega would
have it) or even something that is formulated retrospectively by
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 BENNETT M. BERGER

historians of later generations; the character of the contemporary

'generation' and the 'spirit' presumalJly created by it have become
ideological questionsfor its own members. The problem of assessing the
'spirit of the age' becomes not only a question of analysing the works of
its creators; a struggle enslles between different groups of intellectllals
of the same generation (each consciolls of itself not as a structllrally
defined group, bllt as a temporally located 'generation') for the right
deliberately to dehne, indeed to name the spirit of the age. For 'naming'
the age is not only a diagnostic function, it is an ideological one too; and
to belong to a beat generation in an age of organization men is, like
being a classicist in a romantic age, or an analyst of geitgeist in an age of
logical empirscism, to be fated to live in a historical limbo, that is, to
have been born too late (or too early) for 'one's time'.
Clearly, age-groups are important in the analysis of cultural pheno-
mena, but their full significance is likely to remain elusive unless
supplemented by the structural variables which not only give a cultural
meaning to age but which locate one in a 'school of thought', glve one a
distinct 'perspective', and a place urithin an intellectual tradition which
began neither in a North Beach bistro in San Francisco nor in a New
York conference room high above Madison Avenlle, nor, for that
matter in a panelled salon in Bloomsbury. Viewing the matter this way,
one is enabled conceptually to handle multiple continuities of thought
between generations, and at the same time to distinguish between
structurally defined groups of the contemporary generation who carry
on the continuing struggle for the right to 'represent' the age.2l
It shollld be obvious, however, that all formulations of the nature of
'the age' and 'the generation' are essentially mythic in character; no
'age' is wholly romantic, classic, anxious, or conformist, and no 'genera-
tion' is wholly lost, found, beat and certainly not silent. Nevertheless,
cultural struggles go on as iSpossession of the myth of the age were at
stake; and in a sense it is, for those who win the struggle for the right to
be considered 'representative' of their age, in Weber's striking phrase,
'usurp status',22 and their contributions are preserved in the large print
of intellectual history, while those who lose are relegated to the always
significantly smaller print offootnotes. Yielding, however, to the almost
irresistible temptation to find something new and unprecedented in the
contemporary situation, Harold Rosenberg has observed that 'what is
remarkable about the manufacture of myths in the twentieth century is
that it takes place under the noses of living witnesses of the actual events
and, in fact, cannot dispense with their collaboration.23 Rosenberg's
observation summarizes the apparent belief of intellectuals that their
historical sophistication is great enough to permit them to anticipate the
historian's function; understanding that the characterization of the past
is in large part a function of contemporary documents, intellectuals are
tempted to treat the present as history, for by doing so they weight the
I8

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 HOW LONG IS A GENERATION?

future's characterization of the present. It is almost as if a contest were

being waged to see which of the contending intellectual groups could
leave the largest and most convincing body of contemporary documents
for the historian of the filture to assess. Sometimes they don't even
wait:

. . . to the young people educated in the late forties and early fifties it
seemed that a war was being fought in American culture between two styles
of asserting one's seriousness as an intellectual: the old style of 'alienation' . . .
and . . . the new style of 'maturity.' 24

Regardless of the merits of the substantive assertion, I would call

attention to the historical mood of this writer's prose; he is writing the
history of his generation no more than a few years after they've re-
ceived their bachelors' degrees. This is anticipatory socialization or
other directedness of a pecllliarly ghostly sort; oriented toward history,
intellectuals collapse the historical process in their attempts to find their
place in it; and by attempting to write the history of their time before it
is actllally made, intellectuals create the myth of their time. Attempts
like these to structure one's experience so as to make it public, and thus
historical, have probably always been with us bllt David Riesman
suggests that

they have been speeded up in recent years by the enormous industry of the
mass media which must constantly find new ideas to purvey, and which have
short circuited the traditional filtering down of ideas from academic and
intellectual centres. We can follow an interpretation of the suburbs from an
article in The Arnerican jtournal of Sociology to an article in Harper's to a best
selling book to an article in Life or a TV drama all in the matter of a
couple of years much in the way in which a . . . 'beat generation' . . . (is)
imitated almost before (it) exists. 25

Surely, this is the cultllral dimension of what Weber meant by

'rationalization'; the increasing nllmbers, decentralization, and speciali-
zation of intellectuals, the availability of print, the respectability of
almost any scheme of values (as long as tlley are logically articulated),
and our predilection to think that by naming something we understand
it, all contribute to the helter-skelter rush with which we hasten to
confer the status of 'trend', 'movement', 'spirit', etc., on a series o
events which, with some historical distance, we ght recognize as a
minor cllltural quiver. This is not intended as a defence of Olympian
detachment or as a recommendation that intellectuals abdicate their
responsibility to comment on and interpret the direction of contem-
porary culture. We always see the present and immediate past more
critically and in more complex detail than we see more distant times,
and many of the results of the impulse to record and identify the temper
of one's time while it is happening or to make coherent sense of con-
temporary events perhaps before any coherence or pattern has appeared,
I9

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 BENNETT M. BERGER

may be invaluable as ethnography to futllre historians and social

scientists.26 At the same timeX they may be seriously misleading or
puzzling to future researchers who find a five-year period labelled an
'age of conformity' (at precisely the time that a 'beat generation' is
flourishing undiscovered by the mass media) or who read of three
different 'post-war' generations within a period of fifteen years.
This discussion of the relationship of the concept of the generation to
the concept of geitgetst can be extended to the somewhat firmer scien-
tific ground upon which survey research stands. If Lipset et al. are
correct in saying 'there has been no attempt to apply systematically the
concept of generation to modern survey research techniques',27 then
survey research is probably the poorer for it. Shed of its philosophic
overtones, the German tradition of generaiion-analysis wollld simply
argue that culturally defined generations may be as important an
explanatory variable as class, incomen religion, ethnic status, or any
other structllral variable. This is a simple and reasonable enough
assertion, and Lipset et al. have cited a few studies of political behaviour
in which the generation idea illuminated the data quite markedly.
More recently, William Evann in outlining a procedure for studying
long-term opinion change, has emphasized the importance of analysing
survey data in terms of generation cohorts. 28 Both Evan and Lipset et al.,
however, suggest that ageing, as such, may have less effect upon opinions
and attitudes than the impact of certain historical situations. They say,
for example: 29

If, in fact, it is the case that generations tend to vote left or right depending
on which group was in the ascendency during their coming of age, then it
may be necessary to reconsider the popularly held idea that conservatism is
associated with increasing age . . . If a society should move from prolonged
instability to stability, it may well be that older people would retain the
leftist ideas of their youth, while the younger generation would adopt
conservative policies.

Certainly, this observation is readily applicable to the many university

teachers (come of age in the thirties) who may be frequently heard
remarking in a melancholy vein on the cautiousness, conservatism, and
generally restricted horizons of their students. But at the same time, if
what I have previously suggested makes sense, one would expect the
definition of 'coming of age' to vary depending upon the structural
factors affecting conceptions of 'youth' and 'maturity'. The possibility
that Lipset et al. envision does not make a mere stereotype out of the
apparent association of conservatism wlth ageing; it suggests only that
this is one tendency among others, and Hyman has carefully analysed
some of them; it seems clear enough that differences in 'mentalities' due
to the diffiering historical circllmstances under which they were formed
may frequently persist over time strongly enough to remain only
20

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 HOW LONG IS A GENERATION?

slightly affiected by the conservative tendencies of ageing. Evan, this I2

time with data (however scanty), suggests, in fact, that the historical
situation has a greater effect upon opinion change than ageing does.
What he and other stlldents of the problem do not take into accollnt,
however, is relative (or occupational) age; that is, that the forty year old
painter may be responding to historical circumstances as a yollng man,
whereas the forty-year-old editor of a mass-circulation magazine may
respond to the same circumstances as a member of the 'older generation'.
One may not be as old as one feels, but one can be as young as the age-
norms of one's status and reference groups permit one to be. To be sure,
this factor may considerably complicate the practicability of applying
the generation variable, but not, it seems to me, to such an extent as to
preclude its usefulness especially where occupation and education are
already known.
But the idea of the generation can be efl^ectively used not only in
conventional survey work; there seems to be good reason for survey
methods to be used to cast light on the larger cultural problems with
which the Germans concerned themselves. If survey methods can
inquire into political attitudes, sexual behaviour, child rearing practices,
and such elusive topics as apprehensiveness among professors, then
those methods may be 1lsed to elicit the attitudes of intellectuals toward
questions of style and taste, optimism and pessimism, 'responsibility'
and alienation, atmosphere and temper-in short, toward components
of the Zeitgezst. A survey can be no better than the subtlety of the
relationships it hypothesizes and the ingenuity of the questions it asks to
measure them. Such work will probably show, in empirical terms, that
the concept of the generation is a structural variable of major and
statistically identifiable significance and not merely a sentimental pro-
jection of ageing retrospective philosophers.

NOTES

1 I would like to thank Reinhard Ryder, 'The Gohort as a concept in the

Bendix, Leonard Cain, Erving GofEman, Theory of Social Change', delivered at
Robert Merton, and David Riesman for the I 959 meetings of the American Socio-
critical readings of an earlier draft of logical Society in Chicago.
this article. 8 Generations, according to Ortega,
' That this interest may in fact be create changes in 'vital sensibility' he
developing is indicated by three recent sees generations as a 'compromise' be-
treatments of the problem which have tween Marxist and Heroic theories of
just come to may attention. See Anselm historical change. See ch. I of ET7ic Modern
Strauss' recent discussion in Mirrors and Senu (London: C. \V. Daniel, I93I).
Masks (Glencoe: The Free Press, I959), ' See Karl Mannheim, 'The Problem
pp. I32-4I; see also Herbert Hyman's of Generations', in his Essays on the
comprehensive and disciplined analysis Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Oxford,
of data on generations in his recent I 952), p. 278. Mannheim says that some
Political Socialization (Glencoe: The Free Europeans have taken a generation to
Press, I959), ch. VI, especially pp. I2g mean a period of about fiftten years.
I 32; see also the paper by Norman Among these is Ortega. See his overly

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22 BENNETT M. BERGER

dogmatic statement in Man and Cnszs "Young Writers" ', CommentaCy (October,
(New York: \v. W. Norton, I958), I 952) .

ch. 4. tt The psychological crisis experienced

5 To say elren this, of course, assumes by many American women who are
that there is some utility in abstracting passing into middle age may be the
generational age-groups for analysis result of the lack of an ideal model of
that there is something more than an female middle-agedness. David Riesman
infinite succession of persons being born has suggested to me that middle-aged
and dying at every moment. men (or at any rate, rich, middle-aged
6 The clearest expression of this view men) are enabled to be vicariously
is in Sigmund Neumann, 'The Conflict young by surrounding themselves with
of Generations in Contemporary Europe' young women-as one can see in the ads
Vital Speeches (August I, I 939), which forCadillacs and other elegant products
begins, 'Modern European politics from although this can have, too, the un-
Versailles to Munich can be largely anticipated consequence of increasing
explained in terms of a conflict of genera- the poignance of ageing.
tions'. Neumann conjures up an image 12 It goes without saying of course,
of Hitler and Chamberlain at Munich: that the current tendency to identify 'my
Hitler, the young warrior of World War generation . . . ' with 'my school of
I (age 48) and Chamberlain, the 'late thought . . .' obscures this distinction.
Victorian gentleman' (age 68). 13 '. . . in I929 all ten professors of
7 Most students of the generation (in economics in Australia met and told the
the sense of Kultur) agFee that the source government they believed it would be
of the 'unity' of its outlook is its common disastrous for the country to go off the
exposure to decisive politically and gold standard. The Labour government
culturally relevant experiences in the of the day was not happy about this but
formative stages of its members' develop- felt it should not move against the
ment usually conceived of as late 'experts'. There are far too many such
adolescence. See, for example, Rudolph experts in America for them to have
Heberle's chapter on political genera- such corporate "influence" '. S. M.
tions in Social Movements (New York: Lipset, 'American Intellectuals: Their
Appleton, Gentury, Crofts, I 95 I ) . Politics and Status', Daedalus, (Surnmer,
8 Increases in juvenile delinquency in I 959), p 47°-
recent years have come more notably in 14 Lipset, op. cit., pp. 470-I
the II-I4 year old group than in the 15 See Eugene Burdick's discussion of
I 5-2 I group. On the developing group- 'week-end bohemians' in 'Innocent
consciousness of teen-agers, see Dwight Nihilists Adrift in Squaresville', The
McDonald's interesting profile of youth Reporter (April 3, I 958) . See also, 'Beat-
pollster Eugene Gilbert, Ehe J%ew Yorker niks in Business', M4demoiselle (March,
(November 22 and 29, I958). I 959) .

9 See 'The Problem of the Intelli- 16 In a recent book called roung

gentsia', Essays on the Sociology of Culture Painters of Promise (London and New
(New York: Oxford, I956), p. I64. York: the Studio Publications, I957), of
Certainly there is some evidence to the the I I 8 'young' artists whose birth dates
contrary-especially regarding young are listed, 45 are 35 years of age or older,
people who are not students. Early I8 are over 40, 4 are over 50, including
marriage certainly dampens the irrespon- one young artist bom in I894.
sibility and adventurousness of young 17 With some sarcasm, Harold Rosen-
people, and the whole complex of berg observes, '. . . one may, especially
'organization men' with their ideology today, call any age-group he chooses a
of 'responsibility' suggests that maturity' "generation" among ensigns or ballet
may come early to some. The cultural dancers a generation is replaced every
problem posed by this heterogeneity is three or four years.' Harold Rosenberg,
discussed below, but it seems to me that Ihe Tradition of the New (New York:
the extension of youth is most visible Horizon Press, I 959), p. 247.
among those intellectuals engaged in 18 Mannheim, 'The Problem of
the creation and discussion of culture, Generations', op. cit., p. 3I3.
that is, the formulation of the 'spirit of 19 In this respect, Mannheim comes
the age'. close to Ortega, who believes that no
10 Seymour Krim, 'Our Middle-Aged difference between members of the same

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 HOW LONG IS A GENERATION? 23

generation is as profound as tbe difference warning that the man who marries the
between persons of different generations. spirit of his own age is likely to be a
'° Neumann argues that the revolt of widower in the next. One need go no
the Nazi elite was a revolt by young men further for an example of Inge's prophecy
against the pre-World War I generation than the present experience of those who
of German leaders, and cites figures to captured 'the myth of the thirties'.
show that the leaders of political and 23 Rosenberg, op cit., p. 22I.
economic life in Wiemar Gerrnany were, 24 Quoted from Norman Podhoretz by
in fact, a gerontocracy. Reinhard Bendix Rosenberg, op. cit., p. 248.
and others have argued that the early 25 David Riesman, in an unpublished
electoral successes of the Nazis was due manuscript. Riesman also points to the
in part to their winning the votes of tendency for intellectuals to create myths
young people. of themselves by writing autobiographies
21 It is really to no one's benefit that while still relatively quite young. Pre-
the concept of the 'generation' and the sumably, Stephen Spender, Mary
related concept of 'spirit of the age' refer McCarthy, Phillip O'Connor and a
primarily to activity in the arts. The number of others still have a good part
phenomena these concepts attempt to deal of their lives ahead of them. Riesman
with occur in every field of intellectual says, 'It is as if the principle of buying
endeavour although probably with de- on credit and living now rather than
creasing sharpness as one moves from the later was extended into all spheres of
humanities through the social sciences to intellectual life.'
the natural sciences, the physical sciences 26 Paul Lazarsfeld has coented on
and mathematics. Allen Ginsberg and the responsibility of today's public
Jack Kerouac on the one hand, and opinion pollsters to the future's historians.
Truman Capote, and William Styron 'The obligations of the I950 Pollster to
on the other, belong to the same genera- the I 984 Historian', Public Opinion
tion but to different intellectual and Quarterly (Winter, I 950-I ).
esthetic traditions. One could cite 27 S. M. Lipset, et al., 'The Psychology
* . . * * .

slml ar examp es ln muslc, pamtlng- of Voting', in G. Lindsey, Handbook of

and sociology too. The work of C. Wright Social Psychology (Cambridge: Addison-
Mills is clearly an attempt to influence Wesley Press, I954), vol. II, p. I I48.
what the 'character' of sociology shall be Hyman's work (op. cit.) is certainly a
like in the twentieth century; but so is major effort in this direction.
the work of David Riesman and Paul 28 William Evan, 'Cohort Analysis of
Lazarsfeld-and Talcott Parsons. Survey Data', Ptlblic Opinion Quarterly,
22 That this usurpation may be a pre- Spring, I959, p. 68.
carious one is suggested by Dean Inge's 29 Lipset et al., op. cit., p. I I48.

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