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Interconnections over Time

Critique of the Concept of Generation

Trinity College, Cambridge, UK

The term ‘generation’ in everyday language is unsuitable for the analysis of temporal connections from a sociological perspective. Understanding these generational linkages, their strength, content and quality, their variability by class, sex, locality, culture, stages in the life course, education, material position and liability to modification by political action, is a fundamental requirement for the analysis of individual behaviour, and is a point of departure, some would say the point of departure, in understanding all social behaviour. Recognition of the centrality of generation to social structure was a basic component of John Locke’s theory of liberal rights and property and of Robert Filmer’s theory of patriarchy and authority. Generation as a tool of analysis should therefore be of intellectual concern to classical sociological theory.

Key Words: generation • kinship • obligation • procreation • time

Journal of Classical Sociology, Vol. 5, No. 2, 205-213 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1468795X05053492


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