Karl Mannheim

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Lore & Background

Karl Mannheim was a seminal figure in the study of generations. He elaborated a theory of generations in his 1923 essay *The Problem of Generations*. He suggested that there had been a division into two primary schools of study of generations until that time. Firstly, positivists such as Comte measured social change in designated life spans. Mannheim argued that this reduced history to "a chronological table". The other school, the "romantic-historical" was represented by Dilthey and Martin Heidegger. This school focused on the individual qualitative experience at the expense of social context. Mannheim emphasised that the rapidity of social change in youth was crucial to the formation of generations, and that not every generation would come to see itself as distinct. In periods of rapid social change a generation would be much more likely to develop a cohesive character. He also believed that a number of distinct sub-generations could exist. According to Gilleard and Higgs, Mannheim identified three commonalities that a generation shares: shared temporal location (generational site or birth cohort), shared historical location (generation as actuality or exposure to a common era), and shared sociocultural location (generational consciousness or entelechy). Mannheim elaborated on the meaning of a generation's "location" (Lagerung), understood in a historical, economic and sociocultural sense. In 1928 he wrote: "The fact that people are born at the same time, or that their youth, adulthood, and old age coincide, does not in itself involve similarity of location; what does create a similar location is that they are in a position to experience the same events and data, etc., and especially that these experiences impinge upon a similarly 'stratified' consciousness. It is not difficult to see why mere chronological contemporaneity cannot of itself produce a common generation location. No one, for example, would assert that there was community of location between the young people of China and Germany about 1800. Only where contemporaries definitely are in a position to participate as an integrated group in certain common experiences can we rightly speak of community of location of a generation." From Mannheim's perspective, then, the chronological boundaries often attributed to different generations ("Generation X", "Millennials" etc.) seem to have little global validity since these boundaries are mostly based on shared Western, especially American, historical and sociocultural 'locations'.

Reader's Guide

Mannheim's significance lies in his founding role in the study of generations. His 1923 essay *The Problem of Generations* is the key text. He identified two prior schools: positivists (like Comte) who measured social change in designated life spans, which Mannheim said reduced history to "a chronological table"; and the "romantic-historical" school (Dilthey and Heidegger) focusing on individual qualitative experience at the expense of social context. Mannheim emphasised that the rapidity of social change in youth was crucial to the formation of generations, and that not every generation would come to see itself as distinct. In periods of rapid social change a generation would be much more likely to develop a cohesive character. He also believed that a number of distinct sub-generations could exist. According to Gilleard and Higgs, Mannheim identified three commonalities that a generation shares: shared temporal location (generational site or birth cohort), shared historical location (generation as actuality or exposure to a common era), and shared sociocultural location (generational consciousness or entelechy). In 1928 he wrote that mere chronological contemporaneity cannot produce a common generation location, giving the example that no one would assert community of location between the young people of China and Germany about 1800. Only where contemporaries participate as an integrated group in certain common experiences can we rightly speak of community of location of a generation. From Mannheim's perspective, the chronological boundaries often attributed to different generations ("Generation X", "Millennials" etc.) have little global validity since these boundaries are mostly based on shared Western, especially American, historical and sociocultural 'locations'.

Did You Know?

• Mannheim elaborated his theory of generations in his 1923 essay *The Problem of Generations*.
• He argued that positivists like Comte reduced history to 'a chronological table'.
• Mannheim believed that in periods of rapid social change a generation would be much more likely to develop a cohesive character.
• He identified three commonalities a generation shares: shared temporal location, shared historical location, and shared sociocultural location.
• Mannheim wrote in 1928 that no one would assert community of location between the young people of China and Germany about 1800.