Sheriff Nil, gr.

What is generational identity and why have sociologists paid attention to these? 12 Marks

Generational identity is formed within a group of people of certain time of birth. This concept is
a base of self-categorizations of people into groups. However, the studies on this concept
started only recently and is still the subject of many studies. Thus the question of why
sociologists were attracted to this topic arises. But before answering that question, it is also
necessary to specify what generational identity is exactly. This essay will also show why the
question is still being discussed, demonstrating the aspects of this problem that are unresolved
and need to be answered.

Generational identity refers to the individual’s consciousness of belonging to their generation,

which is a category of people that were born within a certain time frame in respect to which
historical events these people face. It can be clearly observed in the modern world – even kids
and parents within the same family often feel like they are different because of the age
difference, the parents faced some events that children did not and during some events they
were at different ages and that might have effected them differently. For example, in Russia
some elders argue that the younger part of the population often supports opposition because
they did not live during the previous authorities, which, according to these elders, were worse
compared to the current ones. The two groups disagree with each other because they have
different experience in respect to historical events, or in other words because they have
different generational identities.

So why do sociologists pay so much attention to this topic in the recent years? One of the first
sociologists that popularized this topic was Karl Mannheim. After his work, ‘Problem on
Generations’, several sociologist started discussing the question of whether or not it can be the
source of identity.

Most of the sociologists agree that indeed, different generations form people in different ways.
In the recent years sociologists showed the differences in generational identities. It still hard to
define all the effects of generation on one’s identity because it is intangible, hard to trace and
sperate from other, possibly overlapping, identity-forming factors such as religion, nationality,
etc. The challenge here is to develop tools, which could prove the effects of this particular
factor.

To sum up, generational identity is the consciousness of an individual of belonging to their

generation, and it has drawn attention in the recent years because it was introduced as a new
possible factor which forms identity. It is still being discussed to provide a complete picture of
how generation can affect identity.