Preface

An ancient Arab proverb proclaims that men resemble their times more than they do their fathers.The age-old notion that social change is embedded in value shifts from one generation to another has become something of a truism over time.Phrases like "my generation," "the younger generation" and the "post-war generation" have crept into common vernacular as a means of demarcating signifi cant social groups on the basis of their locations in history.Yet our recent interest in diff erences among the generations is not mere fad or pop-culture frivolity.The construct of generations has a long theoretical tradition in the fi eld of sociology.The theory of generations is largely predicated on the foundational work of sociologist Karl Mannheim, whose 1923 essay "The problem of generations" posited that individuals born within the same historical period and socio-cultural context experience the same events and context during their crucial formative years, which provides them with a common "inborn way of experiencing life and the world" (Mannheim, 1923(Mannheim, [1952]], p. 283).In other words, history imbues each generation with a unique worldview, which is forged by the historical opportunities and challenges of our times.Subsequent researchers and theorists have elaborated on this theory, noting that the shaping infl uences of a generation must be understood as the confl uence of historical events, progression through the developmental life cycle and episodic period eff ects that impact on society as a whole (Ryder, 1965;Strauss and Howe, 1991).Others have depicted the generational phenomenon as a battle for resources, with younger and older generations fi ghting to serve their own specifi c interests (Edmunds and Turner, 2005;Eyerman and Turner, 1998).Thus, we can view a generation as the product of its historical context, experienced over the course of its biological life cycle, aff ected by periodic events that aff ect the opportunities and challenges it faces.Although the cultural salience of the generational phenomenon has waxed and waned over time, its popularity has grown immensely in recent decades, largely as a reaction to the boom in birth rates following World War II, the so-called "baby boom," which created a demographic phenomenon that has had lasting impacts on North American society (Foot, 1998;Ricard, 1994).The terms "Veteran Generation," "Baby Boomers"

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