It seems like the concept of "Generation" (Boomers, Gen-X, Millennials, etc.) has gained increasing prominence in the past decade or two, but how did that concept gain steam culturally, and when?
I have an okay understanding of the idea of an age cohort and Karl Mannheim's conception of that in the 1920's, but I feel like it didn't become any kind of zeitgeist until popular media started talking about Baby Boomers, and then once marketers got ahold of the concept and ran with it, it became much more a shorthand for how to SELL to different generations than anything about the Generations as cohorts from then on.
So, I'm looking for answers and sources that get at these types of questions:
- Were Baby Boomers the first named generation, and then the prior generation ("Silents," "Greatest Generation") named after the fact, since we had to name their parents?
- Did sociologists study generations before marketers started marketing to them? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
- If we only started to study the behavior of generations in the mid-century and only then in the context of consumption (media or products or otherwise), how do we know whether people behave in ways consistent with their generation or consistent with their age? |
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