Generations and Ideological Change: Some Observations

Abstract

The recollections of 28 cohorts of college graduates-all of them former recipients of Woodrow Wilson Fellowships for graduate study-of historical events between 1945 and 1971 and their participation in activities specifically associated with the peace movement and student activism of the 1960s were brought to bear on Mannheim's theory of generations. The analysis suggests proportionately greater sensitivity to the events of the 1960 among those who reached the age of 20 near the middle of the decade, a finding that bears out generational theory. But despite this apparently heightened sensitivity among those the fight age at the right time, the effect of these recollections and experiences on attitudes expressed in 1973 was consistently overshadowed by even stronger attitudinal effects attributable to an early commitment to activism. The latter was more closely related to the family milieu than to having come of age politically in a particular historical period. The data were obtained from a mail survey of 1321 former Wilson Fellows. Carl W. Roberts is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Department of Statistics, Iowa State University. Kurt Lang is Director and Professor, School of Communications, University of Washington. An earlier version of this article was presented at the American Sociological Association in Detroit, September 1983. The authors are grateful to Andrea Tyree and Katherine Williams for their helpful comments. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol 49:460-473 ? by the American Association for Public Opinion Research Published by Elsevier Science Publishing Co, Inc. 0033-362X/85/0049-460/$2 50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.104 on Mon, 20 Jun 2016 06:19:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms GENERATIONS AND IDEOLOGICAL CHANGE 461 the historical process. That people are born at the same time, or that their youth, adulthood, and old age coincide, wrote Mannheim, . . . create[s] a similar location [in] that they are in a position to experience the same events and data, etc., and especially that these experiences impinge on a similarly 'stratified' consciousness (1952: 297), at least insofar as they reside within some proximity and/or are part of the same polity. Although within these limits contemporaries of all ages are exposed to the same events, the older age groups will already have formed their own natural of these events. As a result, what is a shared experience becomes stratified by a multiplicity of perspectives that are, so to speak, generational. Each age group brings its own point of view to bear on these