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European Sociological Review Advance Access originally published online on November 23, 2008
European Sociological Review 2009 25(1):25-36; doi:10.1093/esr/jcn032
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Global Generations and the Trap of Methodological Nationalism For a Cosmopolitan Turn in the Sociology of Youth and Generation

Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Beck, Institut für Soziologie, Konradstrasse 6, 80801 München, Germany. Email: u.beck{at}lmu.de
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Kochstraβe 4, 91054 Erlangen, Germany. Email: beck-gernsheim{at}soziol.phil.uni-erlangen.de

Is there such a thing as ‘global generations’? What does ‘global generation’ mean? Can we, as we did so far, still understand the concept of generation in a national frame of reference? Or do we need a cosmopolitan outlook to understand the generational dynamics that exacerbate inter-generational tensions within nations and intra-generational affinities and conflicts between nations? For example, globalized ‘Consumer Generations’ comprise very different fractions; not only those who buy and live with consumer brands and images, but also those who are unable to buy and live with these symbols, but risk their lives to become migrants to the consumer paradises of the Western World or Dubai. Our thesis is: A cosmopolitan sociology is required in order to understand the situations, impacts, divisions, contradictions, and desires of the global generations. A cosmopolitan sociology means a sociology that gets rid off ‘methodological nationalism’ and takes globality and (human) social life on planet Earth seriously. A cosmopolitan sociology differs from a universalistic one by starting, not from anything supposedly general, but from global variability, global interconnectedness, and global intercommunication. It means treating the global generations not as a single, universal generation with common symbols and a unique consciousness. Rather, it conceptualizes and analyses a multiplicity of global generations that appear as a set of intertwined transnational generational constellations.


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