Generational Intelligence

A Critical Approach to Age Relations

Simon Biggs,Ariela Lowenstein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136804724
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The question of communication and understanding between different generations is emerging as a key issue for the twenty-first century. The advent of ageing populations may lead to increased conflict or solidarity in society, and provokes a profound ambivalence both in public and in the private sphere. In a new approach, Biggs and Lowenstein offer a critical examination of Generational Intelligence as one way of addressing these issues. How easy is it to put yourself in the shoes of someone of a different age group? What are the personal, interpersonal and social factors that affect our perceptions of the 'age other'? What are the key issues facing families, workplaces and communities in an ageing society? This book sets out a way of thinking about interpersonal relations based on age, and the question of communication between people of different ages and generations. The book challenges existing orthodoxies for relations between adults of different ages and draws out steps that can be taken to increase understanding between generational groups. The authors outline a series of steps that can be taken to enhance Generational Intelligence, examine existing theories and social issues, and suggest new directions for sustainable relations between generational groups.

1

What is Generational Intelligence?

Summary

The purpose of this chapter is to draw out a newly emerging model of intergenerational relationships, called Generational Intelligence. It takes as its starting point the degree to which it is possible to place oneself in the position of a person of a different age or in what has been designated as a different generation. In it, we explore an approach that is based on how generations are experienced as part of everyday social life. A point we make is, that in a time of changing roles and expectations it is important to re-focus attention to the processes that underpin these kinds of relationships. To this end, a working distinction is made between the informational ‘intelligence’ that is culturally available to social actors and the degree to which it is possible to think and act ‘intelligently’ within that defining context. This is followed by four steps that someone would need to take to become critically aware of age and generational identity as a factor in social relationships. The steps include a growing awareness of oneself as being influenced by age and generation, so that in the end it is possible to recognize one’s personal generational distinctiveness. Other steps follow from this, such as understanding other people based on similarities and differences between generations, becoming critically aware of the values underlying social assumptions about generations and adult ageing and finally, acting in a manner that is generationally aware. In this manner, we work towards an understanding of two key aspects of intergenerational relations. First, the degree to which it is possible to place oneself in the position of the age-other and second, the possibility of working towards negotiated and sustainable solutions.

Key points

• In everyday life, generation is taken for granted, experienced holistically and is not necessarily actively thought about.
• To make sense of it a critical distance has to be created, by becoming consciously aware of one’s own generational identity.
• As part of this process, it is necessary to separate and then return to the ‘age-other’ so that the distinctiveness of each position can be recognized.
• This process involves becoming critically aware of the values and attitudes underpinning beliefs about intergenerational relations.
• The process clears the way for action that is generationally sustainable.

Introduction

This chapter is grounded on two questions which are followed up in subsequent parts of the book. First, how can we put ourselves in the place of someone of another generation? And, second, how is it possible to negotiate intergenerationally sustainable solutions? The first of these is necessary because, in life-course terms, contemporary society so often eclipses the existential projects of the second half of adult life and replaces them with the priorities of the first. This seems at first glance to make putting oneself into the shoes of the age-other an easy task. In effect, to the person in the dominant stage, their goals, hopes, desires and sense of past and future, appear to be universally acknowledged. On closer inspection, however, the task becomes a considerable psychological and social challenge. The second is necessary because it is not simply enough to become self-consciously aware of one’s own and another’s life-course priorities. It is also important to achieve a rapport between them, and find ways of negotiating a complementary relationship that can be sustained over time. It has, in other words to work for both parties and to be able to last.

As a starting point, it may be helpful to put forward a preliminary definition. We would define Generational Intelligence as an ability to reflect and act, which draws on an understanding of one’s own and others’ life-course, family and social history, placed within its social and cultural context.

Intergenerational relations provide the context within which individuals grow and mature. They provide the backdrop against which people mark their own ageing and the value that is attached to that process. Their quality shapes the way we feel, think and act towards others.

Generational Intelligence not only focuses on a single person’s or generations’ perspective but also creates the possibility of a space emerging, in which multiple generational viewpoints can be taken into account. This gives the opportunity for a process of pragmatic negotiation to take place. It arises as people become explicitly aware of similarities and differences based on age. If age groups do not aim to occupy the same social position within this space, complementary processes based on age-distinctiveness and solidarity may be able to emerge. It does not suggest an ‘age-neutral’ or ‘age-irrelevant’ society, however, but the negotiation of generation-specific needs and goals.

Generational relations as a growing social issue

How, then, can we put ourselves in the position of someone of a different age group? How far is it possible to understand the different influences on intergenerational activity? How far can we act while taking them into account? These are key questions for the twenty-first century as the numbers of older citizens are growing to equal those of children and adults in midlife (Bengtson and Lowenstein, 2003). People are living longer, with changes in age structure affecting both the developed and developing worlds (Aboderin, 2004). The proportional growth of the number of older adults and the length of time that people are living is historically unprecedented (WHO, 2000). As a result, we are increasingly living in a world where challenges to existing assumptions and expectations about intergenerational behaviour can be expected (Biggs et al., 2011). The higher life-expectancy of older persons is already creating new spaces for multigenerational interaction, as there are simply more generations to interact with each other (Antonucci et al., 2001) to which can be added an increased complexity of extended family patterns arising from divorce, remarriage and other forms of relationships (Bengtson et al., 2003). Individuals may be living in the context of four or in some cases five generations, in circumstances where kin relations are becoming more diverse.

In addition to these demographic shifts, a new range of social issues are emerging, that are intergenerational in form. These include age discrimination in the workplace, elder abuse in care, questions of generational fairness around pensions and whether healthcare should be rationed according to age. Such issues have been recognized by the Second World Assembly on Ageing in Madrid, convened by the UN in 2002, which noted: ‘the need to strengthen solidarity between generations and intergenerational partnerships, keeping in mind the particular needs of both older and younger ones, and encourage mutually responsive relationships between generations’ (UN, 2002b: 4).

This is not only a problem of numbers, however. It is also a problem of developing the intellectual and cultural capacity for societies to adapt to this situation. Generation itself, has been referred to as a ‘packed social concept’ (McDaniel, 2008), including a variety of social, familial and personal associations, that influence personal identity. Unfortunately the different disciplines which are engaged with the concept of generation, such as sociology, psychology, medicine, geography, rarely cross-communicate (Bengtson and Lowenstein, 2003). Each emphasizes a particular perspective and struggles to deliver an understanding of how a multiplicity of different influences contributes to the ways people navigate their social world. Partly as a result of the aforementioned, there is a growing recognition that to study adult ageing one has also to study intergenerational relationships (Antonucci et al., 2007). Intergenerational relations provide the context within which individuals grow and change, the way that they mark their own ageing and the relative value that is attached to that process.

Taken together, these factors point to a need to re-examine the idea of generation, its constituent parts and how it is experienced. What follows is an attempt at unwrapping what an increasing critical awareness of generation might entail, in other words, what forms of ‘intelligence’ are required to understand and act in the context of other generations. By critical, here, is meant an ability to see beyond the surface assumptions that drive everyday behaviour, address power relations between generational groups, plus a valuing of the experiential element of ageing and encounters between age groups. It has been assumed that age categories, such as midlife, old age and adolescence cannot easily be given specific chronological ages (Jung, 1931; Shweder, 1998; Schaie and Willis, 2002; Settersten, 2006). They depend, for example, upon particular functional capacities and how ageing is perceived in any society. Similarly, generations are often more likely to be a combination of social Labeling and self-perception. The degree to which an individual sees themselves as a member of a group based on age and different from other age groups, or age-others, does not depend on breaking the population down into demographically convenient ten-year chunks, but on how that generation is socially constructed and experienced.

Generations, power and cultural resources

The need to interrogate different degrees of Generational Intelligence is made more pressing in the light of comments by contemporary social theorists. For example, Kohli has argued that ‘in the twenty-first century, the class conflict seems to be defunct and its place taken over by the generational conflict’ (2005: 518). This assertion gains some support from Turner (1998) who has outlined generational tension between baby boomers and younger generations on the distribution of power. Francophone writers such as Ricard (Olazabal, 2005) and Chauvel (2007a) have criticized the boomer or generation lyric for social selfishness and disproportionate cultural and economic influence, to the disadvantage of succeeding generational groups. Moody (2008) has charted what he calls the ‘boomer wars’ as a recurrent polarization of discourse in North American popular literature, while in UK politics, Willetts (2010) has blamed the boomer generation for using up resources belonging to other generational groups. Conflict and competition in the public sphere of policy, work and popular debate, may be expected to increase the salience of generational similarity and difference. This is in spite of evidence that indicates that, at least in the private sphere, generational transfers continue to travel downward, from older to younger generations (Irwin, 1998) and that family solidarity exists across systems that rely on family or state-based welfare support (Daatland and Lowenstein, 2005; Daatland et al., 2010).

Social commentaries, especially those arising from the public sphere, then, suggest a renewed aggression in intergenerational discourse, directed primarily against late-midlife intergenerational relations. Indeed, a number of social problems are likely to multiply as populations live longer, and the proportion of older adults increases. If it is accepted that increased scarcity of resources, leads to a retrenchment into in-group identification, and that identities are increasingly being cast in terms of generation, obscuring other forms of social inequality, then the degree to which it is possible to put oneself in the position of someone of a different age group may become one of the defining factors driving social policy in the twenty-first century.

Our collective ability to deal with the issues thrown up by an ageing population will only be as good as the cultural tools available to us. This is not only a problem of numbers, however. It is also a problem of developing the intellectual and cultural capacity for societies to adapt to this situation. The cultural processes that have been available to date, reflect attempts either to ensure continuity of social value in terms defined by a dominant age group or of the transfer of power from one generation to the next. Older adults may, for example, continue to be encouraged to remain as productive workers, either paid or unpaid (Morrow-Howell et al., 2001), or they may find a role as consumers (Gilleard and Higgs, 2005), thus in one way or another feeding wider economic interests. These positions have now largely replaced attempts to ease a path of disengagement or of unspecified, yet morally signified activity (Katz, 2000; Estes et al., 2003). Disengagement refers to a withdrawal from social participation and a restriction in social roles in order to make room for succeeding generations. Activity, here, refers to the need for older people to ‘stay active’, but without necessarily identifying its purpose.

One implication of a transformation in expectations of later life is that a new architecture for social relations may begin to emerge. Should anyone doubt the dramatic change that has occurred in attitudes to later life, for example, it is only necessary to compare two statements, 20 years apart, made by the United Nations. The First World Assembly on ageing (1982) concluded that:

The human race is characterized by a long childhood and a long old age. Throughout history this has enabled older persons to educate the younger and pass on values to them. … A longer life provides humans with an opportunity to examine their lives in retrospect, to correct some of their mistakes, to get closer to the truth and to achieve a different understanding of the sense and value of their actions.

(United Nations, 1982: 1b)

This can be seen in retrospect to illustrate a rather gentle view of generational relations and the tasks of ageing, with an emphasis on retrospection, wisdom and a sense of summing up. A sort of benign disengagement.

While demographic projections remained essentially the same, in 2002, the Second World Assembly on Ageing, showed a very different vision of later life.

The potential of older persons is a powerful basis for future development. This enables society to rely increasingly on the skills, experience and wisdom of older persons, not only to take the lead in their own betterment but also to participate actively in that society as a whole.

(United Nations, 2002: 2)

The first statement suggests a personal task looking backwards and sifting through accrued experience. The second privileges the application of skills in the here and now, while looking forward. By 2002, there seem to be fewer qualities that distinguish one generation from another and less emphasis on specifically inter-generational relations. However intergenerational relations continue to provide the context within which individuals age, the way that they mark their own ageing and the relative value that is attached to that process. It is becoming clear that we do not currently, as national or global societies, have the cultural resources, the redundant cultural strength, to draw on to negotiate this novel intergenerational situation. We are, collectively, rather like midlifers who, according to Dan McAdams (1985), have to ‘figure it out on their own’. Traditional roles and responsibilities no longer seem to fit and the new demands lack the specificity and cultural embeddedness to supply a reliable guide to action.

Towards a phenomenology of generation

A key beginning for Generational Intelligence is to recognize that while the scientific study of population ageing uses separate categories, such as historical period, cohorts within a certain age-range, family position or stage of life, it is rarely encountered in such an atomized way during daily interaction. Rather, we would argue, generational identity is experienced as an undifferentiated whole, all in one go, as part of who one is. While the salience of different influences would vary with context and circumstance; generation, as an amalgam of life-stage, family position and cultural labeling, is generally experienced as a felt degree of similarity or distance with respect to others loosely based on something to do with age.

Arber and Attias-Donfut (2000) have observed that a feeling of generational belonging is created not just in a horizontal dimension of the birth cohort but also in a vertical dimension of familial lineage and that questions of generational awareness exist at the intersection of these axes. To this can be added Biggs’ (1999) distinction between depth and surface elements of life-course experience, dimensions of the mature self which creates a third context, that of the maturation of personal consciousness. This third context is perhaps more difficult to explore empirically, and exists tacitly as a growing awareness of one’s progress through life and the existential tensions that emerge as a result. This meeting point of birth cohort, familial lineage and personal maturation creates a three-dimensional space in which the immediate experience of generational identity, its phenomenology, exists and is given holistic expression. It is the quality and critical consciousness of this space that informs behaviour in intergenerational settings. The thoughts, feelings and values associated with that space, the degree to which people are aware of it, how they react to it, the effect it has on the sense of who they are and how they behave towards others form a basis for what might be called ‘Generational Intelligence’.

By choosing a critical phenomenological form of inquiry, we recognize, then, that while each dimension may be conceptually discrete, they are experienced holistically and it is their sum or balance which results in a particular experience of generation. Becoming conscious of one’s own distinctive identity emerges as a force that both links and distinguishes particular generational groups in so far as it is not until one becomes conscious of generational distinctiveness that one can develop genuine relationships between generations (Faimberg, 2005). So, consciousness of generation, may depend upon being able both to recognize one’s own generational identity and how that identity itself generates certain forms of relationship. The point here is not simply to rehearse the observation that adult demography consists of cohort, period and lifespan effects, but also to suggest that generation is experienced as a combination of influences, experienced as a whole, which give it its individual phenomenological flavour. In order to critically interrogate this experiential space, an individual needs to separate out competing influences, and consciously return to them before genuine intergenerational understanding can emerge. Such influences should be thought of processes, which come in and out of focus at different times.

Linking generation and experience

An understanding of generations, when we think about it at all, is, then, mediated by other experiences such as that of the family, one’s current position in the life-course and whether one’s age group has shared historical events that become socially signified. There are a number of research reports indicating that different notions of generation are closely linked and exist at the crossroads of public and private experience.

Hagestad (2003) has observed that families often mediate between individuals and societies undergoing change, while much of Bengtson’s (2001) work has concentrated on the family as a place where the influence of relationships and social structures meet. Here, intergenerational relations within families represent complex social bonds, and family members are linked by multiple types of relationship that may produce solidarity, conflictual or ambivalent feelings (Luescher and Pillemer, 1998; Pillemer et al., 2007). Bengtson and Putney (2006) claim that intergenerational relations within multigenerational families have a profound but unrecognized influence on relations between age groups at the societal level.

Perhaps, the most widely known evidence of the relationship between generations and historical and economic circumstances can be found in the work of Elder (1974; 1994), whose longitudinal study of life chances following the Great Depression and economic downturn in the North American Midwest, links the three metrics of individual lifetime, family time and historical time. The linkage between particular ages and family events and historical circumstances shows that the character taken by certain generations depends on broad social changes like migration, wars or economic shifts, which shape mutual support within families (Hareven, 1996; Elder, 1980). Position in the family, age at which economic hardship is experienced and gender were each found to mediate life chances and certain aspects of personality. In France, Attias-D...