GENERATIONS OF THINGS

Abstract

The first part of the paper is a proposition of a replacement of the category ‘intergenerational solidarity’ (which is a rather idealistic, wishful thinking and descriptive term, cumbersome and difficult to use in the changing and complex social environment) with a term ‘intergenerational ambivalence’ as the latter refers to the conflicting expectations, commitments, norms, standards and actions of individual generations and their ambivalence, which, even if they divide the generations, constitute at the same time the essence of the intergenerational relations. Intergenerational ambivalence on the other hand much more precisely than intergenerational solidarity describes the relations between representatives of different generations as it very accurately reflects the specificity of the relations between generations that appear in the postmodern world with its conflicting expectations, as well as because it emphasises that the specificity of each category of generation reflects the ability of its representatives to cope with the contradicting ideas in their relations with older generations, and with ambivalences that are characteristic of a given place and time. The other part of the paper is an attempt to characterise the manner in which ambivalences that permeate the intergenerational relations are articulated in everyday actions, in particular in those realised through material culture, as well as the manner in which the specifics of today’s material culture increases those conflicts.