Global Generations and the Trap of Methodological Nationalism For a Cosmopolitan Turn in the Sociology of Youth and Generation英文文献.pdfVIP

European Sociological Review Advance Access published November 23, 2008 European Sociological Review VOLUME 00 NUMBER 00 2008 1–12 1 DOI:10.1093/esr/jcn032, available online at 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 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, gl