ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses the neglect on empirical research conducted as part of a European Research Council-funded study Living with Difference, to explore how individuals understand and live processes of social differentiation. It focuses on multiple forms of difference in contrast to the literature around prejudice/encounters which has primarily viewed these issues through the lens of race and racism. In the chapter, an interviewee from the older generation describes his attitudes towards young people, while an interviewee from a younger generation explains in both an extract from her interview and her audio-diary what it is like to be on the receiving end of age-based prejudice. In reflecting on attitudes towards social differences, this chapter demonstrates that intergenerationality is an aspect of social identities. Rather, the evidence of this research is that people needs to recognize and classify both the labelling and stereotyping of older people as prejudiced, and young people as disrespectful, as forms of ageism.