ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on detailed empirical work to address key questions that arise from the interplay between the rise of mass consumption, increasing individualization, and generational fracture. It provides a collective contribution, from a diversity of perspectives, to the debates surrounding generational change in contemporary consumer societies. The book addresses the rise of consumer culture and the various attempts to explain and account for it. It considers how social theory has responded to the rise of consumer society and how consumer lifestyles have become increasingly salient to the understanding of social structure and conflict in later modern societies. The book suggests that the idea of distinctions between generational groups is to understanding the third age as a cultural field in which actors from various cohorts and life stages participate.