ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the Boomer generations were able to exploit the social opportunities, becoming, in contrast to the epic generations of the first half of the twentieth century, market generations characterised by consumption and style. The relations of consumption rather than production were more important, allowing the development of easily purchased and adaptable style as well as providing different kinds of settings in which youth could play out its social life. A broad typology of consumption generations is offered here: The criticality of market relations, Identity through market locations, Inadequacy of existing scripts of poverty. The first wave of the Boomers grew up through the boom years of postwar European and American expansion, in the contexts of the Cold War and colonial and postcolonial struggles. It was a time of intense social and cultural change, in part produced by the generation, alongside significant economic growth and diversification of class and other systems of inequality.
