ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the qualities of generations primarily through the window of sociology and its cognate disciplines. It provides a slim survey of a few examples of both the concept of generation and the actuality of generations through the process of entering and exiting society. For social scientists generation is a dual concept, referring to both family and kinship structures on the one hand, and cohorts on the other. It has been subject to change in the flow of history and circumstance in which it has been put to work. The concept of generation has been charged with being too empty and slippery to be of much use. Yet these characteristics are a function of its survival over thousands of years and the diversity of human formation and experience which it has named.
