Rethinking the Generation Gap: Age and Agency in Middle-Class Kolkata

Abstract

The popular and scholarly generation gap idiom implies that social change is instigated by the young while the old remain fixed in time and culture. In fact, it is inadequate to think of the young as the primary locus of social change. By examining the lives of older Indians from Kolkata who moved out of extended family homes and into elder residences and nuclear-family-style apartments, I learned that prevalent models of generation and social change fail to capture the complexity of the lives and perspectives of the older generation and the workings of social-cultural transformation.