Very interesting take on generations, Helena.
An event occured during the meeting that struck me very forcefully in this
regard. First, as a pre-amble remark, I may qualify for the old generation,
but for sure not the original one, which by my reckoning goes back more
than 100 years.
Here is the event. I was scheduled to be second in a symposium at which
Yrjo was to be discussant. One member did not show. So the organizers
reordered the sequence of talks placing me, with Yrjo, explicitly as the
"older generation
" who they would be addressing so that we could provide sage, old persons'
advice. No particular harm done. I found their work and Yrjo's commentary
interesting. But I remarked at the time that we were witnessing the social
construction of aging and age categories, and in a public, rather peremptory
spontaneous way that (speaking from my perspective) I found uncomfortable.
A potentially important question for the future is how we, collectively, can
be of help to you in the very difficult and important work you are
undertaking. I hope the conference provided you contacts and ideas that will
serve you in your project. Ditto for all who went.
As for "firsts" (excluding for-bearers from early in the last century) the
very hard work of the organizers of earlier ISCRAT and Sociocultural folks
who put together prior meetings really needs to be recognized. It is hard
to imagine that Georg Ruckhreim and his colleagues, the wonderful folks from
Madrid and Brazil, or Marianne Hedegaard and her Danish colleagues could haev
been compensated properly for the enormous efforts they went to on our
collective behalves.
And the same goes for Bert, Wim, and the Dutch team that put this most
recent effort together. We are in their debt, all of them.
mike
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