?
Поколение: социологические границы понятия
Conceptual workings of sociologists and historians on the issues of generation and intergenerational transmission of cultural patterns are summed up in the article. The following issues are considered: socio-cultural context of the emegence of the concept "generation" in its modern meanings and the main landmarks in the history of "generation problem" research; semantic structure of the notion in its empirical use and in various perspectives of stating the problem by researchers in the West and in Russia; the issue of generation and the generation gap in Russia's society and first of all in the Soviet and post-Soviet societies as a historically established mechanism of self-determination through ostentatious distancing from the generalized partner and symbolic lowering the importance of innovative action. A particularistic construction "fathers and sons" historically established and fixed by the authority of literature classics hampers the possibilities of systematic rationalization and therefore institutionalization of the meanings of social and cultural changes.