Generational order: troubles with a ‘travelling concept’

ABSTRACT

This brief comment on Samantha Punch's paper first recalls the theoretical context in which the notions ‘generational order’ and ‘generationing’ emerged. It is then suggested that their uneven use both in childhood research and elsewhere is centrally related to inadequate consideration of ontological and methodological issues involved in cross-theory and cross-context adaption of ‘travelling concepts’.

KEYWORDS:

• Generational order
• travelling concept
• childhood studies
• generationing
• ontology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Here I followed R. W. Connell’s (1987) gender vocabulary: ‘gender order’ naming the inventory of more specific, local ‘gender regimes’.

2 Sociologists, throughout the history of the discipline have of course addressed the ’Hobbesian problem of order’ (Comte, Parsons) and also Max Weber was centrally concerned with ‘Ordnung’. In the fields of economics, jurisprudence and political science the concept of ‘order’ takes a central place even today (Anter 2007).

3 The ambition of practice theories vacillate between being an ontology and (merely) a methodology (see e.g. Koddenbrock 2016).