1. Chapter 1 - Introduction
1.7 Chapters
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institutions are helpful to explore large-scale trends. However, if we want to explore the meaning of large-scale trends, a qualitative approach is necessary. In-depth interviews can be a helpful tool to provide this second deeper layer.
The official data on political large-scale trends in Taiwan provided by the Electoral Study Centre of NCCU will be used as a tool to support the results of in-depth interviews.
Regarding secondary data, this thesis will rely upon different materials such as books, e-journals, magazines and websites.
1.7 Chapters
The thesis will have 11 chapters. The first one is an introduction to the topic, the second chapter provides the thesis's theoretical framework, which is based on two main theories: Political generation studies and political socialisation. It also discusses the limitations of this thesis as well as how these theories can be applied to the case study of the Sunflower's Generation.
The third chapter establishes the existing the first three political generations in Taiwan.
It is worth mentioning that this chapter is not relevant for this thesis, however, it is needed as it provides historical coherence.
The fourth chapter analyses the 4th political generation and its political values and attitudes towards Cross-Strait relations.
The fifth chapter discusses the Wild Strawberry Movement and its location regarding the existing political generations. The sixth chapter provides the Sunflower Movement history as well as it explains the variables that contributed to its emergence. In addition, it also discusses the importance of the Sunflower Movement as a destabilising historical movement and as a consequence why it can be considered as being a catalyst of the Sunflower political generation.
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The seventh chapter analyses the Sunflower political generation's political values and attitudes towards Cross Strait Relations, and it particular, the self-identity, "Taiwanese nationalism", partisanship, independence vs unification issue, democracy, political engagement, political socialisation and opinions on China.
The eighth chapter compares the political values and attitudes of the 4th political generation and the Sunflower's political generation.
The ninth chapter studies the Sunflower's political generation's implication for Cross-Strait relations. And the conclusion provides with the conclusions of this research.
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The thesis is based on two main theories: political generation theory and political socialisation theory. It is vital to understand different key concepts of these theories and how they are connected. This chapter is divided into three sections:
The first part develops political generational theory, based Karl Mannheim. It also discusses the importance of political generations as well as why political generations struggle within the nation-state. It also analyses why destabilising historical events or formative events are critical for the emergence of political generations. In addition, this section also includes Andy Chang and T.Y Wang's generational model as well as Shelley Rigger's work on Taiwanese political generations.
The second section, discusses the notion of political socialisation. It will pay attention to the role political socialisation agents such as state institutions (school, universities), which are related to the development of political generations. Furthermore, it analyses the relationship between youth and social movements as political learning agents.
Finally, this chapter provides the limitations of using the theories commented above as the intrinsic scholarly limitations of studying the Sunflower Movement's Generation and its political values and attitudes towards Cross Strait relations.
2.1 Political Generations Theory
2.1.1 The intellectual development of the concept of Generation
Traditionally, from a sociological approach, the concept of generation can be studied according Comte and Dilthey's theoretical framework. Despite their theoretical differences, they developed the foundations of the concept of generation in the 19th century. In the late 19th century, authors such as Justin Dromel, Antoine Cournot and Giuseppe Ferrari, also focused their research on the study of generations and its political implications.
The French scholar Auguste Comte, between 1830 and 1840, was the first to study generations in history applying a scientific framework, highly influenced by a positivist worldview. Comte examined systematically the succession of generations as the moving force in historical progress. He believed that the tempo of the progress was determined
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by the tempo of generational change. Social progress exists only, according to Comte, insofar as it is based on death, as the eternal renewer of human society20.
On the other hand, in the late 1860's, the German scholar Wilhelm Dilthey based his studies on generations using a historical romantic approach. In his study of German romanticism, he discovered that many of its most important representatives were born in adjoining years (Schlegel in 1767, Hölderlin in 1770, Novalis and Tieck in 1773). This observation led him to hypothesise that the absorption of formative impressions during adolescence tends to transmit for life to a great number of individuals of the same age a fund of relatively homogenous philosophical and social guidelines. Subsequently, Dilthey believed that formative impressions, which people receive during a rather short period of time in adolescence, can hardly be thrown off later on through strong impressions of an opposite nature21.
Also in the decade of the 1860's, the French author Justin Dromel did a taxonomy of generations based on the age of the individuals. His theory was purely based on statistics and some elements of the political aspects of society. According to Dromel, birth can be considered at the age of 21 years, adulthood at the age of 25, a phase of progress, between 25 and 40 years. The political life, he stated, lasts until the 70, but activity ceases towards the 65. From 65 to 70, men suffer - and this is a sharp observation of Dromel - the filial influence changes, when before the son lived from the father's ideas, now, the father lives from the son's ambitions22.
Antoine Cournot introduced some analysis elements based on a more rationalist approach23. According to Cournot every generation transmits through education some ideas which are followed, and through that education act or transmission is verified, the educative generation is still in presence, while still suffer the influence of all the survivors of the last generation that have not ceased of being notably involved into
20 Hans Jaeger, "Generations in history," Geschichte und Gessellschaft 3 (1977): 275.
21 Ibid, 276.
22 Julian Marías, El método histórico de las generaciones. (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1961), 41.
23 Marco. A. Martín, "The theory of generations in Ortega y Gasset: a reading from the 21st century," Tiempo y espacio 20. (2008): 100.
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politics, in the movement of ideas and business. The youth that is initiating in the world also preserve the footprint of their childhood, which is caused by the conversation with the older24.
The Italian philosopher, Giuseppe Ferrari, who was strongly influenced by positivists ideas of Comte and Vico, discussed the importance of generations when understanding the progress of history. He pointed out that every 30 years there is a significant change with regards to the ideas of the social groups. Each generation struggle to impose its own convictions with the aim of breaking the old social order.25
In the early 1920's Mannheim developed further generational theory, being considered the founder of the modern approach. Later, other scholars such as Ortega y Gasset, Marías, Gramsci and Abrams also contributed to the understanding of the notion of generations26.
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2.2 Karl Mannheim and political Generations
As Karl Mannheim stated in his article "The Problem of Generations" (1952), the problem of generations is important enough to merit serious consideration. It is one of the indispensable guides to an understanding of the structure of social and intellectual movements. Its practical importance becomes clear as soon as one tries to obtain a more exact understanding of the accelerated pace of social change characteristic of our time.27
The social phenomenon "generation" represents nothing more than a particular kind of identity of location, embracing related "age groups" embedded in a historical-social process. The nature of generation location is determined by the way in which certain patterns of experience and thought tend to be brought into existence by the natural data
24 Julian Marías, El método histórico de las generaciones. (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1961): 48.
25 Marco. A. Martín, "The theory of generations in Ortega y Gasset: a reading from the 21st century,", Tiempo y espacio 20. (2008): 101.
26 Carmen Leccardi and Carles Feixa, "El concepto de generación en las teorías sobre la juventud," Última decada 34 (2011): 14.
27 Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of Generations". In Essays on the sociology of knowledge, ed.
Paul Kecskemeti, 276-320.(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul LTD, 1952), 287.
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of the transition from one generation to another28. In addition, generations have to two main characteristics: members of the same generations are born at the same time and in the same cultural context. However, as Mannheim pointed out, sharing a temporal and spatial location makes a group of individuals an age cohort, not a generation. The location as such only contains potentialities which may materialise, or be suppressed, or become embedded in other social forces and manifest themselves in modified form.
When pointing out that mere co-existence in time did not even suffice to bring about community of generation location. In order to share the same generation location, i.e in order to be able passively to undergo or actively to use the handicaps and privileges inherent in a generation location, one must be born within the same historical and cultural region. Generation as an actuality, however, involves even more than mere co-presence in such a historical and social region. A further concrete nexus is needed to constitute generation as an actuality. This additional nexus may be described as participation in the common destiny of these historical and social units29.
According to Mannheim, the formative years which are the those that correspond to youth, are the critical moment for the emergence of generations as its the period of formation of the "natural view the world" that may or may not lead to the actuality of a generation. Mannheim stressed the importance of a formative event, which is likely to be a traumatic event or catastrophe that uniquely cuts off a generation its past and separate its from the future30. For this reason, people who are between 18 and 25 years of age when destabilising events occur can coalesce to form a generation.31
However, not all the members of the same age cohort perceive or experience events in the same way. Mannheim in order to explain such a phenomena, discussed the idea of generational units. This notion represents a much more concrete bond than the actual generation as such. Youth experiencing the same concrete historical problems may be
28 Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of Generations". In Essays on the sociology of knowledge, ed.
Paul Kecskemeti, 276-320.(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul LTD, 1952), 292.
29 Ibid, 303.
30 Daniela Koleva "Remembering socialism, living post-socialism: Gender, generation and ethniticy". In Peripheral Memories: Public and private forms of experiencing the past and narrating the past, ed. Elisabeth Boesen, Fabianne Lentz, Michel Margue, Denis Scuto, Renée Wagener, 219-239 (Bielefeld; Transcript Historie, 2012), 229.
31 Shelley Rigger, "Taiwan's rising rationalism: generations, politics, and "Taiwanese Nationalism". Policy Studies 26 (2006), 12.
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said to be part of the same actual generation; while those groups within the same actual generation which work up the material of their common experiences in different specific ways, constitute separate generation units32.
2.3 Why do political generations clash within the nation-state?
One of the main critiques that can be done to Mannheim's work on political generations is that he did not elaborate on why new political generations clash with older ones within the nation-state and why political generations can lead to social change.
One of the main assumptions regarding the inter-generational struggle is that new political generations tend to clash with older political generations because new political generations seek more political power, which is hegemonised by "older" political generations. Generations constitute a new “Self” of the nation-state against an internal
“Other,” a previous generation. Roskin of Kuhn’s paradigmatic transitions established that the ontology of a nation-state is remade to some degree by an emerging generation against the one in power. Such transitions are characterised less by a “passing of the torch” than a contentious period of intense, negative identification struggles.33
Regarding generational struggles between new political generations and the old, such transitions come about through two mechanisms. The first of these is the so-called
“formative experience,” anomaly, or social moment that creates the generational cohort;
the second is a component of intense intergenerational struggle—sometimes termed
“revolutionary” or “destructive.”34
When explaining the importance of formative events as phenomenon that can shape political generations during their formative years, Anthony Giddens's notion of critical situations is vital for their understanding. A critical situation is a set of circumstances which -for whatever reason- radically disrupts accustomed routines of daily life.
Conventions and social codes maybe be abandoned and new ones produced on spot.
32 Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of Generations". In Essays on the sociology of knowledge, ed.
Paul Kecskemeti, 276-320.(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul LTD, 1952), 304.
33 Brent J. Steele and Jonathan M. "Introduction: The Evolution of Generational Analysis and International Theory" In Theory and Application of the "Generation" in International Relations, ed. Brent J. Steele and Jonathan M, Acuff. 3-25, (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2012), 10.
34 Ibid, 26.
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Under crisis, agency comes to the fore, often reshaping prevailing social structures.35 In addition, these critical situations are also able to create a new identity due to the fact that the "new" cannot accommodate itself in the existing identities. Generational analysis scholars see these as catastrophes or crises that provide the “exogenous shocks”
that make possible a new identity. Yet in two important respects, the shocks may be endogenous as well. First, such shocks are “made possible” because of the sedentary thinking of a generation in power, which fails to see data that disconfirms its implementation of policies. Second, an incoming generation can then connect such crises to the policies, the mindset, and the agency of a generation in power. Identities can change, but they can also remain static for periods of time, as Kratochwil reminds us.36
Another scholar who is critical to understand why "exogenous shocks" are important for the development of a political generation is the British sociologist Philip Abrams. The British sociologist contributed to the field studying Mannheim's ideas and looking, in particular, at the role of identity in generations. As Mannheim, Abrams also believed that historical and institutional discontinues are important for the development of a generation37. To prove that, in his book Historical sociology, he brought out Bereleson's work, which suggested that a whole political generation may have been developing for whom the socio-economic problems of their youth served as bases for permanent political forms... Presumably an age generation can be transformed by political events and social condition...a generation that retains its allegiances and norms while succeeding generations are moving in another direction38.
Adams also suggested that the individuality and society are socially constructed. The identity - is considered as the link between both individual and society's dimensions - and has to be studied within the historical and social framework. Subsequently, Abrams
35 Christopher G. A. Bryant, David Jary, Anthony giddens: Critical assemsents ( New York:Taylor and Francis, 1997), 312.
36 Brent J. Steele and Jonathan M. "Introduction: The Evolution of Generational Analysis and International Theory" In Theory and Application of the "Generation" in International Relations, ed. Brent J. Steele and Jonathan M. ACuff. 3-25, (New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2012), 11.
37 Carmen Leccardi and Carles Feixa, "El concepto de generación en las teorías sobre la juventud," Última decada 34 (2011):19.
38 Abrams Philips, Historical Sociology (Somerset: Open books publishing ltd, 1982), 258.
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defined identity as the consciousness in which history of the individual life and social history are interwoven39. In addition, when expanding the notion of identity and generations, he also suggested that if a new sociological generation is to emerge, a new configuration of social actions, the attempt of individuals to construct identity must coincide with major and palpable historical experiences in relation to which new meanings can be assembled. (...) But it is historical events that seem to provide the crucial opportunities for constructing new versions of such meanings. Such opportunities are seized, in turn, most avidly and imaginatively by those who are most actively in the market for such meanings (identities). Hence the peculiar connection of youth and generations. And the more the overall configuration of a society leaves the mode of entry new individuals open to negotiation the more likely it is that those individuals will put together a sense of themselves as being historically unlike their predecessors; will make something culturally or politically of their distinctiveness as youth. Such attempts create the world of youth as a stage of life history. But sometimes such attempts also seize on historical experiences, of war, revolution, crisis or liberation for example. (...) an age group located at such a moment in history can create a new social generation. Life history and world history coalesce to transform each other.
Identity is made within the double construction of time40.
According to Abrams, one generation, in the sociological sense, is the period of time in which one identity is constructed based on the resources and meanings that are socially and historically available. Therefore, a sociological generation do not follow each other based on a recognisable temporal cadence established by succession of biological generations. Hence, there is not a normalised time to measure and predict their rhythm, as a result, from a sociological perspective, one generation can last 10 years or centuries.41
39 Carmen Leccardi and Carles Feixa, "El concepto de generación en las teorías sobre la juventud,", Última decada 34 (2011):18.
40 Abrams Philips, Historical Sociology (Somerset: Open books publishing ltd, 1982), 256.
41 Carmen Leccardi and Carles Feixa, "El concepto de generación en las teorías sobre la juventud, "Última decada 34 (2011):18.
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To explain the intergenerational struggle, Thomas Kuhn's theory on "Paradigm shift"
can enable us to understand such a phenomenon. It serves as the perfect analogy to explain why "new" political generations struggle with the "old" ones. When researchers, operating under their old paradigm, begin to notice that their empirical findings do not come out the way they are supposed to, disquiet enters into the profession. Anomalies or counter instances crop up in the research and throw the old paradigm into doubt. Then an innovator looks at the data from another angle, reformulates the basic framework, and introduces a new paradigm. Significantly these innovators tend to be younger men who, "being little committed by prior practice to the traditional rules of normal science, are particularly likely to see that those rules no longer define a playable game and to conceive another set that can replace them.42 The new paradigm does not triumph immediately and automatically.
Now there are two competing, antithetical paradigms; each demands its separate world view. The discussants are bound partly to talk through each other because they are looking at the same data from differing angles. The new paradigm makes progress,
Now there are two competing, antithetical paradigms; each demands its separate world view. The discussants are bound partly to talk through each other because they are looking at the same data from differing angles. The new paradigm makes progress,