Theory first saw its development as a mere sociological theory that intended to better explain social patterns, such as values and ideals, as well as its development over time. Due to the lack of explanatory contextualization in previous research, this section is dedicated to deepen the reader’s understanding over the theory and how it evolved over time. Further research may be drawn from this point onwards, to why the theory is still today more of an explanatory nature, rather than exploratory. The formulation of a possible generational gap was firstly mentioned by Mentré (1920), in his book Les Generations Sociales. The author tries to understand the social and intellectual differences that structure society into patterns over a certain amount of time. Alongside with other authors such as Comte, Cournot and J. Dromel, Mentré found it impossible to define a certain place in time in which generation series could be defined, aesthetics being the only true …show more content…
Therefore, an event might influence and bring together a group of people, bounding them through ideas and concepts. An example used by the author was of the concept of Freedom, which united the Liberal generation-unit that was once scattered spatially. However, Mannheim also asserts that within a generation, there can be many, even antagonistic, generation-units, which together constitute an “actual generation” – even opposing ideas, bind them towards each other, recognizing themselves as a whole. To this, the author called the Theory of Generations. Later on, during the 70’s, Dr Morris Massey developed the Values Theory, in which he defends that values are the defining variables for different generations. Therefore, people share a value system, which justifies our belief sets and behaviours, not overlooking other factors such as gender, age, race and geographical