The Adjectives of Solidarity. Trajectories of Research on Intergenerational Solidarity

Abstract

The essay presents an analysis of most of the approaches to the theme of solidarity between generations. For several decades the time of generations has met the history of ideas. Today, at the intersection of conceptual history and general sociology, and of the analysis of cultural processes and social history, a political reflection is taking place about the "political generation" as a paradigm unavoidably characterized by a kind of semantic vagueness. The same reflection is also confronted with the relationship of complicity or conflict between generations characterized by the growing weight acquired by the issue of intergenerational solidarity. This, in turn, is reflected both in the space of life relationships between old, adults and young people, and, in terms of history, among the living, the dead and the unborn. The so-called "non-contemporaneity of contemporary" is imposing its logic, but it requires new forms of understanding and representation of today's global dynamics.