The time structure of biographies

Introduction There is a way of viewing social change as resulting primarily from the diversity of organization, development and meaning of the individuals’ life courses over successive time periods. This was discussed by Mannheim in his famous essay on the generations, from the standpoint of cultural patterns, and has been recently taken up again by demographers and sociologists. The latter use the cohort concept to mean a set of individuals born within the same time span, and therefore facin..