Consumption, Middle Class and Youth

This article is about common links between social stratification, youth and consumption patterns. If we follow Karl Mannheim’s (Essays on the sociology of knowledge. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1952) classic understanding of society as being stratified into different generations (originally published in German in 1928), societies can be looked at as if they are consisting of different age groups which belong together. Each generation or cohort is characterized by having similar birth years and profiles regarding common life perspective, identities and interests (France & Roberts, Journal of Youth Studies 18: 215–223, 2015).