Understanding generations: political economy and culture in an ageing society.

Sociological understanding of generations can be enhanced by avoiding defining them rigidly as chronological cohorts but rather linking people's accounts of their generational experience with an historically informed political economy. It then becomes possible, for example, to understand the complexity of generational politics. This paper uses data on the 'War Generation' taken from the Exeter Politics of Old Age project to link an empirically based political economy of generational inequality with a cultural sociology of generations.