100 Years of Identity Crisis

Chapter 4: Identity, Socialisation and Its Tenuous Link with the Past

It is difficult to develop a sturdy sense of collective identity without a shared memory and a common attachment to conventions or customs that are rooted in the past. Collective identities are inter-generational accomplishments that are cultivated through the absorption of a common cultural inheritance. For socialisation to occur successfully, adults draw on the experience of previous generations to provide young people with a meaningful account of adulthood. Erikson remarked that the values with which children are trained ‘persist because the cultural ethos continues to consider them “natural” and does not admit of alternatives’. He observed that:

They persist because ...