1968 - SYMBOL FOR THE FIRST GLOBAL GENERATION

In contrast to analyses which portray the student movement of 1968 pri marily as a generational phenomenon in the context of national histori es or as a consequence of structural transformations in Western indust rial societies, it is here argued that the student movement represente d the first global generation in history. The occurrence and concurren ce of worldwide student unrest can only be explained by linking the gl obalization theory perspective of Tiryakian, Wallerstein and Hobsbawm with Mannheim's historical generation concept. Being a segment of the secondary elite of intellectuals at the crossroads between the politic al and cultural spheres, the students of the early sixties had enjoyed a privileged vantage point from which to experience the shift in zeit geist as politicians worked toward an easing of tensions. The combinat ion of being ''youth'' and of being students, a segment of society the n defined by an increasingly generalized institutional paradigm, forme d the social basis for the development of a global elite class within a single generation.