Ca. Mallmann et Ga. Lemarchand, GENERATIONAL EXPLANATION OF LONG-TERM BILLOW-LIKE DYNAMICS OF SOCIETAL PROCESSES, Technological forecasting & social change, 59(1), 1998, pp. 1-30
An increasing amount of empirical evidence has accumulated showing the
existence of several kinds of recurrent long-term societal processes.
Particular attention was given to the 50-60 year billows, usually rel
ated to economical and technological processes (Kondratieff cycles). T
hese studies generated a large set of different theories-intrinsic to
the economy and the technology-that tried to explain the recurrent pro
cess origin. Since the last century, several scholars have identified
even longer societal billows usually related to long-term political pr
ocesses (Hegemonic and Ferrari cycles). The paradigm of long-term soci
etal processes was not always accepted because of the lack of a consis
tent theoretical framework that could account for it. In this article
we introduce a partially formalized version of that framework which co
ntains only one, to be determined constant, namely: a generational tim
e lag. We show that this time constant is equal to the Life lapse of h
uman beings in which they are mainly motivated to interact with their
contextual, social, and ''habital'' processes. We call the constant ta
u, Societal Historical Generation (SHG) and conclude, using theoretica
l and empirical arguments, that its length is 39 +/- 4 years. A mathem
atical model of the societal temporal diffusion of those motivational
concerns, in agreement with all the empirically determined characteris
tics of the long-term billow-like processes. is presented. The solutio
ns for the first three oscillatory modes have the following ''billow-l
engths'': 156 +/- 16; 31 +/- 3; 17 +/- 2 years (with k > 0) and 52 +/-
5; 22 +/- 2; 14 +/- 1 years (with k < 0). The basis of this model has
anthropo-psycho-epigenetic human roots that allow the emergence of co
llective societal behavior patterns with the appearance of long-term b
illows in economical and political indicators. An interpretation and d
iscussion of the main characteristics of the societal moods as well as
other research lines to test the model are presented. (C) 1998 Elsevi
er Science Inc.