Shaping the event: Socialisation effects and registers of participation

Karl Mannheim’s definition of generational units as being formed by their members’sharedexposure to thesameevents (Mannheim, 1972 [1928]) raises more questions than it answers. Is it really possible to say that the various participants in the events of May-June 1968 participated in thesameevent? What could a lower-class factory worker on strike have to exchange with a young student from a bourgeois background, motivated by breaking away from her family? Would they even have come into physical contact during the events? Archival films and photos show thousands of activists marching hand in hand down the streets