Generation: Nostalgia and Life Cycles

Since the 1970s, nostalgia has been transformed by the consumer market, especially in the US. With the emergence of ephemeral novelty goods—popular music, TV serials, kitsch, automobiles, and especially playthings—nostalgia has become less about identification with past communities, ideologies, or regimes than associated with fast-changing consumer goods, especially those encountered in childhood and youth. Reappropriating those goods later in life in nostalgic collecting has become a big business, producing narrow cohorts of consumers sharing common consumer memories. The result is a nostalgia divided by generation and embraced at middle age as consumers recall the ephemeral goods and media of their formative years.