The Myth of the Age of Entitlement peels back the layers of the entitlement myth, exposing its anti-democratic faults and offering a more nuanced understanding of the millennial generation.
We are said to be living in the age of entitlement, and millennials—those in their late teens to early thirties—are declared by scholars and pundits to expect special treatment more than any prior generation.
The Myth of the Age of Entitlement peels back the layers of the entitlement myth, exposing its anti-democratic faults and offering a more nuanced understanding of the millennial generation. Cairns argues that the majority of millennials in fact face bleak economic prospects and mounting ecological disaster. In lively prose, and punctuated with insights from millennials rarely profiled in mainstream media—including indebted university students, young retail workers, Indigenous youth, and supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement—he offers a passionate defense of how this generation is bravely addressing a legacy of inequality and social and ecological injustice. It is this kind of action that can precisely reinvigorate democracy and bring about a new era of universal entitlement.
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"The Myth of the Age of Entitlement helps to puncture the invented entitled status that has been foisted onto millennials and provides an array of examples where millennials are bucking this myth, demanding their democratic entitlements, and telling the Margaret Wentes of the world to STFU (an acronym that Cairns also helpfully spells out on page 133)." -- Nora Loreto, Briarpatch Magazine
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A deeply necessary intervention into the debate about the millennial generation. James Cairns explodes "the myth of the age of entitlement" and urges engagement with the demands of today's young radicals. Our futures may all depend on it. -- Sarah Jaffe, journalist and author of Necessary Trouble: Americans In Revolt James Cairns immediately grabs the reader, challenging prominent assumptions about the concept of entitlement and how it applies to millennials. He demonstrates that the myth of an entitled generation is more about an elite's effort to suppress the just and democratic demands of masses of people who see their hopes evaporating. Much like Ronald Reagan's focus on the supposed "welfare queens," the myth of an entitled generation aims to distract popular attention away from the theft of our savings, hopes, and futures by what has been termed the "1%." Cairns has presented a counter-narrative that needs to become the new common sense. -- Bill Fletcher, Jr., Former President of TransAfrica Forum, trade unionist, co-author of Solidarity Divided, and author of 'They're Bankrupting Us!' - And Twenty Other Myths about Unions
| Acknowledgements |
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vii | |
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Chapter One The Age of Entitlement? |
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1 | (28) |
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Chapter Two Democratic and Oppressive Entitlements |
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29 | (24) |
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Chapter Three Zeroed Down: The Flexible Millennial Worker |
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53 | (28) |
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Chapter Four Austerity U: Teaching and Resisting Disentitlement on Campus |
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81 | (28) |
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Chapter Five Millennial Blowout: Eco-disentitlement versus Ecological Justice |
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109 | (26) |
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Chapter Six Everything for Everybody |
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135 | (18) |
| Appendix: A Note on Methodology |
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153 | (6) |
| Glossary |
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159 | (6) |
| References |
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165 | (20) |
| Index |
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185 | |
James Cairns is Associate Professor in the Contemporary Studies Department at Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford. He is the co-author with Alan Sears of A Good Book, In Theory (third edition, 2015) and The Democratic Imagination: Envisioning Popular Power in the Twenty-First Century (2012).
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