In the their article "Generation, Youth and Social Change in Australia" (Wyn & Woodman 2006), the authors set out a rationale for considering the issue of young people and social change through the lens of "social generation". This approach places renewed emphasis on the historical context within which different cohorts of young people negotiate their lives, locating the experience and meaning of both youth and adulthood within particular historical, social and political contexts. The concept of social generation (Mannheim 1952) can be used as a marker for the processes and outcomes of certain forms of being and of possible subject positions. Mannheim expanded his concept of generational consciousness by proposing that each social generation includes a number of age cohorts or generational units, which are the groups that react in different ways due to their different social position within the social generation. This suggests a way to move beyond seeing a social generation as a group who share a particular homogeneous value set. The authors contrasted this generational approach with what they called the "transitions" perspective, which they argued has too readily assumed that shifting patterns are simply age effects, and uses, often a-historically, the previous social generation as the standard against which the new generation is measured, and hence tends towards discovering "delayed" "extended" or "failed" transitions. In his response to the authors' article, Roberts defends the transitions paradigm. He identifies three main points on which he disagrees with the article. Here, the authors focus on these three points: (1) the extent of change in the nature and meaning of youth transitions in the post-1970 generation; (2) the significance of subjectivities; and (3) what counts as evidence, which all highlight important issues for the wider field of youth studies.