Strauss and Howe’s ‘Turnings’ Model of U.S. History

In 1997, William Strauss and Neil Howe published their impactful book “The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy.”

Strauss and Howe observe recurring cycles in history, each lasting for approximately a generation of around 20–25 years. They call these cycles “turnings”, and outline a recurring pattern of four types of turnings: High, Awakening, Unraveling, and Crisis. According to their timeline, and a follow-up book published by Howe in 2023, we are currently in the midst of a period of crisis. (More on that in subsequent posts.)

The Cycle of Turnings

‘High’ turnings are periods of prosperity and strong institutions but also of conformity, such as the post-World War II era. ‘Awakening’ turnings are eras of increasing individualism and decreasing social order, such as the ‘consciousness revolution’ of the 60s. During ‘Unraveling’ times, individualism is celebrated, and institutions are weak; the ‘culture wars’ and ‘Gen-X’ cynicism of the 90s being a clear example. And ‘Crisis’ turnings are times of upheaval and major changes, like the Great Depression and World War II.

According to the authors, these turnings have rotated in a consistent cycle throughout the history that shaped the United States and throughout the country’s history to the present; shaping societal mood, behavior, and collective actions.

Driven by Shared Generational Values

Although the authors note that the observation of 80 to 100 year social cycles goes back through civilization, it is incorrect to interpret the “turnings” model as proposing some kind of natural law (like gravity) that forces a natural pattern into the working of society.

What the model actually exposes is that society will always have emerging challenges that require a collective response, and that the response will be driven by the shared and competing values and norms found in the culture of the time. It is the flow of such societal responses under changing generational norms in an iterative (and expanding) process of social learning from prior responses that creates a cyclical pattern.

Sometimes society responds collectively in progressive ways that value change of the old establishment, expansion and growth, and sometimes in conservative ways that seek safety or security in strong collective norms and powerful institutions. In either primary response of the majority-centered institutions of the culture, there is often a countervailing desire for a different response, that exerts pressure until it is also reckoned with. It is not universal law that sends humankind a cyclical pattern of history. It is simply a pattern of emerging generations dealing with what the prior generations put into the world before them and left them to work with, a cycle of self-imposed cause and effect.

Addressing Criticisms of the Model

The ‘turnings’ model proposed by Strauss and Howe has not been without criticism. Detractors argue that defining a whole generation by its commonalities oversimplifies and homogenizes the experiences and attitudes of the millions of individuals within that generation. Some critics simply view the idea of inevitable cycles of history as reductionist and even a denial of the role of human agency and randomness in shaping events. The accuracy of predicting future events based on this model has been questioned, given the numerous variables and factors that could influence societal changes.

In fact, all of these criticisms could generically be applied to any social model, so in the end do not uniquely undermine the value of this model.

Models Are Meant to Simplify

All models are simplified interpretations of reality. A model battleship does not contain all of the mechanics and ammunition of a real battleship at a smaller scale. A map never possesses the size or detail of the territory it describes. Maps fit whole forests into a few pixels on a phone screen. The map does not tell you what exactly you will see along the road you travel, or which deer you might come across in the forest, it simply shows you how roads connect across vast spaces, allowing you to find the correct roads to your destination. The value of a model is to show a simplified representation of an overarching structure that everyone understands contains a much more detailed reality.

There is certainly some ambiguity in when and where the cut points between one “turning” phase and another could be defined. But that does not undermine the model. It is simply a matter that can be debated using the model. And none of these criticisms undermine the model’s proposition that transitions from one phase to another do occur, they only raise some question around the exact moments at which they change — a level of precision that is not as important in social science as it might be to mechanical engineering problems.

Nature and Nurture

The model also does not appear to me to diminish the impact of randomness and human agency on history. In fact, it actually establishes that it is human agency in response to randomness that shapes the events in society which are later captured as history. What it does propose is the truly common-sense understanding that behavior arising from human agency involves a “nurture” or socialization aspect as well as a pure nature of individual agency.

It is naive to believe that the behaviors of a person arising from their individual agency are not in some part based in thoughts, values and motivations that are influenced by socialization through family, communities, institutions and media. The presence of human agency does not preclude the idea that the psychological drivers of many of these actions have social influences. For example, the impact of “peer pressure”, or “religious guilt” or “potential for social shame” (or “what would mom think”) on decisions made with full human agency are very commonly understood.

Randomness impacts each person every day — we are very commonly required to respond to factors we did not expect. We respond to these random occurrences with full subjective human agency within our unique personal circumstances, but the types of responses we take may be classifiable into models that recognize commonalities in how (generational) social values and norms shape responses. Randomness, human agency and a model that proposes social commonalities in how subjective agency expresses itself in response (and observes the social influences on that commonality) are not mutually exclusive.

All Predictions Have Disclaimers

Finally, to dismiss any model on the basis that it may lack precision in addressing the numerous variables and factors that could influence what it is predicting is basically to undermine prediction from any model. The future will always contain unknown factors that influence actual occurrences, as the frequent inaccuracy of most weather predictions shows. We do not stop predicting weather because it often makes mistakes predicting when exactly rain will start or end, or how severe the rain might be at 1000 yard intervals from the cetner of a storm (or where exactly that center will fall). We value weather prediction for the times it is generally enough correct to allow us to adequately prepare for what we get.

Of course there are many potential influences on the personal and social behaviors that will shape the social and cultural events of the present and near future. Of course not all influences on the emerging future can be predicted; many will appear to humankind as sudden and seemingly random influences requiring responses guided by human agency.

What is possible to predict by observing the culture of any time is the expected distribution of values and norms across the population, and the responses that are likely to emerge from such values and norms in interaction with social factors (commercial, technological and industrial development, population growth, global economic trends, popular themes of media and entertainment).

The Value of the Turnings Model

The “turnings” model gives us a powerful structure for exploring predictions about the future based on the understanding that shared socialization arising from response to past events creates cultural norms and values that influence present events, and that the response to present events and resulting outcomes evolves the norms and values that shape the next collective response. A cyclical pattern of societal understanding of its response to significant social influences that indeed, shapes the destinies of society.