Dale Dannefer

Aging as intracohort differentiation: accentuation the Matthew effect and the life course.

Recent contributions of sociologists and others have brought a new awareness and new theoretical understanding of the extent to which human aging and life-course patterns are shaped by social conditions and influenced by social change. Yet the potential of many social processes to account for individual aging patterns remains untapped, because research and theory have focused heavily upon comparisons between cohorts rather than the internal differentiation of cohorts. This paper shows that focusing upon intracohort differentiation over the life course leads to a mobilization of sociological findings whose age-related implications have not been exploited. Using the phenomenon of “aged heterogeneity” as an illustrative case, it is suggested that intracohort differentiation—operating through macro-level, organizational, and micro-level processes—can explain significant phenomena of aging previously neglected by theory, or else assumed to be psychological in origin. These processes specify Mertons “Matthew effect.” Implications for biological aging and for research are briefly discussed.

Development as a Multidimensional Process: Individual and Social Constituents

Efforts to integrate social and psychological aspects of development require more attention to explanatory processes, rather than normative age descriptions, and a conceptualization of the environment

Age, the Life Course, and the Sociological Imagination: Prospects for Theory

Publisher Summary Recent years have seen a range of new issues emerging to confront social science approaches to age and the life course (ALC). These include an expanding array of work on the life course in fields as diverse as health and criminology, the growing body of work on cumulative dis/advantage that problematizes the intersection of age and inequality, break-through understandings of biosocial interactions, and global population aging. This chapter discusses the aspects of the developments in the context of more general theoretical considerations. It opens up with a review of the place of theory in life course studies. Despite extensive evidence that development and aging are contingent and modifiable processes, even social and behavioral scientists share the popular idea that many kinds of individual change “inevitably happen” with age, and are therefore “explained” by age. Descriptive evidence pointing to age-related decline as a general trend for many individual characteristics probably sustains the plausibility of these ideas. There has been no shortage of sociological research that illustrates the impact of the immediate social circumstances on life course outcomes. As population aging becomes an increasingly global phenomenon even as globalization challenges the capacities of post-industrial societies to maintain policies that support growing elder populations, the organization and meaning of age may change again. The study of ALC faces an era of new possibilities, and with it new obligations, to exercise sociological imagination. Across multiple domains of research, policy, practice, and popular constructions, implicit theoretical assumptions organize and guide the understanding and consciousness concerning the nature and possibilities of age, development, and the life course.Publisher Summary Recent years have seen a range of new issues emerging to confront social science approaches to age and the life course (ALC). These include an expanding array of work on the life course in fields as diverse as health and criminology, the growing body of work on cumulative dis/advantage that problematizes the intersection of age and inequality, break-through understandings of biosocial interactions, and global population aging. This chapter discusses the aspects of the developments in the context of more general theoretical considerations. It opens up with a review of the place of theory in life course studies. Despite extensive evidence that development and aging are contingent and modifiable processes, even social and behavioral scientists share the popular idea that many kinds of individual change “inevitably happen” with age, and are therefore “explained” by age. Descriptive evidence pointing to age-related decline as a general trend for many individual characteristics probably sustains the plausibility of these ideas. There has been no shortage of sociological research that illustrates the impact of the immediate social circumstances on life course outcomes. As population aging becomes an increasingly global phenomenon even as globalization challenges the capacities of post-industrial societies to maintain policies that support growing elder populations, the organization and meaning of age may change again. The study of ALC faces an era of new possibilities, and with it new obligations, to exercise sociological imagination. Across multiple domains of research, policy, practice, and popular constructions, implicit theoretical assumptions organize and guide the understanding and consciousness concerning the nature and possibilities of age, development, and the life course.

Toward a Global Geography of the Life Course

From the beginning, social change has been a central theme of work in the life course tradition (Cain, 1964; Elder, 1974, 1975; Elder & Crosnoe, this volume; Giele & Elder, 1998). In the present historical moment, we are confronted with processes of social transformation and knowledge transformation that are likely to change the enterprise of life course studies itself. In this chapter, I sketch some dimensions of the present situation that may impel such change. This task necessarily assumes a reasonably clear statement of how one conceptualizes “the life course” as an area of study. As this volume powerfully attests, the life course area encompasses a richly diverse and sometimes incommensurate set of questions, methods and principles. Clearly, it is a term that embodies multiple intellectual perspectives.

Enriching the Tapestry: Expanding the Scope of Life Course Concepts

UANE Alwin is to be thanked for an ambitious effort to provide a systematic review of the diverse array of meanings of “life course” and related terms and to contrib-ute to the discussion of the possibilities of integration of this important but often unwieldy literature. It is an undertaking that invites reaction at many points. Of course, space pre-cludes a comprehensive response to the full range of ideas and issues Alwin presents. I limit my comment to three top-ics that warrant further attention: (a) the importance of the life course as a social institution, (b) the relation of the “life span” and “life course” concepts, and (c) the need to address what I have earlier identified as theoretical deficiencies that are common to both life span and life course perspectives.At the beginning of his essay “Integrating Varieties of Life-Course Concepts” (hereafter termed “IVLC”), Alwin counter-poses the risks that may be present when a single term is used to connote “a multiplicity of meanings that are at variance with one another” with the benefits that may come from a concept whose breadth offers “rich tapestry of different emphases.” I am sympathetic to Alwin’s caution of the dangers inherent in requiring a single term—life course—to carry a “multiplicity of meanings,” which is the more worrisome when the use of the term is accompanied by unexamined assumptions and a lack of consistency in explanatory objectives. In attempting to bring some order to this unwieldy domain, I applaud and appreciate the taxonomic and integrative objectives of IVLC. In this comment, I will note some significant arenas in which the formulation offered in IVLC needs to be extended in terms of conceptual scope, precision, and critical analysis.Although the array of terms, concepts, and issues intro-duced in IVLC do indeed represent quite a varied collec-tion, I must begin by taking note of the need to add yet even more “richness to the tapestry.” The task of integration pre-supposes that the components essential to the integrative ef-fort have been identified, and it is necessary to begin by pointing out at least one omitted but essential class of phe-nomena, which revolve around the concept of the life course as a social institution.

Opening the Social: Sociological Imagination in Life Course Studies

The life course perspective originated with the recognition that an adequate understanding of “lives through time” requires attention to the importance of social context. Since those origins, extensive evidence of ways in which context shapes and organizes life course outcomes has been presented. Yet the problem of formulating an adequate theoretical understanding of context’s role in life course processes and outcomes persists, and remains unresolved. This paper suggests that life course scholarship, even while paying attention to context, has frequently relied on theoretical assumptions based in functionalism that restrict exploration of the full explanatory power of social forces. Contextual factors are “contained” through what we term a functional-developmental nexus. We illustrate this tension by examining three domains of life course inquiry: (1) a consideration of the place of agency in life course studies, (2) research on the early life influences on the life course and (3) the study of gene-environment interactions over the life course.

The Continued Eclipse of Heterogeneity in Gerontological Research

Objectives. After a long history of neglect, diversity among older people and increasing heterogeneity with age are now familiar ideas in gerontological discourse. We take up the question of whether this increased attention is translating into the domain of empirical research. We replicate Nelson and Dannefers (1992) review of the treatment of age-based variability in gerontological research, the most recent known assessment of the issue. Method. A sample of empirical studies was drawn from six gerontological journals to determine (a) whether measures of within-age variability were reported and/or discussed and (b) if reported, the observed age-based pattern of variability in the outcome(s). Results. The majority of studies neither reported nor discussed age-based variability. Among those that did report, the great majority indicated either stability or increasing variability with age. Observed patterns varied by outcome type. Although a majority of analyses of psychological and social outcomes suggested that variability was stable across age, half of the analyses of biological/health outcomes indicated increasing variability. Overall, very few (3%) of studies suggested decreasing variability. Discussion. Consistent with earlier reports of studies, researchers continue to focus on average differences between age groups, yet key issues in social gerontology require attention to intra-age variability.

Experience, Social Structure and Later Life: Meaning and Old Age in an Aging Society

By definition the work of demographers entails not only analytical detachment but also the existential reductionism of personally momentous events to single datapoints. It may seem paradoxical that the assemblage of such discrete and singular bits of information for a society’s population can reveal patterns that provide key insights into the character of both intimate and complex aspects of individual experience and of cultural ideals. Indeed, it is not possible to understand social change in either the domains of the cultural (the collective symbolization of ideas and values) or the personal (the meaning-making processes and struggles within individuals’ everyday lives) without understanding demographic patterns and their role in shaping the domains of culture, value and individual opportunity. Nowhere can the impact of demographic patterns on ideas, values and meaning be more clearly seen than in the matter of human age. A discussion of the meaning of age and old age depends first of all upon a clear definition and theoretical understanding of meaning. Meaning can be defined as an actor’s interpretation of a phenomenon and its location in relation to other phenomena. It is a process by which the nature and significance of a phenomenon are identified, and this identification always and necessarily occurs in the context of an overall and more or less coherent Weltanschauung, a worldview, a cognitive system by which an actor organizes her world. The systems of symbols that comprise culture are inherently meaningful, and cultural symbol systems – the most universal and foundational form of which is language – are internalized by actors from their earliest interactions with other humans. Thus, meaning is inherently dynamic: meanings change as actors change their interpretation of a phenomenon in response to changed conditions. This is exactly what has happened to the meaning of age with the momentous technical and demographic changes of the past two centuries. It is not possible in the space of this brief paper to provide a comprehensive analysis of meanings attached to old age, nor to provide an exhaustive comparative or global perspective on the topic of meaning of late life. Our goal will be to examine meaning in relation to structural and demographic changes in aging in two distinct ways. First, we explore the meaning of old age, as the dynamic outcome of cultural and demographic developments that have resulted in a vibrant cultural ageism that reifies negative valuations of elders and old age and provides broad justification for the social marginalization and exclusion of elders. The meaning of old age is an element of culture that is broadly shared by all age groups. Second, meaning in old age focuses on the experience of being old – the embodied, experiential, active and dynamic process of human beings as they create and recreate meaning in relation to their age in their everyday lives and in micro-level interactions. We focus on how this process is socially constituted and situated within the context of a rapidly aging society that is permeated by a strong culture of ageism. In modern societies, social institutions tend to restrict activity and opportunity on the basis of age. As Matilda Riley put it, this entails structural lag, or society’s failure to provide opportunities that engage elders in ways that society could benefit from their Chapter 34 Experience, Social Structure and Later Life: Meaning and Old Age in an Aging Society

Right in Front of Us: Taking Everyday Life Seriously in the Study of Human Development

The need to pay attention to context has been a prominent theme in research on human development. Nevertheless, the empirical reality of the immediate context within which individuals develop has been largely ignored in research on human development. Therefore, my “one wish” is that the field begin to take seriously the processes that operate in the everyday social world. Doing so will help clarify three key principles: advance understanding: 1) diversity in developmental outcomes is largely socially organized; 2) “bi-directional” individual-context interactions are generally asymmetrical; 3) individuals are producers not only of themselves but also of the social world. While it shapes the development of individuals, the social world is also a human creation. These insights can assist developmental research in efforts to broaden its concern to focus on issues of social justice and the analysis of science itself as part of the social world, with cultural, political and ideological dimensions.

Long Time Coming, Not Here Yet: The Possibilities of the Social in Age and Life Course Studies

The advance of scientific knowledge and understanding proceeds through a continuous dialectic of multiple intellectual tensions – between theory and research, and sometimes practice, and between multiple and often competing conceptual and methodological paradigms within and across disciplines. At its best, scientific work entails an ongoing discourse of discovery and interpretation guided by logic and evidence, and yet it is also a discourse that is shaped unavoidably by the biographical experience and social location of individual researchers. “Making science” is a human process, located in a specific sociohistorical space, within the broader everyday life processes through which society is continuously reconstituted. Thus, it is epistemically incumbent on the researcher to consider carefully the impact of her own life history and social location upon her work. The editors of this volume are to be especially thanked for inviting essays that encourage such reflexive work – combining a view of the field of aging and life course studies with autobiographical particularity, which is what I shall attempt in this essay.