ABSTRACT
This chapter presents selected findings from comparative study of age inequalities and age relations in a broad range of nonindustrial societies. It outlines the kinds of rewards and valued roles the elderly can acquire in nonindustrial societies and discusses the impact of old people's high status on relations with the young. The chapter focuses on the privileged old– and on old people who can physically and mentally attend to their daily existence. It explores the kinds of social losses the old in different cultures experience and how this can create tensions with the young. The chapter considers some implications of analysis of age inequalities and age relations for a general approach to the study of age in nonindustrial societies. A perspective which emphasizes age as a basis of structured social inequality– or social stratification–opens up new lines of inquiry and highlights social processes that have received relatively little attention in cross-cultural studies of aging.
