ABSTRACT

In looking at the academic literature on old age and elderly people, I developed a dissatisfaction that forms the intellectual and professional motivation for writing this book. The treatment of elderly people and the ageing process in contemporary social theory is extremely limited and the treatment of age as a basis for inequality in British sociological literature is almost non-existent. How have those studying elderly people and old age sought to explain the latter’s social significance? In particular how, and to what extent, can we draw on these ideas to understand the issues of inequality? And is the inequality experienced by older people the result of mechanisms that also generate more general social inequalities? The major branches of social thought on ageing and inequality can be classified into the following broad social theories: social biology; disengagement theory; the political economy of old age; structured dependency; and age stratification. Issues of social biology were dealt with in Chapter 5. This chapter will concentrate on theories that have a social character rather than biological or cultural explanations.