ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the age as a social dimension and the characteristics of age categories— in particular, the categories of child, teenager, youth, and early, middle, and late adult. Some of the species may feel that certain categories of age are most appropriately clustered with certain kinship and occupational categories. In the short history of America there has already been a succession of different nationalized dimensions and pivotal categories around which division and conflict have been organized. Relative to age in American technological society, the coincidence between it and territory is proceeding apace and is most spectacular in the host communities of the ever-expanding multiversities. Concomitant with the rise of youth ghettos has been a growth of rather age-homogeneous bands of territory ringing American cities. Nonetheless, conflicts between the age categories of a more limited but highly spectacular character are still possible, and even likely, under conditions of youth ghettoization.
