ABSTRACT
This book is the product of our shared conviction that mainstream social gerontology has paid insufficient attention to the degree to which age and aging are socially constituted (Baars, 1991) and to the ways in which both age and aging are currently being transformed as a result of the set of social forces surrounding processes of globalization. The neglect of critical analysis has weakened attempts to understand the social processes involved in shaping age and the life course and, consequently, the creation of alternative conceptions and visions about the future of old age. This failure must itself be linked to general inadequacies of theory building within gerontology, a deficiency shared across both European and North American studies of aging (Bengtson & Schaie, 1999; Biggs, Lowenstein, & Hendricks, 2003; Birren & Bengtson, 1988; Lynott & Lynott, 1996).
