ABSTRACT
Specific openings to critical reflection are built into gerontology by its methodological commitment to scientific inquiry. They include critical reflection on the factual accuracy of popular beliefs, the logical and empirical accuracy of theories, the interpretive adequacy of explanations, and the validity and reliability of measurements. Social gerontology has been criticized as being too concerned with practical issues and problems confronting the aged. The political economy approach has emerged at a border area between social gerontology and the neo-Marxian critical theory tradition in sociology. The explanatory schema of the approach has three levels. The first two levels are conceptually continuous with Marxian; the third level borrows heavily from symbolic interaction theory in interpretive sociology. The chapter provides objectivist preconstructions in political economy analysis. By refracting the preconstructions of standard gerontology through its own preconstruction of capitalism, political economy recreates them, becoming not only an approach to gerontology but an accommodated approach within it.
