ABSTRACT
How old are you? Does it matter at work? Self-identity is intimately related to age and ageing. We often use date of birth as
part of our personal identification and we track the progress of our lives chronologically: we ‘have’ a certain age. At any one time we might also identify ourselves as young, old or middle-aged. Of course we might also disidentify ourselves in relation to certain ages – ‘I’m not old’ – with various degrees of vehemence. Who we are is also closely bound up with our life course and the experience it gives us. Ricœur (1992) refers to narrative identity – we can all tell a story of our lives and, to a large extent, this story is who we conceive ourselves to be. And yet this person is also someone who is changing over time. Even more than the other identities considered here, such as ‘race’, ethnicity and gender, age represents a shifting identity, requiring renegotiation and shifting identifications with others. As Bodily (1994) has argued, we use the concept of age in one of three direc-
tions: inward toward ourselves, outward towards those older than ourselves or outward towards those younger than ourselves. To this I would add a fourth orientation – outward towards those of a similar age. This latter type might well form the basis of identification with these others. In this chapter the issue of age and ageing is explored, dealing first with the issue of inequality. This is followed by a consideration of generations and then of the life course.
