ABSTRACT
Although aging and ‘the burden of dependency’ continue to be issues which dominate the social-policy problems of the advanced industrial societies, the sociology of aging can be said to be in its infancy. An overview of textbooks and classics in sociology shows the paucity of genuine contributions to the study of aging in sociology. Although many introductions to sociology typically carry a chapter on population growth, very few sociologists have regarded the aging process as in any way central to sociology. Many classical introductions to sociology-Kingsley Davis, Human Society (1949), Ely Chinoy, Society (1961), Robert K.Merton et al. Sociology Today (1959), and W.F.Ogburn and Meyer F. Nimkoff, Sociology (1958)—have discussed aging briefly under ascriptive roles as a general aspect of social stratification. Similarly, although there have been important contributions to the study of generations by Karl Mannheim (1952) in ‘The problem of generations’ in 1928-9 and by S.N.Eisenstadt (1956) in From Generation to Generation, there are few comprehensive attempts to link the problem of generational changes with individual maturation. It is perhaps encouraging therefore that the most substantial statement of the core of (American) sociology, namely N.J.Smelser’s Handbook of Sociology (1988), has a chapter on ‘Sociology of age’, but The Social Science Encyclopedia (Kuper and Kuper, 1985) contains two rather minimal and old-fashioned entries under ‘Ageing-psychological aspects’, ‘Age organization’ and ‘Age-sex structure’. Finally, Michael Mann’s Student Encyclopedia of Sociology (1983) has ‘Age set. See rites of passage’.
