ABSTRACT
Lives as lived through time are the raw material for social science research on aging. Gerontologists who initially focused on the later years alone have returned old age to a life course context. Anthropologists, although they have seldom focused on the aged, see and describe life courses in a wide variety of cultural settings. The chapter presents these two perspectives to consider the life course as a variable cultural unit and as a perspective for cross-cultural research. In Western cultures, definitions of time are rooted in discoveries of the physical sciences, especially astronomy. In the United States, a sample of American adults did just that as they sorted through a card deck placing hypothetical people or social persona into the age categories they habitually used. Preliminary results of a search, through anthropological literature suggest general patterns of age differentiation, some of which counter common notions about the social significance of age.
