ABSTRACT
Much which has been written on old age tends to take a “snapshot” of individuals divorced from the context of the rest of their lives. Carroll Estes has described programmes for the elderly and professionals’ servicing of elderly clients as an “ageing enterprise” which treats the old as a commodity (Estes, 1979). She believes such age-segregated policies are socially divisive as they separate out the old from the rest of society. I would add that this “ageing enterprise” has also encouraged us to see the elderly as cut off from the rest of their lives - that is to say, as lacking a personal history. We need to get away from such “separatist” notions of old age and from the conceptual frameworks which developed as a result of the “ageing enterprise”.
