Aging

Anthropological interest in age initially followed two strands that reflected the divide between structural functionalism in the United Kingdom and Europe, and culture and personality in the United States. The former was most interested in the ways societies accorded status based on age. If viewed vertically, age could be seen as a series of statuses one occupied over the life course, structuring the normative timing of events that were important for social reproduction, such as the transition from childhood to adulthood, marriage, and elder status. These statuses entailed ritual, political, and economic obligations between age classifications such as rights of property, ritual knowledge, or political authority. Viewed horizontally, however, age grades or sets formalized bonds between cohorts, stabilizing solidarity across territory or kinship boundaries. American anthropologists, on the other hand, saw the cultural mapping of life-course trajectories as a way of testing emerging psychological theories of human development derived from psychoanalysis and behaviorism. By collecting evidence on the norms and behaviors for different age categories, as well as the social and psychological dynamics within and between age categories, these anthropologists enriched our understanding of the malleability of relationships between age and personality. While culture and personality is most commonly associated with the study of child and adolescent development, anthropology was also vital in bringing attention to the continued developmental changes in adulthood and old age. In both of these strands, cross-cultural comparison yielded strong evidence that age was not only a fundamental axis on which social life revolved but also that the boundaries between groups and the meanings of age were socially rather than biologically determined in the same way that anthropologists now think about gender or race. These strands were further brought together by theories of ritual, wherein age-related status also entailed powerful symbolic reordering of subjective experiences. Other anthropologists pointed out the inequalities and tensions between age groups in ways that highlighted cultural attempts to mediate conflicts. From the 1960s, anthropologists began efforts to promote their perspective within the emerging fields of social gerontology and medical anthropology. Thus, the study of old age began to focus more on the ways health care and modern social welfare systems impacted lives. Anthropology continues to challenge universalizing biomedical reductionism of age though attention to cultural context, narrative, identity, and personhood. It has been further enriched by theories of care, mobility, globalization, and science and technology studies.