Sociology of age.

Sociology of age is both 1) aging over the life course as a social process and 2) age as a structural feature of changing societies and groups as both people and roles are differentiated by age. This chapter describes the emerging special field of sociology that crosscuts other sociological fields and shows how these 2 clearly distinct topics are interdependent. Neither can be understood without the other. Aging processes and age structures form a system of interdependent parts an "age stratification system." The emerging understandings of aging processes changing age structures and the complex interplay between them are illustrated in this chapter by both old and new sociological studies. Following the introduction of a conceptual framework for use in locating the works under review the chapter arbitrarily arranges the discussion of age stratification systems in 3 sections. Studies on aging or the "life course" focus on individuals whose lives are shaped through interactions with the social structures. Studies on age structure focus on age structure of roles - changing as society changes - in which age defines the social locations of people alive at any given time. Linking these 2 sets of studies are studies of cohort flow as cohorts of people born at the same time not only express changing patterns in the aging process but also form the structures of people who occupy the various roles in the age strata.