Social class in later life : Power, identity and lifestyle

Abstract

There lies a strong body of work emphasising the waning of class influence on ageing lives. Whilst Woodward goes as far as to state that along with race, gender and age are the most salient markers of social difference, the recently published Key Concepts in Social Gerontology includes no mention of class neither in the contents nor index. Nevertheless, the sociology of class is firmly located in, and around, the younger and adult ‘territories’ of the life course. Although lip-service is frequently paid to age as one of a number of bases of stratification, older people remain excluded from sociological studies of class, on the basis that their class-related characteristics are not sufficiently unique to undermine the logic of class analysis. In exceptional circumstances, the class position of older persons is commonly located through their final occupations before retirement. Whilst this strategy may have been valid in the past when most individuals died either before or soon after statutory retirement age, nowadays it is surely limiting to assume that one’s class career terminates with the onset of retirement considering that the latter normally signals the start of a ‘third ‘third age’ phase of life.