The Social Organization of Development and Age, I: Historical and Cultural Variations

Abstract

This chapter begins Section II of the volume. The prior chapters have made clear that variation in the patterning of development over the life course cannot be accounted for by the inherent characteristics of the human organism but are shaped by variations in the nature of the social context. This chapter offers a first installment on the importance of context by considering historical changes in the societal significance of age, focusing especially on the US and Europe. In both of these settings, the processes of bureaucratization and rationalization that accompanied industrial expansion brought a heightened awareness of age, and a heightened reliance on age as an organizing principle of society. With educational expansion and growing economic productivity, the resultant shifts led to the institutionalization of the life course, manifested in an increasingly standardized and age-graded regime comprised of the “three boxes” of schooling, work and retirement. In recent decades, a debate has arisen over evidence of a trend toward “deinstitutionalization”, arguably effecting growing precarity in the wider society. Cross-societal variations in life-course patterns are also briefly considered.