On the Significance of Age in Sociology

A sociology of age provides an analytical framework for understanding the interplay between human lives and changing social structures. Its mission is to examine the interdependence between (1) aging over the life course as a social process and (2) societies and groups as stratified by age, with the succession of cohorts as the link connecting the two. This special field of age draws on sociology as a whole and contributes to it through reformulation of traditional emphases on process and change, on the multiple interdependent levels of the system, and on the multidimensionality of sociological concerns as they touch on related aspects of other disciplines.