Human Clocks: The Bio-cultural Meanings of Age

Front Cover
Claudine Sauvain-Dugerdil, Henri Léridon, C. G. N. Mascie-Taylor
Peter Lang, 2006 - Medical - 349 pages
Age is a complex cross-cutting notion for at least two reasons: the intricate interweaving of its biological and socio-cultural meanings and its dual significance as both a benchmark in an individual's life course and a foundation for social structure.
This book offers new perspectives on age and ageing by combining achievements in the biological sciences and their different applications and interpretations in demography, anthropology, psychology and other pertinent disciplines. Thirty contributors from these various fields revisit the measures and the biological models of ageing, the borderline between normal and pathological ageing, the pertinence of chronological age as a benchmark along the life course, its interrelations with psychological development, with reproductive phases and other life events, the «normalizing» role ascribed by age classes and the risk of falling into ageism, the cross-cultural diversity and temporal changes of its meanings, the gender divide (real and perceived), as well as the rights that should be enjoyed at each age.
 

Contents

Reproduction as a Marker of the Stages of Life
23
Measuring Biological Ageing
41
Biological and Genetic Theories of the Process
61
A Case Study
85
The Age Variable in Cognitive Developmental Psychology
101
Ages Life Courses Life Event History Analysis
125
Statistical Analysis and Modeling Perspectives
145
The Psychosocial Meanings of a Biological Transition
201
The Scale of Social Organization
223
Demographic Categories Revisited Age Categories
245
Cultural and Social Perception of the Gender and Agebased
271
A Matter of Female Choice?
289
Errors and Manipulations in Age Assessment
313
The Ethical and Legal Aspects of Age
337
Copyright

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