Age Is (Not) Just a Word—A Bourdieusian Perspective on the Social Construction of Age, Ageing, and Generations

Abstract Mass media and sociopolitical and academic discourses on ageing are characterised by a diffuse and often essentialist use of the concepts of age, ageing, and generation. Based on an interview with Bourdieu on “Youth Is Just a Word” and philosophical reflections on the semantics of age and ageing, the social-ontological status of age and generation classifications as arbitrary segmentations of a temporal continuum will therefore first be discussed. However, the life phase of old age was not the focus of Bourdieu’s work, so his scattered statements on old age are too undifferentiated and stereotypical for an approach based on the sociology of ageing. In order to gain further building blocks for a critical gerontology “with Bourdieu and beyond him”, additional sociological and gerontological perspectives on the social construction of age are presented. On this foundation, a model of the dialectic of symbolic and material constructions of age is presented, which regards “age” as a symbolic means for the field-specific inclusion and exclusion of individuals, “ageing” as a lifelong process of opening and closing life chances, and “generations” as socially constructed groups of adjacent age cohorts that compete for access to resources and social positions. The social construction of age, ageing, and generations is conceived of as an institutional, cultural, interactional, and individual process that builds on the material and physical basis of class-specific living conditions and in turn influences and changes them.