Metaphors in Sociology of Age and the Necessity of Pretheoretical Basis

Abstract

The lack of a consolidated framework for conceptualizing age has led to the fact that sociology of age is now a bricolage of several disparate subdisciplines that study childhood, youth and old age separately. One of the effects of this fragmentation has also been sociology’s insensitivity to adulthood as an independent category rather than an auxiliary attribute of the individual. The existing age classifications simultaneously assume adults as typical, inheriting previous authorities, while at the same time adulthood and age elude sociologists’ attempts to define them. Before formulating fundamental concepts that can give the sociology of age coherence, we turn to the metaphorical logics that underlie current approaches to the study of different age groups, show their political background, and then propose our own version of a conceptual metaphor that might encourage sociologists to search for new sources of
heuristics.