1. No category

INT'L. J. AGING AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, Vol. 9(2), 1978-79
NOTES FOR A RADICAL GERONTOLOGY*
VICTOR W. MARSHALL
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario
md
Department of Behavioural Science
Community Health
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
JOSEPH A. TINDALE
Department of Sociology
York University
Toronto, Ontario
ABSTRACT
The predominant theoretical perspectives in social gerontology reflect a normative
bias toward adjustment of aging individuals to the society. This bias is reinforced
through the methodological predelictions of most gerontologists. We outline the
premises of a radical scholarship for gerontology which would provide an alternative, illustrating from selected works. A radical scholarship in gerontology would
avoid the individualistic and adjustment biases, and would recognize that life in
society is characterized by conflict, negotiation and compromise over politicoeconomic and other interests. Methodologically, it would seek to explicate the
interests and aspirations of the aged in their own terms, and as relevant in the
socio-historical context.
In this paper we critique the mainstream perspectives in social gerontology for
their normative, or sociology of order assumptions [ 1 , 21 ; and we present the
outlines of a radical scholarship as a desired alternative. The latter approach
will be illustrated by reference to selected works. Increasingly, gerontologists
are questioning the usefulness of the dominant theoretical approaches to the
sociology and social-psychology of aging and are turning to a variety of
*This is an extensively revised version of a paper presented in the symposium: Critical
Thoughts on Age and Aging, 28th Annual Scientific Meeting, Gerontological Society,
Louisville, Kentucky, October 30, 1975.
163
0 1978, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.
doi: 10.2190/HP55-38QW-GMU1-88GF
http://baywood.com
164 I V. W. MARSHALL AND J. A. TINDALE
humanistic, critical, and radical perspectives. Our intention is to enter the
dialogue on issues emerging from this theoretical turmoil, and to contribute
some ideas which might help to construct an alternative gerontology. Our first
task is to characterize our disease concerning the state of gerontological theory.
Then we will discuss the elements of a radical alternative to gerontological
scholarship, illustrating with reference t o some promising work which has
recently emerged. There is as yet little radical scholarship in gerontology.
The Sources of Our Dis-Ease:
Gerontology as a Tinkering Trade
Despite its concern with life-and-death matters, we have found gerontology
rather dull and irrelevant. The problem, we feel, lies in the paradox that,
gerontology is both individualistic and neglectful of genuine human concerns.
Let us address these criticisms in turn.
Gerontology is individualistic. The life course of an individual is usually
seen as determined by individual or personal factors [3]. In reviewing the
literature, Kuypers [3] notes:
. . . a number of investigators have been interested in intra-psychic
changes and alterations which follow developmental principles . . .
Changes and reorderings of thought and personality are sought
independent of social and other environmental events. Here the assumption is that certain human functions have their own trajectory of
development and emerge without the impetus of external stimulation.
The changes studied in adulthood often have an existential quality . . .
or an interpersonal focus . . . and often appear to be primarily
intrapsychic.
’
The aging individual’s morale or life satisfaction, adjustment t o the social
system [5, 61, (e.g., [7-lo]), or integration with it, (e.g., [ I ] , 121) provide
the key themes of social gerontology. Reviewing the state of the field in the
sociology of aging, Shanas says, “Much of the recent work is concerned with
how old persons are integrated into the social system and how the family,
friends, and work serve to effect such integration.” [13] The social environment of the aging individual is usually seen in microcosmic terms such as
role-relationships, or the individual’s family or friendship ties. The overwhelming thrust of gerontology in practice, and gerontological theory, concerns
the adaptation or adjustment of aging individuals to the prevailing social
reality. This social reality is almost always seen as systemic or self-regulating.
This is most evident in disengagement theory [14], but is also the case with
activity theory approaches. In Rose’s caricature of disengagement theory [14] :
Society and the individual always seek to maintain themselves in
’
See the discussion of this point in Marshall, as it applied particularly to egopsychological studies [ 4 ] .
NOTES FOR A RADICAL GERONTOLOGY /
165
equilibrium and avoid disruptions . . . the death of an older person is
not disruptive to the equilibrium of a society. . . .
Disengagement theory is based on a metaphor of equilibrium lost (with aging)
and regained (with adjustment). Activity theory is based on a metaphor of a
continuing, or moving equilibrium in which the individual seeks to maintain
his feelings of self-worth (morale) through continuing high levels of activity
with others. Activity theory postulates as normal those persons who continue
to “reflect a commitment to the ethic of personal-worth through-social-utility
(i.e., productivity) prevalent in American society.” [15] The adjusted aging
American is the “rugged individualist.” [16, p. 431 We draw here on the work
of Kuypers and Bengtson, who are highly critical of activity theory [3, 15-17].
Rugged individualists make it in the system, and so do those who are ready
and willing t o adjust (we think here of the inner- and other-directed man [18] ).
The unstated implication in all this theorizing is that this system is basically
good. Its flaws are minor, and with a bit more gerontological tinkering, it can
be made to be better.)
Gerontology, then, is a “tinkering trade” [19] engaged in repair work. It
focuses on individuals, and on how they might adjust (be adjusted?) to the
on-going system. It seldom considers the necessity for serious change in that
system itself.
We have suggested also that gerontology neglects genuine human concerns.
Our reservations here are both substantive and methodological. Substantively,
we believe that gerontologists should abandon any pretense of value-neutrality
(few of us make that pretense in any case). Although this should be obvious,
criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper necessitate our adding that in
arguing against a pretense of value-neutrality, we are not looking for facts to
fit an ideologically distorted theory, but rather are asking that researchers
recognize both where they are coming from and where they are going. We
should seriously decide if the emphasis on attitudind features of old age, on
the quest for “life satisfaction” or high morale is not too strong. Examining
the field of gerontology from 1939-1971, King and O’Toole I201 note:
Through time, life satisfaction, social adjustment, and personal
adjustment has been the favored topic in social gerontology, to the
extent that there is a preference.
This, they note, is particularly true since 1950, with a peak in 1967. Gerontologists are a scale-happy lot, it seems, and when they conduct variable
analysis, they select as their dependent variables things that can be measured
by scales on sample surveys: attitudes, values, and dispositions [20]. King and
O’Toole’s analysis is invaluable for characterizing the research in this field.
They found dispositional, rather than structural, properties taken as dependent
variables in over 70 per cent of research reports in the 1960’s which employed
variable analysis, based on publications of 100 sociologists publishing in
gerontology [21]. By far the most popular methodology is the questionnaire
166 / V. W. MARSHALL AND J. A. TINDALE
and/or the survey and, as King and OToole show, that methodology is
increasing, while the utilization of documents, or of direct observational
techniques, is decreasing. This is not surprising, given that survey research
requires heavy funding, and the increase in the utilization of this methodology
has coincided with increased government funding [20].
Survey research and the study of the attitudes of the aging may perhaps
be thought of as a commendable attempt to obtain the participants’ own
definitions of their situation and perspectives on their problems. We will
address that point later in this paper. For the moment, however, we suggest
that the emphasis on psychological dispositions which is related to the survey
methodology deflects attention away from the structural properties affecting
the lives of the aging. Public issues become reduced to private troubles [22].
As Mills puts it [22, p. 81 :
Tkoubles occur within the character of the individual and within the
range of his immediate relations with others; they have to do with his
self and with those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and
personally aware. Accordingly, the statement and the resolution of
troubles properly lie within the individual as a biographical entity. . . . A
trouble is a private matter. . . . Issues have to do with matters that
transcend these local environments. . . with the organization of many
such milieux into the institutions of an historical society as a whole,
with the ways in which various milieux overlap and interpenetrate to
form the larger structure of social and historical life. An issue is a public
matter. . . .
Radical Scholarship in Gerontology
Having briefly outlined our unhappiness with the field, let us now attempt
to characterize a radical scholarship in gerontology. We recognize the
ambiguities and the political connotations of the term, “radical.” The terms
“critical” and “humanistic” have been suggested to us as alternatives. Although
there is considerable overlap between critical and radical sociology [23, ch.
111 , the term “critical sociology” has come to refer t o the so-called “Frankfurt
School,” which has a more narrow connotation than we desire. The term
“humanistic” lacks the political-economic connotations which we consider
important. Colfax, for example, distinguishes between four types of radical
scholarship in sociology [24] . Gerontologists have debated the question,
“what is radical gerontology?” at least since 1973 [25]. As Lind indicates:
There are some who conceive of Radical Gerontology as an
intellectual and academic enterprise: thinking about the implications of
current gerontological research on society as a whole. Others are more
interested in developing strategies to implement changes on a broad scale,
in the values of society, or more narrowly, in the structure of the
Gerontological Society itself [ 251.
NOTES FOR A RADICAL GERONTOLOGY I 167
In advocating a radical scholarship in gerontology, we call for an approach
which incorporates the following premises:
1. any understanding of the processes of aging as experienced by
individuals must include an awareness of the historical context in which
they have grown old;
2. the historical context includes social, political, and economic realities
which both shape the lives of individuals and are shaped by individual
and collective action;
3. social processes are not characterized by any inherent tendency toward
equilibrium ;
4. interaction between individuals, groups and classes frequently rests on
disparities of interests, giving that interaction a character of negotiation,
conflict, and compromise; and rendering precarious any sense of
stability in the relations among individuals or more macro social entities;
5. there is therefore no inevitable harmony between the “individual” and
“society.” There can be no assumption of widely shared values or
b‘consensus’’;
6. it follows that any conceptualization of individuals being “socialized” or
led t o “adjust” to society (or to shared values) would lead t o a
distorted, and highly abstract, conception of reality.
Beyond these premises, which constitute a theoretical commitment within
sociology, we argue that a radical gerontologist ought to display a commitment to the “constituency” of the aged. Specifically,
7. Rather than view aging and the aged through theoretically preordained
categories, our understanding of the processes of aging should be derived
from the perspectives and realities of the aged themselves;
8. when the interests and aspirations of the aged and aging are found to
conflict with the realities of the social, political, and economic context
in which they live, we should address the question of adjusting the
societal context to the aging individual rather than adjusting the aging
individual to the societal context;
9. since conceptions of the world for everyone, including gerontologists,
are influenced to some extent by the individual’s social location, “It
must be stressed that knowing is always a relation between knower and
known. The knower cannot therefore be collapsed into the known. To
know is always to know on some terms. . . . There is no other way to
know than humanly, and therefore as the knower is situated historically
and culturally. . . . If to be situated as such entails ideology, (indeed if
to be human entails ideology) then knowledge is fundamentally
ideological.” [26] Gerontologists ought to explicitly address the research
dilemmas which follow from the discrepancy between professional and
168 I V. W. MARSHALL AND J. A. TINDALE
sponsoring constituencies and the constituency of the research
“subjects”-the aged.
A radical gerontology is thus a gerontology for constituents, i.e., for old
people. But this is not enough. Gerontology is already a highly moralistic
discipline, in ways of which we approve. This can be confirmed by a quick
reading of editorials in The Gerontologist, or of briefs by officers of the
Society before the Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate. This is
a commendable form of “applied” gerontology, but it is only of service to
older people if it reflects their interests and aspirations.
Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes the difference between the
applied gerontology we now have and the radical gerontology we now seek as
the distinction made by Gouldner between radical and liberal sociologists.
While we differ with Gouldner on a number of points, we tend t o agree with
the following [27] :
. . . radical sociologists differ from liberals in that, while they take
the standpoint of the underdog, they apply it to the study of overdogs.
Radical sociologists want to study “power elites,” the leaders, or masters,
of men; liberal sociologists focus their efforts upon underdogs and
victims and their immediate bureaucratic caretakers.
“The epistemological dimension of radical scholarship takes into account
and makes explicit the reflexive nature of inquiry . . . it further recognizes
that the very terms and language of inquiry shape understanding. . . .” [24,
pp. 87-88] A radical gerontology, in contrast to applied gerontology, will
reject positivistic formulations and seek to develop an understanding of the
aging process and the aged which is neither ahistorical nor asocial. It will
employ a radical methodology, the beginnings of which are actively debated
within sociology at present, and which are finding their way into gerontology
as well, with the work of symbolic interactionist and phenomenological
gerontologists. Colfax [24] notes,
A radical methodology incorporates the contributions of what might
be loosely termed the cognition theorists-persons as diverse as
Wittgenstein, Husserl, Mannheim, Merleau-Ponty, and, of course, the
symbolic interactionists. The dialectic of action and analysis provides a
grounding for an extension of the apolitical paradigms of cognition
theorists ranging from idealists such as Berger and Luckmann to
phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists such as Garfinkel. . . .2
These are the reflexive sociologies and social-psychologies, drawing on
symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, and the Marxist insight that concrete
human beings construct their world through their labor. “. . . Marx the social
For an explicit account of the relation between these “cognition theorists” and
Marxism, see Ropers [ 281 .
NOTES FOR A RADICAL GERONTOLOGY / 169
structuralist and Mead the social psychologist can indeed ‘shake hands’ in
sociology. Both believe in man as maker of society and history and share the
conviction that free men in life-nourishing groups can build progressively more
humane and more just social institutions.” (C. H. Anderson [29] as cited in
Ropers [28]). The non-reflexive methodologies, with their emphasis on
attitudinalscaleable dimensions of consciousness abstracted from concrete
situations give us a portrayal of a hypothetical here in an instantaneous now.
There is no human reality and no historical reality.
As Decker has recently pointed out, by focusing on the age-relatedness of
problems such as poverty, gerontological research tends to deflect attention
away from issues of social class [30]. In the advanced capitalist societies the
aged are deprived of a role in the mode of production, but retain important
roles as consumers. While traditional class analysis does not apply neatly to the
aged, we agree with Decker that attempts at class analysis should be made in
gerontology. For example, the theory that the aged w
ill come to constitute a
cohesive minority group or subculture [31, 321, and the theory that a new
generation of the “young-old’’ [33, 341 is arising, rest on different views of
groupconsciousness, and each postulates a different economic situation for the
aged of the future; yet neither position has been evaluated using a methodology
of class analysis. We feel that the theoretical commitments of a radical
gerontology demand a methodology oriented to the long-run as well as to the
short. Class analysis rests on an assumption that history can be ignored only
with peril.
Most gerontological theory has been a-structural and non-reflexive. The
result, in concrete terms, has been a situation where we read either positivistic
sociology devoid of history and social reality, or are treated to studies of
applied sociology done (supposedly)for, rather than with the aged as a
constituency. An exception is the University of Southern California research
project, “Socio-cultural contexts of aging,” which has aged, including minority
group members, on its steering group, and which supplements survey research
with participant observation in an effort to ensure that the perspectives of the
aged themselves are taken into account. See Bengtson and associates [35].
In summary, we believe future research in gerontology has to relate the
realities of constituents’ lives to the social structure in whch they live. This,
we feel, involves recognizing a conflict reality which is best understood in
terms of conflict theory, most probably a dialectically developed Marxism,
which focuses on the relationships between individuals and social structures.
Research moving in this direction takes gerontology away from the focus on
personality. We are not arguing against the social psychological concerns of
gerontology. Aging is an individual as well as a collective phenomenon. What
is needed, we feel, is more research on interpersonal interaction in face-to-face
situations, but cast in processual terms, and situating the individual in terms
relating to an environment historically understood. Also needed are more
170 I V. W. MARSHALL AND J. A. TINDALE
studies of the political economy of aging, which will restore a sense of context
to our understanding of the lives of today’s aged, and especially inform us
concerning the socioeconomic forces influencing the psychological processes
of aging.
In Illustration of the Above
We will now attempt to descend from the abstract heights of our discussion
above, and illustrate, by reference to selected works, the promise of a radical
geron toIogy.
One of the few gerontologists to emphasize the importance of historical
experiences of any aging cohort has been Leonard Cain [ 3 6 ] .He utilized
demographic and labor-force data, as well as descriptions of life-style and the
“temper of the times” to argue that the generation born just after the turn of
the century is qualitatively different in a number of respects from the generation who were born just prior to the turn of the century. The experience of
old age, Cain argues, must therefore be different for any cohort, depending on
its historical experiences. Cain summarizes concerning these people born just
after the turn of the century, saying that the cohort:
. . .in many ways has been a “favored” generation. Its members have
not had to fight a war. They may have fared better than any other age
group during the Depression. This is the cohort which filled the lucrative
defense jobs of World War I1 and which has continued to ride the crest
of probably the longest period of uninterrupted prosperity in the nation’s
history. This cohort had fewer children to educate and more double
paychecks than any other cohort to date [ 3 6 ] .
Cain refrains from making a theoretical analysis, but his contribution is
invaluable in suggesting one kind of scholarship we think important:
What all this means for the status of the aged in these next few years
I cannot tell, but it is obvious that gerontologists need very much to ask
new types of questions, to develop new methods and to use their
imagination in.new ways if the aged are to be served.
In a similar analysis restricted to understanding the present situation of
aged indigent men, Tindale had to take into account their experience of the
depression, as mediated through their concrete work situations and the ways
in which their disrupted work histories affected family life [37].
Kenneth Bryden, a political economist, has studied old-age pension and
policy-making in Canada, and he makes clear the political basis behind the
Canadian Government’s posture toward pension policy, which, we think, can
be seen as a form of class conflict. His argument in a nut-shell is that a market
ethos has prevailed through-out the historical development of Canadian private
and public pensions in the minds of policy makers and the business lobbies
NOTES FOR A RADICAL GERONTOLOGY I 171
[38, pp. 19-24]. Rooted in thoughts of the pioneer existence, characterized
by possessive individualism [39], government responded to claims that
individuals should be self-sufficient in old age, ignoring the fact that this was
possible only for a minority. Pensions in Canada have typically been treated as
a form of welfare, with recipients stigmatized in a fashion similar to the stigmatization of those who receive other government transfer payments (for the
U.S.see Piven and Cloward, [40]). Bryden makes coherent the historical
development of policy in his argument that government structuring of the
Canada Pension Plan in 1965, and later revision, militates against any
downward redistribution of national income either in terms of recipients of
benefits or burden of contributions throughout the work phase of the life
cycle [38, pp. 206, 2101.
To take another Canadian example, we turn to Daniel Baum’s analysis of
the place of the old in Canada’s social structure [41]. He grounds his analysis
historically, tracing a collaboration of industry and unions in maintaining age
discrimination against the older worker; and he demonstrates the doublejeopardy of ageism and sexism which afflicts women in particular. Baum
outlines structural alternatives that “would require radical restructuring of
practices and institutions in this society,” including the elimination of the
pension system as it presently exists, and eradication of traditional notions of
the work-retirement sequence. There is a great deal of the visionary in Baum’s
argument (he presents a model utopia on pp. 13-14); but more important for
our purposes, we commend his historical approach and insistence on looking
at the structural sources of the poverty and restricted life opportunities of old
age. He advocates changing the system, rather than changing people to fit the
system that presently exists.
Sharon Curtin is not a sociologist and would not we think, call herself a
gerontologist (although she does call herself a radical [42, p. 1301). We wodd
like, however, to cite her critique of existing gerontology. She writes [42, pp.
217-2181 :
There is a prestigious Senate Committee on Aging which holds
frequent hearings . . . But I wonder what all this activity really amounts
to . . . They just keep saying over and over, “Ain’t it awful. . . .” I see
nothing new coming from the politicians . . . (they, and others) and the
eminent gerontologist-sociologist-psychologist,all suffer from the same
blindness and poverty of imagination. They would reduce all the
problems of old age into one little package that could be solved with
more money.
Curtin’s methodology, as a working journalist, is highly reflexive, and
comes as close to our ideals as that of anyone now working in the field of
gerontology: she goes out and lives with old people, or in direct relation with
them. Combined with her patent loyalties to the constituency of older people,
172 I V.
W.MARSHALL AND J. A. TINDALE
this methodological approach has allowed her to feel the indignities of old age
more adequately than most gerontologists, providing a radical scholarship of
enormous value t o working gerontologists. Beeson argues that the same
theoretical and methodological flaws of gerontology to which we have alluded
have led to an inaccurate portrayal of the aging process as easier or smoother
for women than for men [43]. She notes that journalistic accounts tend to
portray a negative view of aging for women: “Students of aging cannot help
but be struck by the contrast between journalistic and scholarly accounts of
the female experience of aging.’’3
Despite the value of their analyses, what Cain, Curtin, Bryden and Baum
lack is a coherent theoretical perspective linking the micro-situations of old
people with the macro-structures of our society. Just as the objectives of the
women’s movement, the problems of poverty, and other phenomena of this
nature cannot be solved in isolation, neither can humane aging be achieved in
isolation from the surrounding system.
Conclusion
Included in the statement of “purpose of the research” of a recent, and
major, study of aged homeless men, the authors outline the theoretical and
practical purposes of their extensive project. With, we hope, tongue in cheek,
they write as follows [47, p. 41 :
With respect to practical policy, we hoped t o provide a body of
information about homeless men that would be useful to the public and
private agencies responsible for rehabilitating, supporting, repressing, and
protecting them.
This statement can be most charitably interpreted as a typographical error; or
as a joke. If a joke, we find it in bad taste. Ano‘ther charitable interpretation
is to view the statement as a declaration of value-neutrality: “we just gather
the data; d o with it as you will.” The broader intention for which their
project was conducted was, the authors make clear elsewhere, t o provide data
useful in the rehabilitation of homeless men. This is a good example of the
“adjustment” ethic of gerontology. It is a good example because the work
itself is fine: it employs a triangulation strategy which utilizes not only survey
research, and analysis of archival data, but participant observation and lifehistory interviews, in an attempt t o formulate the view that these men have of
their own situation. What is not subjected to scrutiny is the society which
furnishes the conditions leadkg these men into such careers. We are better
able to administer these “old men drunk and sober” because of this research;
but is that the most we can ask of our craft of gerontology?
For valuable “journalistic” accounts see Lynn Caine’s description of her widowhood
[44] and Simone de Beauvoir’s account of the death of her mother [45]. On Beeson’s
general point of the neglect of women, see also Fengler [46].
NOTES FOR A RADICAL GERONTOLOGY
I 173
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NOTES FOR A RADICAL GERONTOLOGY I 175
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are grateful for comments on that version, received from Vern Bengtson,
Melissa Clark, and Rhoda Howard. This paper is fully collaborative.
Direct reprint requests to:
Victor W.Marshall
Department of Behavioural Science
Community Health
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A8
Canada