Society as a Mosaic of Age Cohorts

Sociologists routinely inquire about the age of the individuals they study. Just why they do so is more often implicit than explicit. Sometimes they intend only to compare the age distribution of their study samples with some reference population to assess representativeness; sometimes they intend to make comparisons between younger and older individuals on the assumption that chronological age continues to be a widely used sociological variable which has a poorly developed theoretical foundation. Talcott Parsons in the 1940s and S. N. Eisenstadt in the 1950s generated considerable speculation and even a little research on one particular age category, youth. In the early 1960s a group of investigators, principally psychologists and physiologists but including the sociologist E. W. Burgess, produced three significant handbooks on another particular age category, the elderly. Thus, in recent decades social and behavioral scientists have bracketed the adult years with speculation and research; but only recently have there been indications that students of youth and old age have much interest in each other or in the sustained development of theories of human aging and the life cycle. Matilda W. Riley and her associates, with the support of the Russell Sage Foundation, propose to develop a sociology of age stratification in this last of a three volume series on Aging and Society. Volume 1, an inventory of research findings, is a provocative, useful and fairly comprehensive report of research data on the age composition of society and the correlates of age. Tables from original sources are reproduced, along with critical annotations, a relevant bibliography, and suggestions for future research. Volume 2 is a collection of speculative essays by persons representing a wide variety of disciplines; these essays inquire into the theoretical and practical implications of the research findings reviewed in the first volume. Volume 3, which is the subject of this review, might be considered a collection of essays on the significance of age in sociological theory. The appearance of this volume must be applauded. It is long overdue and includes an impressive array of sociological talent. While Matilda Riley announces her intention to promote a "new field in sociology," she modestly notes that this volume moves toward a theory of age stratification; the formulation of a formal theory of age stratification belongs to the future. Her modesty is appropriate. Critics of this volume will surely observe that the data reviewed and the theory generated illustrate not only the past neglect of age as a significant variable in sociological theory and research but also suggest some possible explanations for that neglect. For after reading over 600 pages in this third volume alone, a reader simply must be impressed with how sparse adequate data on age stratification in our society are and with how tentative the theoretical speculations continue to be. Moreover, the book can only be described as heavy reading in spite of the principal author's conscientious attempts to provide overviews and summaries at strategic points. The book begins with perhaps a necessary but nonetheless tediously detailed presentation of terminology and basic methodological problems; it ends with a useful appendix on methodological strategies in cohort analysis. In between there is an uneven mixture of chapters by various authors on age in relation to politics, the workforce, community organization, higher education, the organization of science, friendship patterns, and the life course of individuals. While each of these chapters provides a reasonable review of relevant literature, they are, with notable exceptions, primarily descriptive and discursive; there is a minimum emphasis on the explicit derivation and critical application of empirically testable and tested propositions. The most obvious exceptions to this conclusion are found in chapters by Foner on politics and by Zuckerman and Merton on the age structure of science. And, interestingly, the data analyzed in these particular chapters invite the conclusion that age is not a particularly salient variable in understanding either