Table Of ContentSocial Identities across the Life Course
Social Identities
across the Life Course
Jenny Hockey and Allison James
© Jenny Hockey and Allison James 2003
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First published 2003 by
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ISBN 978-0-333-91283-6 hardback
ISBN 978-0-333-91284-3 ISBN 978-1-4039-1399-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4039-1399-9
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hockey, Jennifer Lorna.
Social identities across the life course/Jenny Hockey and Allison James.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-333-91283-6 (cloth) — ISBN 978-0-333-91284-3 (paper)
1. Aging—Social aspects. 2. Aging—Psychological aspects. 3. Group
identity. I. James, Allison. II. Title.
HQ1061 .H556 2002
305.26—dc21 2002026752
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
For all our sources and our successors,
especially Joan (b. 1922) and Blue (b. 2001)
Contents
PART I: STRUCTURE, AGENCY AND THE LIFE COURSE
1 Problematising Ageing and Identity 3
Introduction 3
Age and the life course 5
Identities across the life course 9
The process of age identification across the life course 12
Relations of power across the life course 15
Conclusion 20
2 The Structuring of Age 22
Introduction 22
Rites of passage 24
Constructing the life course socially 27
Structuring identities across the life course 31
Disciplinary orientations: rites of passage, the life cycle
and the life course 34
Conclusion 37
3 The Experience of Time’s Passage 39
Introduction 39
The temporality of the life course 40
The body, age and agency in the life course 45
Temporal experience spatialised 52
Conclusion 54
PART II: UNDERSTANDING THE WESTERN LIFE COURSE
4 Histories of the Life Course 57
Introduction 57
Changing conceptions of age in the life course 60
A working life? 64
Ideologies of the life course 66
vii
viii Contents
Age and citizenship across the life course 72
Conclusion 75
5 The Making of Life-course Histories 77
Introduction 77
A critical lack of fit 78
‘Age’ as discourse 82
Life histories, history and the life course 85
Representing the life course in time and space 89
Conclusion 95
6 Postmodern Lives? 98
Introduction 98
Standard life? 99
Non-standard lives? 101
Lifestyles and life strategies? 106
The age of the body 109
Diverse lives? 111
Adulthood in prospect 114
Conclusion 115
PART III: EMBODYING THE LIFE COURSE
7 Revitalising the Life Course 119
Introduction 119
Towards the embodiment of identity 121
The body as the site of identification 126
The embodiment of age 128
Sites of ageing 132
Embodiment and identification 135
Conclusion 137
8 Gender, Sexuality and the Body in the Life Course 139
Introduction 139
Constructing sexual identities 141
Gendering sexual inequality across the life course 144
Gendered bodies across the life course 147
Gender in longevity? 151
Choice and identity across the life course 153
Conclusion 155
9 Family Sociality across the Life Course 157
Introduction 157
Family structures and social roles 159
Contents ix
Familial roles and familial identities 163
Dependency, independence and interdependence 166
Homes and families 172
Conclusion 176
10 Production and Consumption across the Life Course 178
Introduction 178
Becoming modern 180
Citizenship and work 184
Rethinking modernity 186
Postmodernity, work and consumption 190
Conclusion 197
11 Time, Memory and the Life Course 199
Introduction 199
Individual and collective identity 200
The future self 203
Reconstructing the past 206
Biography, autobiography and the ageing process 209
Past identities: the body speaks 212
Conclusion 214
References 215
Index 230
PART I
Structure, Agency and the Life Course
1
Problematising Ageing
and Identity
Introduction
The title of this book Social Identities across the Life Course stems
from a question which is implicit in theories of the life course: how
do we come to know that we are ageing? In asking this question we
recognise that, though our bodies change over time, those changes
are imperceptible on a day-to-day basis. And yet we are, nonetheless,
aware that we are ageing and we know that being of a certain age
brings with it social obligations and expectations. The task of the
social sciences, and one we set ourselves in this book, is to explain
such processes and their impact on people’s everyday lives. Just as
gender and ‘race’ shape people’s identities, so does the ageing
process. In this book, we assess the extent to which social science has
provided a satisfactory account of how it is we come to know that we
are ageing.
We ask what the terms ‘age’ and ‘ageing’ might mean, both now
and in the past. They are often taken for granted as biologically-
grounded givens. That is, age is thought of simply as a measure of
the passage of time between birth and death. Yet, in the West, our
age impacts very powerfully on the way we see ourselves – and are
seen by others. Indeed, here we argue that it has become one of the
key bases for the production of social identity, acting as a way to
classify and order the passing of time in an individual’s life. It is not
only a pervasive focus for interest, birthdays of the famous being
announced daily in national newspapers with details of their age, but
additionally, years since birth bear a culturally specific, ideological
and symbolic load. Age, for example, implies social and moral
obligations. Individuals who overstep or step outside the expectations
3
