Age and Religion
Age and religion refer to the relationship between an individual's age and their religious beliefs and practices. Studies in this area explore how age influences religious participation, beliefs, and attitudes. Research often examines how religious affiliation and commitment change across different stages of life, and how generational differences impact religious identity and behavior.
7 Key excerpts on "Age and Religion"
eBook - ePubFractured Identities
Changing Patterns of Inequality
- Harriet Bradley(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...We have successfully deprived age of authority and of interest’ (1987, p. 1). Although their research revealed variety in the ways people adapt to age and cope with its physical restrictions, most of their respondents were aware of the negative images of elderly people held by younger age groups. Such a contrast reveals that meanings attached to specific age groups differ between societies. While we tend to think of age in common-sense terms as a biological fact relating to the number of years an individual has lived since birth, chronological age has in itself limited intrinsic significance; it gains meaning from the behavioural characteristics imputed to it, so that the idea of a person ‘being elderly’ or ‘being adolescent’ triggers off expectations about how that person will act, feel and think. Age, then, as studied here, is a sociological rather than a chronological phenomenon. It relates to social categories, such as childhood, youth, adolescence, adulthood, middle age and old age, which have been developed to describe lived relationships between individuals and groups as they move through the life course. The term ‘life course’ as opposed to ‘life cycle’ is used here, because in biology the latter term is often used as an equivalent to the ‘reproductive cycle’, which terminates when an individual of a natural species has achieved successful procreation (Harris 1987). The term has also been used by biologists and psychologists to denote rigidly defined life stages through which each individual must pass when they reach a certain chronological age. An example of this is seen in the many books which tell parents what to expect each month as their baby grows. Sociologists prefer the term ‘life course’, viewing such life stages as socially defined and constructed; they can be distinguished by different social roles associated with them...
...The sociologist is concerned to explore the processes involved and how they are being interpreted by men and women from different social classes, ethnic groups and cultural settings. This approach contrasts with social policy and government interests in old age. In these contexts, old age is regarded as a problem (for the economy or the health service, to take two examples) – hence the need for some analysis and collection of data. This approach has its own validity and justification, but it often leads to a distorted view of social ageing, together with a limited selection of topics to be analysed and discussed. Sociological perspectives emphasize (as noted in the previous chapter) a broad definition of the relationship between age and society. Rather than old age as such, interest is typically focused on ageing within the context of the life course, the latter expressing the movement of individuals through time and through socially defined transitions such as adolescence, midlife and retirement. Matilda White Riley, an influential figure in American sociology, refers to the interdependence of ageing on the one side and society on the other. She makes the important point that in studying age, we not only bring people back into society, but recognize that both people and society undergo process and change: ‘The aim is to understand each of the two dynamisms: (1) the aging of people in successive cohorts who grow up, grow old, die, and are replaced by other people; and (2) the changes in society as people of different ages pass through the social institutions that are organized by age’ (Riley, 1987: 2). The above arguments raise important issues about how our understanding of ideas associated with age and ageing have evolved over time...
eBook - ePubAge and the Reach of Sociological Imagination
Power, Ideology and the Life Course
- Dale Dannefer(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...While such exploitative usages of age did not evaporate, the expanding 19th-century interest in education as a means of both social control and nurturance, and the invention of adolescence as its scientific legitimation, became the basis for an age consciousness of unprecedented breadth and precision. In the putatively rational-bureaucratic “public sphere” domains, reliance on age as a major axis of social organization and calculation increased across the 20th century—in schooling (with age-graded classrooms; Chudacoff 1989:32–5; Kaestle 1983:17); in medicine, with the emergence of pediatrics, geriatrics and the increased reliance upon age as a “risk factor” for innumerable maladies (Starr 2017); in the workplace (with increasingly fine-grained “career steps” and credentials being devised as bureaucratic organizations expanded in size and complexity (Crozier 2010 [1963]; Whyte 2012); in science, including medicine, developmental psychology and beyond (Broughton 1987; Chudacoff 1989:39–47; Hermanowicz 2011; Morss 1990, 2013 [1996]) and in matters of law and policy (where age operates as an eligibility criterion and as a key dimension of demographic data). In this latter regard, it is interesting to note that the very word “statistics” had as an original definition “questions concerning matters of state” (Sinclair 1791; Hacking and Hacking 1990:16–25; see also Katz 1996, Ch. 2) THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF AGE AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE LIFE COURSE As will be well known to some readers, Martin Kohli has shown that 1) the established reliance on age as a principle of social organization, combined with 2) the sequential structure typifying biographical experience, has led to the crystallization of the life course as a fundamental social institution in modern societies (Kohli 1986, 2007)...
eBook - ePubThe Social Context of Ageing
A Textbook of Gerontology
- Christina Victor(Author)
- 2004(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...We need to distinguish between the different arenas within which we can identify different stages of development and how these different stages overlap and sometimes are in conflict. For example, the family lifecycle element may involve numerous transitions including courtship, newly married, new parents, parents of teenagers, 'empty nesters', retirement and widowhood. Importantly not everyone will experience all these phases of the family cycle; there may also be enormous variations, between cultures and different historical time points, in the ages at which individuals experience these transitions. The primary focus of lifecourse research remains, however, at the individual level of analysis. Social roles and social norms In using a lifecourse perspective, to describe someone as old (or juvenile) we are locating them within a specific social environment, which expects particular roles and provides differing opportunities, rights, privileges and barriers. Chronological age serves as the basis for proscribing or permitting admission to various social roles and behaviours. The entry into, and exit from, specific social roles such as adolescent or retiree is influenced by the existence of 'age norms'. All cultures have rules (either explicit or implicit) which define what are appropriate (and inappropriate) forms of behaviour for people of particular ages. These rules are generally referred to as norms and allow us to predict the behaviour of others in specific situations, as well as allowing others to predict our behaviour. For example, in British culture the norm, or expected behaviour, upon being introduced to someone for the first time is to extend our hand and shake hands. This seems perfectly natural to British people but in some cultures it would be interpreted as a gesture of hostility, not friendship, or an indication of extreme rudeness. Age norms are concerned with the linking of specific chronological ages to expected (and inappropriate) behaviours...
- Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Michael Argyle(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...1984). What does happen at precisely this time of life is the formation of an integrated identity, a consistent self-image (Chapter 7) and polarization, some moving towards religion, some moving away. Identity formation goes through several stages, in the areas of occupational choice, sexual orientation, politics, and religion. McAdams et al. (1981) studied the religious identity of 56 students in depth, and distinguished between those at different levels of identity achievement. Those who were at the higher levels of identity in the religious sphere were also at higher levels on measures of complexity of ego-development, and had higher scores on measures of formation of a coherent identity. They also had higher scores on intimacy motivation, seeing God as an intimate companion, and appreciating communal rituals. Adults: 23–60 In some of the earlier literature (Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi, 1975) the evidence seemed clear – there was an apparent decline in religious belief and activity between ages 18–30 followed by a rise to old age. There was always some doubt that what looked like effects of age might be partly or wholly due to historical, cohort effects, such as secularization or revival. Various attempts have now been made to separate the effects of age and history. Stark (1973) examined the results of a US survey, and found no increase with age for religious belief and behaviour; there was, however, a break between those who grew up before and after the Second World War – those from the earlier period being more devout. On two measures there was still an increase with age – belief in an after-life and private prayer (see below). Ploch and Hastings (1994) used data from successive US surveys carried out between 1972 and 1991...
eBook - ePubAgeing in Asia-Pacific
Interdisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives
- Thomas R. Klassen, Masa Higo, Nopraenue S. Dhirathiti, Theresa W. Devasahayam, Thomas R. Klassen, Masa Higo, Nopraenue S. Dhirathiti, Theresa W. Devasahayam(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Underlying this theoretical approach is a perspective that across culture and history society as a whole works essentially as an age-based social control mechanism (Phillipson 1998, 2004; Quadagno and Reid 1999; Walker 2005). Society structures, enables and constrains individuals’ perceptions, actions, behaviors and life experience at large – both day-to-day and over time – by developing and attaching a set of meanings, loosely or rigidly defined, to specific chronological ages and particular life stages – including that in old age – and defining what attitudes, self-identities, roles, actions and behaviors are appropriate to those ages or life stages based on these meanings (Moen, Erickson and Dempster-McClain 2000; Neugarten, Moore and Lowe 1968; Powell 2010; Riley, Foner and Riley Jr. 1999; Shanahan and Macmillan 2007). Society facilitates individuals’ compliance with and adaptation to those meanings throughout their lives through constructing and reconstructing the life course. The life course refers to individuals’ life experience overtime with the contexts of social structures, which consists of to a series of major life events or periods of activities which individuals are commonly expected, or even structurally forced, to experience as they grow older and in the timings that are considered appropriate in society and culture of which they are part (Elder, Johnson and Crosnoe 2003; Mayer 2009; Powell 2010; Riley, Foner and Riley Jr. 1999; Settersten and Hägestad 1996)...
eBook - ePubReligion and Aging
Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Explorations
- Andrea Bieler, Matthias Stracke, Angelika Veddeler, Andrea Bieler, Matthias Stracke, Angelika Veddeler(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Evangelische Verlagsanstalt(Publisher)
...And though older persons do indeed have less social relations, they remain proactive toward maintaining social relations, especially in their families. Research on AARC (Awareness of Age- Related Change) shows that stereotypes of aging not only do harm as external effects but, internalized, also affect, for instance, live expectancy. The author also includes an outlook on current efforts in gerontology to combine theology, diaconal studies, and psychology in order to provide suggestions on how societies can better provide opportunities for older persons. From another psychological angle, Jenny Lee and Helene Fung deepen the understanding of aging as a multifaceted stage of life by debunking the myths of old age-related loneliness, depression, and memory loss. Against the background of church realities in Hong Kong and New Zealand and psychological findings they suggest steps to make churches more welcoming, inclusive, and empowering for old people – something, they assert, people of all age groups would benefit from. Critically questioning whether mainstream scientific perceptions of and approaches to aging do good in neglecting cultural and especially religious factors, Peter van Eeuwijk focuses on the regulative, integrative, and interpretive influence of religion and spirituality and the respective practices on aging and elderly people’s health. Accordingly, he presents insights from two case studies he conducted in Indonesia and Tanzania and underlines that “the belief in God, Allah, or Buddha represents meaningful ‘explanatory models’ for the elderly in Indonesia and Tanzania when they reflect good health, longevity, frailty, chronification of disease, changes in their body and mind, and pain and/or disability with regard to the aging process and old age.” Prayer here is one mode of care among others...
