Aging as a Social Process and Social Gerontology

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the sociological, physiological, demographic, and theoretical dimensions of aging from lecture notes on Aging as a Social Process.

Social Aging

A process whereby social structures, social norms and values, and social institutions influence how individuals move across the life course and how their actions are guided by social timetables and interactions with other age cohorts.

Population Aging

A demographic change in which the proportion of people aged 65 and older increases relative to younger age groups within a population.

Individual Aging

The physiological, cognitive, psychological, and social changes an individual experiences across the entire lifespan.

Ageism

A socially constructed way of thinking about and behaving toward people based on the biological factor of chronological age, using age to define personality and character traits.

Individual Ageism

The internal acceptance and adoption of negative beliefs, attitudes, and feelings about aging that subsequently influence an individual's own behavior and self-perception.

Institutional/Structural Ageism

Age-based discrimination and inequality created, expressed, and perpetuated through legislation, public policies, workplace practices, advertising, and mass media across society.

Lifespan

The fixed, finite theoretical maximum limit for human survival of the species, determined by genetic, lifestyle, and environmental factors, estimated at approximately 120 years.

Life Expectancy

The average number of years a person is projected to live at birth or from a specific age, calculated based on current age- and sex-specific mortality rates.

Active Life Expectancy

A qualitative demographic indicator measuring the average number of years an individual is expected to live free of chronic debilitating disease and functional disability.

Age Cohort

A group of individuals born within the same year or specified range of years who experience historical events and transitions at similar life stages.

Fertility Rate

The average number of births per woman across her normal childbearing years ($14\text{--}49$), with a replacement rate of approximately $2.1$ births per woman.

Filial Piety

A core cultural value, prominent in Eastern contexts and Confucian philosophy, emphasizing deep respect, deference, and family responsibility for the care of aging parents.

Acculturation

A process in which individuals from one cultural group, through continuous contact with another cultural group, learn and internalize the cultural traits, values, and practices of the other group.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency for individuals or groups to consider their own culture superior to others and use it as the ideal standard when evaluating the worth, practices, or beliefs of other cultures.

Modernization Theory

A macro-sociological theory proposing that the transition from a pre-industrial agrarian society to an industrial, technologically advanced society diminishes the social status, authority, and economic utility of older adults.

Intersectionality

An analytical lens examining how interacting systems of power and social categories (such as age, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, disability, and immigration status) simultaneously shape individual privilege, disadvantage, and identity.

Marginalization

A condition occurring when people are systematically excluded from meaningful participation in economic, social, political, and cultural activities in their communities, denying them full self-realization.

Convergent Subcultures

Subgroups that gradually assimilate and integrate into the broader mainstream culture over successive generations, adopting dominant language and societal customs.

Persistent Subcultures

Subgroups that remain culturally distinct and separate from mainstream society across generations, deliberately preserving unique lifestyles, values, residences, and identities.

Issei

The first generation of Japanese immigrants to North America, arriving primarily in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as unskilled labourers, who encouraged their children to learn English and seek education.

Nisei

The second generation of Japanese Canadians, born in Canada to immigrant parents, who experienced WWII internment and property confiscation but later attained relatively high socioeconomic status.

Sansei

The third generation of Japanese Canadians, who experienced greater cultural and linguistic assimilation than preceding generations while largely continuing to value filial obligations toward aging parents.

Yonsei

The fourth generation of Japanese Canadians, generally characterized by high levels of integration into mainstream Canadian society and limited Japanese language proficiency.

Disability

A physical or mental condition resulting in reported difficulty performing basic activities of daily living (ADLs) or instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), restricting daily functional capacity.

Activities of Daily Living (ADLs)

Fundamental self-care tasks required for personal daily functioning, including dressing, bathing, eating, toileting, grooming, and getting out of bed.

Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs)

Complex daily activities essential for independent community living, including grocery shopping, meal preparation, banking, managing money, housework, and using transportation.

Frailty

A complex, potentially reversible clinical state characterized by multi-system physiological declines, including muscle weakness, fatigue, unintentional weight loss, low physical energy, and slow, unsteady gait.

Sarcopenia

The progressive, age-associated decline in skeletal muscle mass, strength, and tissue elasticity, representing a leading cause of physical disability and fall vulnerability in older adults.

Arteriosclerosis

An age-related loss of arterial elasticity and arterial wall flexibility, which restricts normal blood flow to organs and muscles and diminishes physical endurance.

Atherosclerosis

A pathological vascular disorder characterized by the narrowing and hardening of arterial walls due to the accumulation of lipid plaques and fatty deposits.

Presbyopia

An age-related visual change caused by the decreased flexibility of the eye's crystalline lens, impairing the ability to focus sharply on objects at varying or close distances.

Presbycusis

The progressive, bilateral, sensorineural hearing loss associated with aging, caused by the gradual loss of fine hair cells in the inner ear and typically affecting high-frequency perception.

Fluid Intelligence

The neurological capacity for abstract reasoning, spatial visualization, incidental learning, and novel problem-solving, which peaks in early adulthood and declines with age.

Crystallized Intelligence

The accumulation of knowledge, verbal comprehension, vocabulary, and numerical ability acquired through formal education, acculturation, and life experience, which remains stable or improves with age.

Episodic Memory

The cognitive storage and conscious retrieval of personally experienced autobiographical events and episodes situated within a specific time and location.

Semantic Memory

The long-term cognitive memory of shared, general factual knowledge, conceptual information, vocabulary, and language meanings independent of personal narrative context.

Brain Plasticity

The brain's lifelong neurological capacity to develop new neuro-connections, adapt to new cognitive demands, and restructure itself in response to learning and environmental stimulation.

Ulysseans

Individuals who continue to produce significant creative accomplishments, embark on novel adventures, and embrace later life as an ongoing challenge in their sixties, seventies, eighties, and beyond.

Wisdom

Expert, nuanced knowledge in the fundamental pragmatics and complex realities of life that facilitates exceptional insight, judgment, and constructive advice.

Generativity

A mid- to late-life developmental process wherein individuals shift away from self-centered goals to focus on mentoring, volunteering, community leadership, and supporting the next generation without expecting direct reciprocity.

Demographic Transition

The historical process through which a society shifts from high fertility and high mortality rates to low fertility and low adult mortality rates, typically unfolding over roughly 100 years.

Epidemiological Transition

The historical transition in population health where primary causes of death shift from acute, infectious, and epidemic diseases to chronic, degenerative, and non-communicable conditions.

Technoplosion

The rapid spread of technological and scientific innovations that improves public health, sanitation, disease control, longevity, and overall living standards.

Sex Ratio

A demographic measure indicating the number of males per 100 females in a population, which progressively declines at older ages due to higher male mortality rates.

Total Dependency Ratio

A demographic index measuring the ratio of dependent age groups (individuals under age 19 and aged 65 and over) to the working-age population (ages 19 to 64).

Old-Age Dependency Ratio

A demographic index measuring the number of individuals aged 65 and older per 100 individuals within the working-age population (ages 19 to 64).

Structural Functionalist Perspective

A macro-level sociological framework arguing that society operates as a system of interrelated institutions that maintain social order, consensus, and equilibrium through established roles and norms.

Social Constructionist Perspective

A micro-level interpretive approach proposing that social reality, age categories, and social roles do not exist independently, but are actively created, negotiated, and sustained through interpersonal interaction and shared meanings.

Presentation of Self

Erving Goffman's concept describing how individuals strategically stage and adapt their outward behaviour, appearance, and demeanor to fit the specific demands and expectations of diverse social settings.

Conflict Perspective

A sociological theory viewing society as dynamic and inherently contested, where social groups compete over scarce resources, authority, and power, resulting in structural advantage and disadvantage.

Critical Gerontology

A theoretical approach that critiques status-quo assumptions in aging research, analyzes institutional power structures and structural inequalities, and utilizes praxis to empower marginalized older adults.

Social Exchange Perspective

A framework positing that social interactions consist of ongoing negotiations where individuals attempt to maximize valued rewards and minimize social and material costs through reciprocity.

Global Reciprocity

A generalized, long-term pattern of exchange across generations where balances occur over the life course, such as parents providing child care early on and adult children providing elder care later in life.

Postmodern Perspective

A critical framework rejecting universal positivist claims of objective truth, utilizing deconstruction to analyze how language, historical discourse, and institutional records construct perceptions of aging and enforce power relations.

Feminist Gerontology

A critical perspective treating gender as a central organizing principle of society, examining how patriarchal structures and life-course gender inequities produce accumulated financial and social disadvantages for older women.

Life Course Perspective

An interdisciplinary framework examining the timing, sequencing, and accumulation of major life transitions, analyzing the dialectical interplay between individual biographies, changing social structures, and historical context.

Life Course Capital

Accumulated personal and social resources—such as formal education, financial wealth, physical health, competencies, and supportive networks—that an individual builds up or expends across life.

Life Course Risks

Structural vulnerabilities and disadvantages linked to social stratification (such as poverty, racism, or sexism) that accumulate over time and constrain opportunities across the life course.

Linked Lives

A core life-course principle establishing that human lives are interdependent and embedded in social relationships, meaning events or transitions experienced by one person directly affect the lives of family and close associates.

Social Timetables

Culturally and socially constructed guidelines that prescribe the expected or 'appropriate' chronological age for entering, experiencing, or exiting specific social roles and life-course transitions.

Agency

The capacity of individuals to construct their own life paths, make choices, and initiate actions within the opportunities and limitations imposed by history and social structure.

Social Structure

Patterned social arrangements, institutions, and stratification systems that shape, constrain, and facilitate human behaviour, creating differential access to opportunities and resources across segments of the population.

Activity/Substitution Theory

A symbolic interactionist theory asserting that positive adaptation to aging requires maintaining an active lifestyle and substituting lost work or social roles with meaningful new activities to sustain a positive self-concept.

Disengagement Theory

A structural functionalist theory proposing that the mutual, gradual withdrawal of older individuals from societal roles and expectations is a normal, inevitable, and functional process beneficial to both the individual and society.

Continuity Theory

A theory proposing that individuals adapt to later life by striving to maintain continuity in their established internal structures (attitudes, beliefs, self-identity) and external structures (activities, environments, relationships).

Age Stratification Theory

A framework analyzing society as hierarchically organized into distinct age strata with differential roles and privileges, examining how cohort flow and changing social structures dynamically influence the experience of aging.

Cohort Flow

The continuous, dynamic process through which successive birth cohorts age and move sequentially through the stratified age structures of society over time.

Cohort-Centrism

The tendency of members of a birth cohort to interpret societal events and evaluate social policies exclusively through their own generation's unique historical experiences, limiting understanding of other cohorts.

Structural Lag

A societal imbalance that occurs when changes in individual lives, abilities, and cohort expectations outpace the adaptation of existing social structures, institutions, and public policies.

Political Economy of Aging

A theoretical perspective arguing that the socioeconomic status, resources, and treatment of older adults are largely determined by institutional power relations, capitalism, the welfare state, and public policies.

Unified Resilience and Aging Model (URAM)

An ecological framework analyzing how internal and external resources interact across four environmental domains (social, cognitive/psychological, information, and physical) to facilitate recovery and adaptation following adversity.

Participatory Action Research (PAR)

A collaborative research approach carried out 'with' rather than 'on' participants, positioning community members as equal research partners to generate local knowledge, implement solutions, and evaluate social change.

Narrative Gerontology

A qualitative research orientation that views older adults as biographical beings, analyzing personal life stories and self-narratives to uncover the subjective meanings of aging and major transitions.

Age Effect

Variations or changes in physical, cognitive, or social behaviour that occur as a direct biological consequence of growing older and advancing in chronological age.

Cohort Effect

Differences observed between groups of people that result from being born in different historical periods and experiencing distinct social, technological, and educational environments.

Period Effect

The impact of a specific, broad historical or societal event (such as an economic recession, war, or pandemic) that simultaneously influences individuals across all age cohorts at a given point in time.

Minimum Data Set (MDS)

A standardized clinical screening and assessment tool used in long-term care facilities to evaluate functional capability, health outcomes, and health disparities among frail older adults.

Therapeutic Misconception

An ethical dilemma in research wherein an older participant mistakenly believes that experimental research procedures are designed primarily to provide personal therapeutic treatment or a medical cure.

Generational Units

Subgroups within a single generation whose members exhibit distinct styles of thought, political commitments, dress, and collective consciousness formed around unique socio-historical circumstances.

Intergenerational Social Contract

The formal and informal expectation that successive generations will support and care for one another throughout the life course, maintaining mutual obligations via public policies and family transfers.