Perspectives for analysing normative frameworks of old age

Ideas and expectations about ageing in the contemporary world are today inextricably marked by strong normative undercurrents. These undercurrents are the products of a distinct but highly ambivalent historical heritage of modernity – one with which both gerontology itself and the institutional network of the modern welfare state are currently finding it difficult to deal convincingly. To explore this claim in more detail and to describe the dimensions of this ambivalence, this chapter's main aim is to reconstruct the different historical settings in which the discrepancy between this hidden normative impact and the resulting societal ambivalence took shape. The historical material to be utilised for this demonstration is taken from a European background, predominantly from German-speaking countries, and consists of a wide diversity of written and printed documents as well as interpretations of results from broader research in social and cultural history.

The empirical basis for this reconstruction is provided by three different sources of printed material:

• • a comparison of articles concerned with ageing and life cycles in widely distributed and popular general encyclopedias from the early 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century;

• • a comparison of entries on this subject matter in specialised medical encyclopedias from the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century (von Kondratowitz, 1991);

• • an evaluation of written material dealing with questions of societal ageing and its consequences – the material was produced by a wide range of experts and administrative personnel involved in social and medical reform in Germany from the end of the 18th century to present times (see von Kondratowitz, 1991, 2000a, 2000b).

Hence the content of this analysis will first of all be limited in scope to this specific background. Also in this chapter, the main emphasis will relate to adult and older life stages, which would in principle make it essential to complement this study by a thorough analysis of the other phases of life and their dynamics. But, despite these apparent limitations, it is nevertheless this chapter's intention to offer incentives for a line of research that would compare similarities and differences among the results presented here with sources and material from other European and non-European regions and countries, as well as their respective historical and cultural heritages.