Chapter 8: The life course (8.2) - The life course as a social process

1. Stages of development appears to be biologically fixed
1. There is a singular set of phase that all people go through
2. Progress through infancy, childhood, youth, adulthood and old age unless something happens to cut life short
3. However - Evidence from history and sociology suggests this is too crude a characterisation
  1. What appears to be a biological progression of growth is actually a social and psychological process that can be called life course (Vincent '03, Hunt '05 & Green '10)
  2. Sociologists research on the broad variations
    1. Variation seen as both cross culturally & also within each single society
    2. This variation tells us that the life course is not experienced in a homogeneous way by all people but rather constructed differently in distinct social settings
2. Life course phases affected by difference in belief systems across cultures and economic situations experiences
1. Contemporary Western countries - death associated with the aged, linked to life expectancy in these nations
2. In the past - Life expectancies have been much lower and associated with younger people, it had different meanings and assumptions
3. Other dimensions of social life and stratifications
1. Class, gender,ethnicity plays a role in the way life course is experienced
  1. The interconnected forms inequality is called intersectionality* and renders variation of individuals lives
4. As industrialization took hold in UK, children of different classes were subjected to different set of expectations
1. Eg - Children of privileged class - their education extended well from youth to early adulthood whereas children from working class entered labour market (girls - domestic service, boys mining)
2. Thus, ideas on what people ought to be like and do according to biological age differed according to groups, they were not universal
5. Social Scientists looked at how the life course in the contemporary world varies to the social strata of class gender & ethnicity
1. how the life course in the contemporary world varies to the social strata of class gender & ethnicity
2. also, at how life course differs over time/or historically
3. Groups of people born in the same year are called 'Birth cohorts'
  1. these groups experience similar culture/ political forces and will be subject to the same governmental practice
  2. through this commonalities, the life course they experience will be similar
  3. An early sociologists (Mannheim) argued: Generations (groups of people born in the same year/series of years) have a common outlook
    1. Mannheim saw generations as unified by their similar place in history
    2. He argued: a generational identity was as impt as a class identity in forming people's ideas and values
      1. Generations sense their situation in being unique from other generations
      2. This gives rise to the idea 'Generation gap'
  4. While a cohort is not defined by having the same perspective, a generation is (Alwin et al,2006)
6. Social scientists have identified the distinctive beliefs of
1. the baby boom generation (Gillon 2004)
  1. Those born in the 2 decades after WW2, they have witnessed a huge number of social transformation
    1. Many western countries had a dramatic increase in birth rates in the prosperity after the war
    2. This large generational group lived through many changes
      1. Technological (TV), Increased disposable income for families, new liberalization of interpersonal relations
      2. Life of baby boomers different from their parents
      3. Part of their new experience: Emergence of the category of youth
  2. Mannheim viewed this generation as unique which changed the society
    1. He sees the generation as analogous to social classes because of the 2 fold way - 1. They bring about social change, 2. Impact on identities and social life
    2. Read Giddens : pg 334 - 340
2. 'Beat' generation (Charters 2001)
3. Various others : 'hippy gen, Gen X, Gen Y"

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Chapter 8: The life course (8.2) - The life course as a social process

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