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Bridging the Gap: Theory and Research in Social Gerontology

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Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Social Gerontology

Abstract

Social gerontology’s growth as a distinctive discipline has remained contested with continuing debates on gerontology’s limited research focus, disciplinary boundaries and inadequate theoretical development subsequently constraining the cumulative knowledge building of the discipline. Given this intellectual background, in this introduction, I assert the goal of this volume: This volume, based on original research drawing from different disciplines and theoretical orientations, acknowledges the pursuit of a common gerontological imagination by foregrounding social gerontology as an integrative discipline. A related effort has been to emphasize the importance of cultural diversity and plasticity in understanding the social process of age and aging. This introduction maps how scholars in the volume have examined the sociological question of inequality and its intersection with age, gender, health, family and social relations. In the process, the studies in this volume have highlighted the unique historical, institutional and social systems that govern the subjective experience of aging in diverse contexts globally. Specifically, societies in transition including India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Japan, China, Israel and the Europe are studied while connecting the micro social experience of aging (loneliness, wellbeing, discrimination, relationships and resilience) with the larger temporal and political contexts. In this introductory chapter, I show ways how this exercise has generated an intellectual capital that reformulates linkages between aging research and policy in innovative ways.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See, for example, a peer report publication of the NSF, The Role Of Theory In Advancing twenty-first century Biology: Catalyzing Transformative Research, National Research Council 2008), leading journals in social gerontology and sociology of aging (e.g. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences (JGSS), The Gerontologist, Ageing and Society, American Sociological Review (ASR) and the International Journal of Ageing and Later Life) through their intentional inclusiveness for theory-heavy, humanistic and interpretative research methodologies (Bengtson 2006; Hendricks et al. 2010; Kivnick and Pruchno 2011) and with the publication of the second edition of the Handbook of Theories of Aging (Bengtson et al. 2009). In fact, in the Handbook, there is an explicit emphasis on integrating theoretical perspectives within and across disciplines through a featured section on “Theorizing aging across disciplines”.

  2. 2.

    See, for example, www.who.int/healthinfo/sage/articles_indepth.

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  1. Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar, Palaj, Gujarat, India

    Tannistha Samanta

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    Tannistha Samanta

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Samanta, T. (2017). Bridging the Gap: Theory and Research in Social Gerontology. In: Samanta, T. (eds) Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Social Gerontology . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1654-7_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1654-7_1

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