西方学界关于老年人地位研究的综述

A Summary of Studies on the Status of the Elderly in Western Academia

20世纪中期以来,西方社会学和历史学界都在关注老年人地位的历史变化,相继提出了黄金时代、现代化理论和结构性依赖等观点,强调工业化和福利制度的构建等经济社会变革对老年人地位的负面影响。对于老龄化和养老问题,相关研究倾向"以现在为中心",更关注老年群体的依赖性。20世纪80年代以来,很多学者通过实证,反对黄金时代的理想化描述,反对夸大近现代老年人的困境。他们强调老年经历存在时空、阶层、性别、经济及文化等多重差异,力图呈现不同时空与不同社会群体之间共性与差异并存的老年史。

Since the mid-20 th century, the historical change of the status of the elderly has become an important issue among western sociologists and historians. Views like the golden age, modernization theory and structural dependence have been put forward one after the other, emphasizing the negative impacts of economic and social change, such as industrialization and the construction of welfare system, on the status of the elderly. As for the aging and pension problem, related researches tend to be 'now-centered', paying more attention to the dependence of the elderly. Since 1980 s, many scholars empirically opposed the idealized description of the golden age and the exaggeration of the plight of the elderly in modern society. They emphasized that there were multiple differences of old age experience in time, class, gender, economy and culture, trying to present an history of the elderly that had both commonality and differences among different social groups in different time and space.