A diversidade cultural do envelhecimento: A construção social da categoria de velhice

Abstract

The observation that notions of old age are subjected to considerable historical and cultural variation suggests that, as social constructs, they reinterpret the biological (individual and universal) process of aging. Old age is a central part of the social representation of the individual’s life cycle as systematized in each society’s notion of Person. The latter presumes a specific conception of the relations between the members of the society and their integration into the social whole. Becoming aged dynamizes a process of substitution of each individual by a new one that will guarantee the historical continuity of social reproduction.