Aging and Inequality: Consumer Culture and the New Middle Age

Abstract

Gerontologists and biologists suggest that built into the genetic structure of man is a pre-set clock of aging which determines that our bodies will age and die and that this process will occur at a specific rate. Despite the promise of science and technology to hold back and eventually master the aging process, individuals have to face the fact that it is ultimately irreversible: their bodies will run down and decline. There is abundant evidence that middle-aged people are being increasingly encouraged to become sensitive about physical aging and its social implications. Alongside the growth of consumer culture a number of demographic changes have occurred which have radically altered the nature of midlife. The rationalisation and expansion of technigues of mass production in the early decades of the twentieth century laid the foundation for consumerism and these processes have been subjected to theoretical analysis by Georg Lukacs and members of the Frankfurt School.

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