On the Anthropology of Age

Abstract

Time is the medium in which life is designed, experienced, and modified. In time, the-traditionalization and individualization take place. The non-identity of life must prove itself against the constraints of time. The linking of people through the general time order involves a compulsion that is increasingly becoming self-coercion. The external compulsion through the social time institution is replaced by a kind of individual gain of time. Since early childhood, self-regulation is learned through the internalization of chronocracy and an individual consciousness of time is developed. Maximum time gain through optimal time utilization is the maxim. The connection between time and money, between the laws of the bourgeois social order and the economy of time is obvious. The time order is the economic order par excellence. Ageing is a synonym for life that emphasizes its temporality and transience. Age is not only the result of a physical process but also of a cultural construction process. Age and ageing therefore mean different things in different cultures and historical epochs. The temporality of life is experienced primarily in the growing older of one’s own body. Old age has become a part of life in a way that was previously unknown, a review and change of attitudes towards old people and life in old age is necessary.

Keywords: anthropology of age, lifetime, repetition, mimetic relationship, chronocracy, generation, aging