Diversity, Difference and Division in Later Life

Abstract

In the concluding chapter of the book, we summarise some of the main issues concerning social divisions and social differences in later life. First we stress the transformation of later life in second modernity, from its categorisation as a residuum, a role-less role, a residuum of a life once lived to a richer and more diverse set of social locations. It is not simply that older people have shifted from being a category of the poor to a subset of the rich. Such representations are both false and misleading. Still they constitute a partial fact, namely that older people have become more diverse and no longer capable of being categorised as a distinct class or community. This transition can be explored in terms both of classical social divisions, like class, gender, disability or ethnicity, as well as through social differences and distinctions realised through the lens of citizenship, consumption and community. We conclude by arguing that examining both divisions and differences, inequalities and identities, in later life enables both a greater understanding of the changing nature of later life and of the changing constitution of division in contemporary society.