Introduction

This chapter will examine social class identity and age identity in later life in the context of social change. As previously noted in the introductory chapter, it is important for research to be sensitive to the subjective as well as the objective elements of social class in later life. Thus, while it is critical to look at how the material structures of class can impact on the life chances and living conditions of those in later life, as has been done by the other contributors to this volume, it is equally important to see whether older people themselves see class as a meaningful source of identity in later life. Much gerontological research has operated with a materialist definition of class. This approach has been criticised for not giving sufficient consideration to how older people themselves relate to or identify with class as a salient source of their own identity (Gubrium and Holstein, 2000). Thus, there is an argument that research that focuses on social class inequalities in later life would benefit from being supplemented by research that takes a more culturalist approach and that explores class as part of an ‘individual's self-concept and subjective understanding’ (O’Rand and Henretta, 1999: 35). This issue is not specific to gerontological research, but resonates with wider issues within sociology around the meaning and materiality of class in contemporary, late-modern, society (Bourdieu, 1984; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Savage et al, 2010).

Class identity in late modernity

Although there is no agreement over the precise starting point of late modernity, those scholars that have described, evaluated and attempted to explain the social, economic and political transformations of the last 40 years agree that there have been profound changes in individuals’ lives and social relations. Key aspects of late modernity and its accompanying transformations have been identified in terms of increasing individualisation (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002), cosmopolitanism (Beck, 2002), risk and uncertainty (Giddens, 1990), and liquidity (Bauman, 2000). A striking feature of these social changes is that individual and social identities become more contingent, changeable and fluid.