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An Age-Based Mobilisation: The Emergence of Old Age in American Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2008

Cheryl Elman
Cheryl Elman
Affiliation:
Demographic Studies, Department of Sociology, Duke University, Box 90088, Durham, North Carolina 27708-0088, U.S.A.
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Abstract

Older people became a highly visible force in the American politics of the 1930s. The Townsend organisation mobilised one tenth of the U.S. elderly population prior to their direct representation in the polity as an interest group. This article utilises several theoretical social movement models to analyse how and why mobilisation occurred. It demonstrates that many factors, including phenomena associated with the social dimension of age, influenced the mechanisms of mobilisation and the movement's shape. Characteristics of this cohort of older people, including its size, life expectancy, spatial distribution, shared traditions, and symbolic frameworks were conducive to club formation and mobilisation. The period event of the Depression also triggered collective action, by exacerbating trends of changing old-age institutional supports. But the organisation expanded most where it channelled inducements to participants and evoked the cohorts' symbolic frameworks and ideals. Mobilisation also occurred within a political environment, the national stage of U.S. politics, where non-represented interest groups (such as elderly people) find it difficult to receive benefits.

Keywords

Old-age politicsTownsend movementsocial movementcase studypension politics
Type
Research Article
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , September 1995 , pp. 299 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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