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⁴ A detailed analysis would show that informal and unpaid work is not of one kind only. We have to distinguish at least three different types: (1) unpaid informal work in the household and the neighbourhood; (2) paid work in the growing sector of the informal economy, which shares some but not all of its properties with paid formal work; and (3) unpaid work in formal settings, such as large volunteer organisations, for which the same applies. For the purpose of the present discussion, however, it will usually not be necessary to take up this distinction.

⁵ In a comparative perspective, it is fairly obvious that the structure of the work society is especially salient for Germany, which may be the reason why the German sociological discourse has given such prominence to this concept. But it is equally clear that much of it applies to the other Western nations as well. Härtel, U., Matthiesen, U. and Neuendorff, H., ‘Kontinuität und Wandel arbeits-bezogener Deutungsmuster und Lebensentwürfe’, in Brose, H.-G. (ed.), Berufs-biographien im Wandel. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen, 1986 pp. 264–290CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kohli, M., Retirement and the moral economy: An historical interpretation of the German case. Journal of Aging Studies, 1 (1987), 125–144.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

⁶ This perspective is based on the approach of structural anthropology. For Mauss, the essential aspect of gift exchange in primitive societies is not the goods that are exchanged but the social relations that are constituted by the exchange, in other words, the system of reciprocal obligations that follows from it. Similarly, for Lévi-Strauss the essential aspect of the exchange of women is not to secure the reproduction of the groups that participate in it but to constitute social bonds between them. Mauss, M., The Gift. Cohen & West, London, 1966Google Scholar; Lévi-Strauss, C., The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Beacon Press, Boston, 1969.Google Scholar

⁷ It may be questionable why we should go back to the ‘classics’ in order to discuss the challenge of ageing for sociological theory; after all, there has been an enormous output of more recent theoretical work that might be a more adequate starting-point. However, the importance of the classics is shown not only by the fact that contemporary theoretical treatises often take the form of a – philologically more or less sound – reconstruction of the classical arguments; it will become evident also in the substance of what is to follow.

⁸ There is one interesting theoretical exception to this view: Veblen's theory of the ‘leisure class’. While he imaginatively captures many features of social life, his insistence on social honour as being tied to non-industrious, conspicuously unproductive activity completely overlooks the moral centrality of the work ethic for bourgeois society, and seems more appropriate for aristocratic life forms – and possibly for those of the ‘self-expressive’ society that we seem to be moving to; it may be that Veblen's days are still to come. At any rate, he has anticipated much of Bourdieu's highly acclaimed conception of class based on distinctions of life style rather than on means of production. Veblen, T., The Theory of the Leisure Class. New American Library, New York, 1899Google Scholar; Bourdieu, P., La distinction: Critique du jugement social. Minuit, Paris, 1979.Google Scholar

⁹ Graebner, W., A History of Retirement. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1980.Google Scholar Similarly, Phillipson and Walker show that retirement is used as a key element in manpower policy. Phillipson, C., Capitalism and the Construction of Old Age. Macmillan, London, 1982CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, A., Towards a political economy of old age. Ageing and Society, 1 (1981), 73–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹² These indications refer to one case, that of (West) Germany. Germany was the leader in establishing a public old-age insurance system, and West Germany is today the leader in population ageing; it therefore shows the features of this process in a particularly dramatic way, but is rather closely followed by the other developed nations. Kohli, M. and von Kondratowitz, H.-J., ‘Retirement in Germany: Towards the construction of the “citizen of the work society”’, in Markides, K. S. and Cooper, C. L. (eds), Retirement in Industrial Societies. Wiley, Chichester, 1987, pp. 131–166.Google Scholar

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¹⁶ For example, Parsons, T., Age and sex in the social structure of the United States. American Sociological Review, 7 (1942), 604–616CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N., From Generation to Generation: Age Groups and Social Structure. Free Press, Glencoe, 1956.Google Scholar

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²¹ For an overview, cf. Featherman, D. L., ‘Life-span perspectives in social science research’ in Baltes, P. B. and Brim, O. G. Jr, (eds), Life Span Development and behavior, Vol. 5. Academic Press, New York, 1983, pp. 1–59.Google Scholar

²² In other disciplines, similar work is now under way. Thus, for developmental psychology, the life-span orientation means not only a massive extension of the focus, it also gives rise to a redefinition of basic concepts such as ‘intelligence’ – concepts which had been abstracted from research on early life stages, but take on a very different meaning if applied to adult life and especially old age. Dittmann-Kohli, F., Weisheit als mögliches Ergebnis der Intelligenzentwicklung im Erwachsenenalter, Sprache und Kognition, 2 (1984), 112–132Google Scholar; Baltes, P. B. and Dittmann-Kohli, F., ‘Toward a neofunctionalist conception of adult intellectual development: Wisdom as a prototypical case of intellectual growth’, in Alexander, C. and Langer, E. (eds), Beyond Formal Operations: Alternative Endpoints to Human Development. Oxford University Press, New York (in press).Google Scholar

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³² The category of ‘dependents’ gives a – more or less appropriate – handle for incorporating some of the groups outside the system of gainful employment, namely, children/youths and housewives. But it is clearly inappropriate for the elderly. (The same applies to the concept of ‘reproduction’; cf. below.) If it is used to refer not to the family but the state, a different set of problems arises, as will presently be discussed with regard to the literature on the ‘structured dependency’ of the elderly.

³³ Bergmann, J., Brandt, G., Körber, K., Mohl, E. and Offe, C., ‘Herrschaft, Klas-senverhältnis und Schichtung’, in Adorno, T. W. (ed.), Spätkapitalismus oder Indus-triegesellschaft? Enke, Stuttgart, 1969, pp. 67–87.Google Scholar

³⁴ In Germany, the public pension system alone accounts (1985) for 39.2% of the ‘social budget’, or 12.2% of the GNP. Statistisches Bundesamt (ed.), Datenreport 1987.Google ScholarBonn, , Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1987, p. 188.Google Scholar

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³⁷ Among the most important studies, the following should be mentioned: Estes, C. L., Swan, J. and Gerard, L., Dominant and competing paradigms in gerontology: Toward a political economy of ageing. Ageing and Society, 2 (1982), 151–164CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Estes, C. L., The politics of ageing in America. Ageing and Society, 6 (1986), 121–134CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guillemard, A.-M., La vieillesse et l'étal. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1980Google Scholar; Guillemard, A.-M., Le déclin du social. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1986Google Scholar; Myles, J., Old Age in the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Public Pensions. Little, Brown, Boston, 1984Google Scholar; Phillipson, C., 1982, op. citGoogle Scholar; Phillipson, C. and Walker, A. (eds), Ageing and Social Policy: A Critical Assessment. Gower, Aldershot, 1986Google Scholar; Townsend, P., The structured dependency of the elderly: A creation of social policy in the twentieth century. Ageing and Society, 1 (1981), 5–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, A., 1981, op. cit.Google Scholar

³⁸ Cf. also Kohli, M., Rosenow, J. and Wolf, J., The social construction of ageing through work: Economic structure and life-world. Ageing and Society, 3 (1983), 23–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁹ Most notably, Myles' perceptive analysis, which – in a somewhat different systematic context – touches upon many of the points treated in this section.

⁴⁰ Townsend, P., 1981, op. cit.Google Scholar; Phillipson, C. and Walker, A., 1986, op. cit., p. 3.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Some of the claims that this view is based on would have to be settled not by theoretical argument but empirically. Reasons of space preclude an extensive empirical discussion here, but I want to take up one point at least: the willing ness of workers to retire (e.g. Townsend, , 1981, op. cit., p. 10Google Scholar). For Germany, there is clear evidence that retirement is broadly popular; even the new programmes of pre-retirement (starting at age 58) – to the extent that they are financially attractive enough – have met with acceptance by an overwhelming majority (Kohli, M. et al. , Leben im Vorruhesland. Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Düsseldorf, 1988Google Scholar). If we keep in mind the high relevance of the work society for Germany, this may appear paradoxical. It does not mean, however, that people want to stop working at any price; they want to stop being forced to do so, or having to support the stressful conditions of their work. In other words, they might want to continue working if the conditions of work life were different; but given those that exist, their choice is clear.

⁴² In the gerontological literature, there are analogous continuity theorems re-garding personality characteristics and life style.

⁴³ For a discussion of these concepts, cf. Kagan, J., ‘Perspectives on continuity’Google Scholar, in Brim, O. G. Jr, and Kagan, J., 1980, op. cit., pp. 26–74.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ In Germany, the standard net pension (in 1986) amounts to 63.7% of the mean net work income (Statistisches Bundesamt, 1987, op. cit., p. 193).Google Scholar A more detailed empirical analysis of a sample from one of the regional pension systems (in 1974) showed that even within the category of blue-collar workers, there was a high amount of variation around the mean replacement ratio, indicating that not only the ipsative but also the normative correlation between work and retirement income is far from perfect. Göbel, D., Zur Einkommenssituation beim Über-gang vom Erwerbsleben in den Ruhestand. Zeitschrift fur Gerontologie, 13 (1985), 285–290, p. 285.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Giddens, A., 1981, op. cit., p. 298.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Walker, A., ‘Pensions and the production of poverty in old age’Google Scholar, in Phillipson, C. and Walker, A., 1986, op. cit., pp. 184–216.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Johnson, P., The Structured Dependency of the Elderly: A Critical Note. CEPR Discussion Paper No. 202, London, 1987Google Scholar; cf. also Kohli, M., 1987, op. cit.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ It is true also for the popular Marxist strategy of throwing all phenomena outside of the production process into the sweeping category of ‘reproduction’, there by declaring them necessary for the functioning of the former. With old age, the concept of reproduction really runs into trouble. It is manifestly nonsensical on the level of the individuals: there is no need to reproduce their labour-power. And neither does it make sense on the structural level. It could be argued that the institutionalisation of retirement is a necessary consequence of the development of an economy based on free labour, with its problems, e.g. of externalisation of non-economic activities and orientations and of orderly succession (cf. Kohli, M., 1986, op. cit.Google Scholar) and is thus needed to ‘reproduce’ it. But such an argument – quite apart from its highly problematic functionalist logic – is not possible in a strictly materialist approach; it presupposes a cultural approach, i.e. the assumption of a normatively grounded structure of reciprocity.

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⁵² They parallel those developed with respect to gender as a key dimension of social inequality – arguments which also require a departure from a purely work-based approach, or an extension of the concept of work to include activities beyond gainful employment.

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