This article deals with the interplay of care as practical tasks and as ways of constructing and reconstructing social relations. We maintain that the division of tasks in care reflects a social organisation, and that the ‘who’ and ‘what’ in care are inseparably linked. On this basis we suggest that care be studied as care systems. This perspective is developed through case studies and other data. Theoretical and practical implications are suggested.

In an attempt to gauge the quality of relationships, definitions of friendship were delineated through inductive analysis of transcripts of guided conversations with 30 men and 30 women aged 60 + who related their biographies using friendships as a constant referent. Two definitions of friendship were constructed, one which focuses on ‘friends as particular individuals’ and another which focuses on ‘friends as relationships’. Each is described in turn, followed by a discussion of the consequences of holding one or the other or both in old age. Suggestions for intervention strategies tailored to specific definitions are made.

A structural model for examining retirement is presented in the context of a political economy of ageing. Contemporary capitalist economies may be conceived of in terms of macro-level organisation which results in a monopolistic core and competitive peripheral sectors. In turn this configuration serves to colour individual life-experience. Data on differential worker- and work-related characteristics are presented as a means of explicating the need for an alternative perspective to explain later life events. A proposed research agenda based on a consideration of both the status attainment and dual economic framework is put forward.

This article traces the development of residential care for elderly people in the period 1939 to 1948. It begins by looking at the nature of such institutions in the period just prior to the Second World War and then discusses the complex impact of war upon such provision. Particular attention is paid to how evacuation hostels, run by local authorities and voluntary organisations, changed notions about the role of the state in the care of elderly people. The paper concludes by looking at how such changed notions were incorporated into the 1948 National Assistance Act.

The analysis of modern-age stratification systems must be based on the social organisation of work. This requires a theoretical approach that takes into account the structure of economic production, but also the fact that work is a meaningful activity of human beings within their life-world. The task therefore consists of integrating ‘materialist’ and ‘interpretive’ approaches to social reality. This integration is attempted in an examination of the special problems encountered by workers in the second half of their work life, as created by the ‘construction of ageing’ in the industrial firm. Existing approaches drawn from industrial sociology, stress structural features of the production process, whilst labelling theory stresses culturally induced age labels. Both are one-sided. A more comprehensive approach has to conceptualise the industrial firm as an actor with strategies based on economic rationality and as a life-world constituted by what is taken for granted by its members. The final section applies this framework to an empirical case study.

Hitherto, Western analysts of Soviet affairs have largely neglected Soviet persons beyond retirement age. These persons constitute a heterogeneous and expanding social category, and their lot has a number of dimensions. The present examination concentrates on their economic status and participation in social production, regarding both as an outcome of the Soviet régime's changing policies. It indicates a modest level of success in retaining the working involvement of retired people during the early post-retirement years. At the same time it uncovers many issues and situations which are familiar to gerontologists in Western countries.

Statistics of the movement of elderly people through institutions of care have attracted little attention from present-day researchers, and none at all from historians. The intention in this paper is to indicate some of the analyses which the historian can make, to explore the changes and continuities in the inmate populations of institutions over 120 years, and to speculate upon the reasons for the higher and lower incidences of residential care amongst the old in specific periods. The questions of interest here are how many and which groups amongst the old have been in care in different periods; how many people would ever find their way into institutions in old age: at what ages would they enter; for how long would they stay in care; would they die in care or leave for other reasons; what are the reasons for taking the elderly in to care; and what does all this tell us about the society in question.

This paper examines the distribution of personal resources - financial, social, health and psychological - between age cohorts, sex groups and social classes in a random sample of community elderly. As expected, the young elderly, males and those from middle-class backgrounds have a disproportionate share of three out of four of these resources, but for social support the balance of advantage is reversed. When age, sex and class are combined to yield eight subgroups, younger working-class males consistently rank high on all resources and older working-class females consistently rank low. Older middle-class females rank low on all resources other than on close friends.

Studies designed to evaluate the services of a health or welfare institution face the major difficulty of selecting evaluative criteria to serve as measures of successful performance. This paper explores that difficulty in the context of a study of a new psychogeriatric day hospital. The study and its methods of data collection are described. ‘Patient turnover’ features prominently as a measure of success within the hospital. Consultants, nurses, general practitioners, social workers, staff of a related hospital and patients’ relatives interpret this measure in different ways and adopt different strategies to pursue ‘success’ in their own interests. These differences are described. The paper concludes that a ‘pluralistic evaluation’ has several advantages as compared to other approaches.

The number of elderly Commonwealth South Asian immigrants in Britain originating from the Indian sub-continent will grow substantially in the next few years, yet there has been little consideration of this group in terms of academic social research. Indeed, welfare agencies are only beginning to become aware of the possible needs of this group. A survey of the scanty British literature on elderly ethnic minorities reveals the paucity of existing knowledge. However, studies from other countries, notably Japan and the U.S.A., suggest a number of illuminating areas for research. The presence of a culturally distinct Asian ethnic minority group experiencing ageing in British conditions appears to afford a good opportunity to throw further light on an important aspect of gerontological theory: namely the respective weight to be attached to cultural factors, social structure and the degree of societal modernisation in shaping the ageing process of individuals and groups.

A feminist analysis of the experiences of elderly Australian women is explored through sixteen biographical accounts. Through the employment of narrative material a classification of the powerful stereotyping imposed upon these women is produced. The components of the stereotype are gathered together under three headings - social, physical and mental.

In a survey of 1,400 older Americans over 65, two household structures, elders living with others and elders living alone, were compared with older married couples. Results indicated that elders living with others had a greater degree of incapacity and lower income than married couples, but on most indices there were few differences. Elders in three-generation families had somewhat lower general life satisfaction, but the greatest number of elderly people with low life satisfaction were widows who lived alone. Widows living alone were less likely than married couples to own their homes and more likely to perceive that their income was inadequate, that transportation needs were unmet and that no one would care for them in an emergency, all conditions strongly associated with low life satisfaction.