Starr J M
Int J Aging Hum Dev. 1982;16(4):255-70. doi: 10.2190/f5tw-3e23-ctre-h7xe.
In recent years, the study of aging has come to be increasingly multidisciplinary and to encompass the whole life course. The well established life history approach has been reformulated to include the macro-structural and cultural context of aging. Over the past decade research on adult development and aging, cohort differences in aging patterns, and historical changes in life course differentiation has challenged the validity of the established "stability" and "ordered change" theories of aging. An "aleatoric" account of aging, which calls attention to the flexibility of developmental patterns, has been proposed in their stead. Consistent with this development is the need to replace the old conception of the self as a passive object of outside social forces with a new conception of the self as an active, self-reflexive agent in society. The author demonstrates the utility of certain core concepts in social phenomenology and ethnomethodology, in particular Schutz's concept of biographical work, for developing this new conception of the self. It is proposed that more attention to the practical procedures of reality construction involved in biographical work would provide the epistemological basis and conceptual clarity needed for empirical research on the dynamics of life histories.
近年来，衰老研究越来越呈现出多学科性，并涵盖了整个生命历程。已有的生命历程方法被重新阐述，以纳入衰老的宏观结构和文化背景。在过去十年中，关于成人发展与衰老、衰老模式的队列差异以及生命历程分化的历史变化的研究，对已确立的衰老“稳定性”和“有序变化”理论的有效性提出了挑战。取而代之的是一种“随机”的衰老观点，该观点强调发展模式的灵活性。与此发展趋势相一致的是，需要用一种新的自我概念取代旧的自我概念，即将自我视为社会中积极的、自我反思的主体，而不是外部社会力量的被动对象。作者展示了社会现象学和常人方法论中某些核心概念的效用，特别是舒茨的传记工作概念，以发展这种新的自我概念。有人提出，更多地关注传记工作中涉及的现实建构的实践过程，将为生命历程动态的实证研究提供所需的认识论基础和概念清晰度。
