Abstract
There are as many interpretations of the word “elderly” as there are people in a given society; yet the legal and welfare systems have yet to find an appropriate method for incorporating individuality into their functions. This paper critiques the concept of uniformly applying this sort of label; a social-interactive approach is used to attempt to develop a method of adjusting the “aging” label. By emphasizing the importance of life histories, as well as individual attitudes toward everyday life, six case studies will be briefly examined and fit into a previously-developed structural framework; it is hoped that the methods discussed in this paper can be used to more effectively understand the label and the concept of “aging” as it applies to individual members of society.
