Considering Life Course Concepts

Considering life course concepts.

I N limning the etymology of the concept of the life course, Alwin makes a number of prime points and paves the way toward further conceptual development. For me, one of the more prominent takeaway messages is that there is no standard model—to borrow a phrase from particle physics. He makes clear that life course analysis is not an exact science, and, sticking with the same analogy for a bit l...

Integrating varieties of life course concepts.

A body of work referred to as the "life course" framework (also known as "life course theory," the "life course paradigm," and the "life course perspective") has been increasingly used to motivate and justify the examination of the relationships among variables in social and behavioral science, particularly in the study of population health and aging. Yet, there is very little agreement on what...

Enriching the tapestry: expanding the scope of life course concepts.

Agency in the life course: concepts and processes.

(Re)considering the life course as a key concept in social gerontology.

A S a graduate student in the mid-1980s, I was captivated by the full-throated scholarly debate in the American Sociological Review between Dale Dannefer and Paul Baltes over the role played by social forces in structuring adult human development (Dannefer, 1984a, 1984b; Baltes & Nesselroade, 1984). Particularly impressive was the way this exchange clarified the distinction between ontogenic an...