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As a feature of social change and as an aspect of social stratification, ageing and age groups have been seriously neglected by sociological theory. This article attempts to conceptualise age groups in a multi-dimensional model of stratification which considers ageing in relation to economic class, political entitlement, or citizenship, and cultural life-styles. This multi-dimensional model provides an analytical basis for rejecting functionalist theories of ageing, which emphasize the positive functions of social disengagement, activity theories, which show that self-esteem in ageing is an effect of continuing social involvement, and Marxist social gerontology, which argues that retirement is determined by labour-market requirements in capitalism. The article concludes by developing a reciprocity-maturation curve of ageing which explains age stigmatization through exchange theory as an effect of declining social reciprocity. Both young and elderly social groups in a period of economic recession are perceived to be socially dependent, and become the targets of 'the politics of resentment'. The processes of social ageing can be located in the core of sociological theory, because they are connected fundamentally to the conditions of social solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, it is argued that the feminist critique does not seriously undermine those 'class theories' which seek, in the most general way, to argue that classes are social forces having an impact upon societal development. However, that version of 'class analysis' -- exemplified by researchers such as Wright and Goldthorpe -- which seeks to theoretically identity an empirical ensemble of 'class places' is seriously affected. This approach, which rests upon an analysis of the occupational structure, cannot separate out systematically the impact of 'class' from that of 'gender' (or indeed, of other factors) in this structuring. Although, therefore, such theoretical 'class' schemes retain their sociological utility as descriptive concepts, they do not, as has been claimed, provide uncontaminated measures of 'social class'. An alternative approach to the occupational structure, which stresses its fluid and socially constructed nature, is developed. In the light of this discussion, attempts to establish the theoretical basis of a 'system' of patriarchy are examined. It is argued that although gender relations are universal, they are not necessarily patriarchal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]