Introduzione - Età e classi di età: rappresentazioni, ibridazioni e conflitti

What value has age taken on in current society? What is currently the social relevance of age? Spanning through personal age, seen as a chronological section of the whole life course and at the same time as a transition and interlude between two time phases, now takes on a much more hybrid and interconnected connotation than in the past. When such chronological sections or transition are looked at through their unraveling within the economic and working sphere, the changes which become visible and which refer back to personal bios, are increasingly the product of exogenous factors and systemic casualities rather than individual choices. One is young or old according to one's level of integration with the production system and how well it fits in with its stated aims. When these sections/chronological transitions are looked at within the micro-scopes of interpersonal or family relationships, or within the many scopes of secondary socialisation (school, interest groups, clubs etc.), age classes and age as a personal attribute take on nuanced contours and shifting shades. We are now witnessing the transformation of chronological age into mere conjecture, increasingly refuted by personal experience. The chronological dimension individually perceived often does not match the social perception, and the attempts of a global system to nullify the usefulness of youth as well as of the third age conflicts with the autarkic claims of young and old to the right of demarcation of specific life choice areas (procreational, sentimental, housing and, more general, space-time related), beyond the self representational attempts which more and more involve body and aesthetic manipulations. It is increasigly evident that there is a new permanent conflict which sees the two chronological ages at the two extremes (youth and old age) positioned "against" the middle age (adults). How is it therefore possible to define the more or less relevant distance definire between chronological age and the socially or individually perceived age? In practice, who is young and who is old? What is the role of a young person and of a senior citizen, and which indicators mark the gap between the prescriptive order of habit and roles and the more showy one of the characters which young, adult and older people are prepared to play in the various "provinces of meaning"? Further, what happens to families where there are three generations living at the same time? Which possible balances, not simply abscribable to practical needs, redefine the endogenous relationships? These are the themes addressed by this journal issue, which intends to propose a relection on age's weight in current society. If traditionally in the past age pointed to the belonging to more or less defined 'groups', in 3rd millennium society categories are increasingly provisional. The aging of the population together with the lenghthening of life expectancy question age defined social categories. Transitions from one age to another have become increasingly hybrid, therefore its 'weight' must be increasingly evaluated in relation to the various specific scopes - personal, public, social, economic and healthcare etc.