A First-Generation Critic Comes of Age Revisited

This chapter reflects the direction and evolution of my scholarly endeavors as a sociologist of more than four decades in the field of aging and thoughts on the future direction and challenges for the field. My perspective is located within two frameworks of active debate: the sociology of knowledge(s) (Gouldner, 1970) and public sociology (Burawoy, 2005). I ground the more abstract argument about critical gerontology with references to my own biography, including experiences in my own family, in my career as a graduate student, and, ultimately, in my varied professional career. It is consistent with the sociological imagination, and with feminist epistemologies, that we connect our personal and public words.