ACT YOUR AGE

With the aim of contributing to a sociology of age, this essay develop s framework for understanding age as accomplished, i.e., as something that is both a process and the outcome of ongoing interactional work. The common expression ''act your age'' provides the useful metaphor of performance. We perform our own age constantly, but we also give mean ing to other ages and to age more generally in our actions and interac tions, our beliefs and words and feelings, our social policies. This e ssay offers two routes to the conclusion that age is accomplished. The first involves drawing parallels between the study of age and the stu dy of gender The second route uses Existing scholarship, which recogni zes that age is far more social than chronological. I draw on work in the social constructionist, symbolic interactionist, and life course t raditions to develop the framework of age-as-accomplished and to show its potential to organize much of what we already have leaned about ag e and aging.