Identidade etária, envelhecimento e terceira idade: criação e redefinição do curso de vida contemporânea

Abstract

This study deals with the appearance of innovations in the field of personal identities related to the aging process. We identify, in the contemporary world, the appearance of behaviors, images, habits and beliefs that modify the conceptions traditionally associated to the aging process. We adopt as hypothesis the consideration of the third age - the term that has being used to identify this innovation - as a new age identity that adds itself to infance, adolescence, adult age and oldness in the composition of the contemporary life course. The understanding of this new age identity comprises the delimitation of its historical path, its differatiation from the identity of the oldness, the analisys of its connections to the context of personal identities construction in force in the contemporary world and the delimitation of its specific characteristics. From the indications offered by the specific case of the third age. We reflect concerning the trends of undefinition and fragmentation that, paradoxically, reach the contemporary life course and provoke a redefinition and a reorganization of the different ages.