Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do We Adapt as We Grow Older?
Revisit the criteria used throughout the path. Distinguish evidence that an outcome changes from the judgment that it should define aging well for everyone.
A question to consider. Choose an earlier study and propose one additional outcome or participant perspective that would make its account of aging more inclusive without obscuring what it originally measured.
Why this reading
A definition of aging well also determines who falls outside it. Katz and Calasanti examine how research criteria, personal choice, and unequal resources enter judgments about older lives.
Before you read
The essay critiques the successful-aging model associated with Rowe and Kahn, while acknowledging its challenge to a decline-centered view. A descriptive criterion classifies observations; a normative criterion also expresses a judgment about what is desirable.
Read for
- Identify the assumptions connecting health, activity, and success.
- Consider whose experiences are excluded when disability disqualifies a person from a favorable category.
- Reconstruct the argument that social conditions shape the choices attributed to individuals.
Consider afterwards
- How would you evaluate a community program if participants valued belonging and practical support more than the program's chosen fitness outcome?
Editorial context
This is a critical conceptual essay, not a trial or a systematic estimate of intervention effects. It asks how inequality and age relations enter a research framework. The objections do not imply that health or agency is unimportant; they challenge how these become a sufficient account of a person's circumstances and worth.