234 RüdigerKunow
members are unified passively by... the objectified results of the
material effects of the actions of the others" ("Gender" 724). Her
principle example of seriality is gender. The aggregated social and
cultural scripts on gender position women independently of their own
background or volition in pre-existing material social and cultural
relations. Young's focus is on heteronormativity and the sexual division
oflabor,butIseenoreasonwhyhermodelcannotalsobeappliedtothe
normativitiesofseniorlifewhichis,aswehaveseen,stronglygendered.
Gerontological research, especially social gerontology, has provided us
with a sheer endless abundance of material which shows how "age"
identities are almost always the result of material and symbolic actions
of others.One example is a norm complex I am calling here thedefault
notionof "age": In this perspective, as Gilleard and Higgs have shown
"oldpeople'sphysicalachievementsarecelebratedbythestandardsthat
are established by reference to contemporary 'youth culture'" (Gilleard
andHiggs79),andnotbyanythingtheydooraccomplish.
Seriality as a form of passively unified collective identity has the
further advantage of being not based on models of a hypothesized
collective identity (I. M. Young, "Gender" 733-34), which were often
the bane of social deterministic models, but instead it highlights the
effects that social and cultural norms have on the autonomy and
opportunitiesofcollectivities.Hence,itmakeseminentsensetospeakof
older people as a passively unified group, produced by "the material
effects" of others, the not (yet) old, and objectified in the social and
cultural normsaddressing elderlife.Whatgives particularpoignancy to
the "set of structural constraints and relations to practico-inert objects"
(I.M.Young,"Gender"736)whichconditiontheexperienceof"age"as
seriality is the aggregate of emotional reactions which people bring to
"age"—theirownandthatofothers.AsThomasCole,oneoftheleading
voices in the field of a determinedly humanistic form of gerontology,
has noted: "the experience and the cultural representation of human
aginghelptoconstituteitsreality"(JourneyofLife21;Segal227).This
is true of the lay public as it is true also of experts; chief among them
gerontologists. If the realities of later life are broadly viewed as non-
normative,notconformingtothestandardsofsociety,elderlypeopleare
likely to view themselves also as not normal. As the excitement about
Alzheimer's disease has shown, the fear and loathing inspired by
equation of "age" with Alzheimer's, "a certain amount of cognitive loss