Sociological Imagination for the Aged Society

The aim of this article is to explore how the sociological imagination may generate new insights regarding the dangers and possibilities that arise when an old order disintegrates and a new one has to be created. The new order is theorized as the “aged society”. The aged society is demarcated by radical population aging that also constitutes our main challenge, especially when coupled with globalization and new technological developments. In this article, the questions and challenges of the aged society, as an emergent world, are not perceived as purely financial, neuroscientific, biological, or technological ones, but as issues of freedom and reason. Contemplating the aged society, however tentative it might be since it regards social realities that are still becoming, might enable us to reconsider and reassess presuppositions of most current aging studies in terms of these values at risk