AGEISM COMES OF AGE

Abstract

Ageism: Stereotyping and Prejudice Against Older Persons, edited by Todd D. Nelson. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002, 372 pp., $45.00 (cloth). As most readers of The Gerontologist know, ageism is a kind of prejudice like racism and sexism. But ageism is different from the other two “isms” in two important ways: it is the only one to which we all are, or will become, vulnerable (if we live long enough), and yet most people have never heard of it or are only vaguely aware of it. These two differences are what make the field so exciting: on the one hand, everyone has a personal stake in understanding and overcoming ageism, but on the other hand, it is a relatively young and uncharted field of research and practice. Yet the publication of Ageism: Stereotyping and Prejudice Against Older Persons, edited by Todd D. Nelson, shows that the field of ageism is “coming of age.” It is a sign of maturity that 25 experts could write 11 scholarly chapters with over a thousand references on the subject. It may be true that a search of a PsycINFO database yields only about one tenth as many articles on ageism as on racism (p. ix). But this is much more than would have been found a decade ago—and there would not have been any found 35 years ago, before Butler (1969) coined the term.