Conclusion: Toward a Biography of Aging

The notion of biography is central to understanding people’s meanings and experiences of mind and body relevant to the lifecourse. Sociologists such as Schutz have employed the life course as a second-order analytical construct to understand different classes of experience from early to later life. Individuals make their own biographical histories across the life course. From earliest age to old age, individuals create biographical narratives to create a sense of coherence and self-identity. The social worlds that individuals create are put together by categorized experiences. Categories take on an existence of their own for interpreting and constructing meaning. Both natural and social objects are interpretively constituted and as such are evolving stocks of knowledge—the cornerstone of common frameworks for making sense of experiences.