Rethinking Ageism: Conceptual Boundaries and Empirical Variations

In recent years, ageism has gained increasing recognition as a significant social issue, not only affecting older populations in ageing societies but also shaping experiences across the life course, as well as across different historical periods and cultural contexts. However, this conceptual expansion raises important theoretical and empirical questions that remain insufficiently explored. Drawing on life course perspectives, this session invites contributions that examine how age-based discrimination emerges, evolves, and operates at different stages of life, and within diverse cultural and historical settings. Contributions are encouraged to explore how age-based norms, stereotypes, and power relations vary across societies and over time, as well as how they are embedded in cultural narratives, policy frameworks, and everyday practices. Ultimately, this session aims to open a critical dialogue on the scope and limits of ageism as a concept. It invites scholars to reflect on whether ageism should be treated as a unified analytical category or as a set of related but distinct phenomena shaped by life course position, cultural context, and historical change. In doing so, the panel contributes to advancing theoretical clarity and empirical knowledge on ageism in sociology, gerontology, social policy, and related fields.