An Age-Based Mobilisation: The Emergence of Old Age in American Politics

Abstract

Older people became a highly visible force in the American politics of the 1930s. The Townsend organisation mobilised one tenth of the U.S. elderly population prior to their direct representation in the polity as an interest group. This article utilises several theoretical social movement models to analyse how and why mobilisation occurred. It demonstrates that many factors, including phenomena associated with the social dimension of age, influenced the mechanisms of mobilisation and the movement's shape. Characteristics of this cohort of older people, including its size, life expectancy, spatial distribution, shared traditions, and symbolic frameworks were conducive to club formation and mobilisation. The period event of the Depression also triggered collective action, by exacerbating trends of changing old-age institutional supports. But the organisation expanded most where it channelled inducements to participants and evoked the cohorts' symbolic frameworks and ideals. Mobilisation also occurred within a political environment, the national stage of U.S. politics, where non-represented interest groups (such as elderly people) find it difficult to receive benefits.

Understanding generations: political economy and culture in an ageing society

“…Are these divergent interests bases for political action that can be observed in survey data on voting behaviour? Older people are frequently discussed as an undifferentiated category and the complexity of ‘old age’ politics, including cross national differences, needs to be fully appreciated (Elman 1995; McManus 1996; Binstock 2000; Vincent, Paterson and Wale 2000, 2001). The stereotypes that suggest that older people are both Conservative and conservative are no exception (Alwin and Krosnick 1991).…”

(Non-)Politicized Ageism: Exploring the Multiple Identities of Older Activists

“…Gilleard and Higgs [10,29] argue that, with few exceptions, the increasing wealth disparities and, consequently, consumer lifestyles among retirees have led to the individualization of retirement, conducive to a fragmentation rather than a coalescence of an old age-based identity. In this sense, although research documents older adults' political organization in pensioners' political parties [30] and pensioners' social movements [31][32][33], some of the observed cases of older persons' mobilizations confirm the lack of a common and unified political identity based on old age [3,34]. The Gray Panthers in the U.S. [8] and the Raging Grannies in Canada [7] stand as a few well established and renowned exceptions that appeal to a politically driven identity based on old age.…”

Pensioners' Political Parties in Israel

“…Social movements in general are aimed at exerting influence on policy-makers with regard to allocation of national resources and the setting of priorities. The gerontological literature has reviewed some of the social movements related specifically to populations of older people, such as Townsend's Age Revolving Pension Plan (Elman, 1995), George…”