Towards a Caring Sociology: Theoretical and Methodological Implications of a Relational Perspective on Ageing Societies

Abstract Ageing and the need for care pose challenges to individuals, families, and societies. Within the sociology of ageing, care has received ample attention, while analyses often remain concentrated on organisational or policy challenges or questions of practical concern. However, as the feminist ethics-of-care tradition has pointed out, care also represents a philosophical concept in that it emphasises an alternative conceptualisation of the individual. In this contribution, I first outline the depth and width of perspectives that can be drawn from investigations of care. I investigate the elements that constitute care as sociological perspective (i.e. attention to the vulnerable, sentient, embodied, gendered, and relational person) and subsequently reassemble the components to build a theoretical and methodological starting point for investigations of ageing societies. A caring sociology thus critically engages with the postulate of individual autonomy, and it positions vulnerabilities, dependencies, and (caring) relationships not only as areas of investigation but as analytical lenses through which social differentiation can be captured. This reconfiguration not only allows a more nuanced understanding of older people but can provide a more thorough understanding of the process of ageing and the structures and dynamics of ageing societies.