Crossing Frontiers: Gerontology Emerges as a Science (review)

From his first work on ideas of aging (Old Age in the New Land [1978]) to his volumes on policy (Shades of Gray [1983] and Social Security [1986]), W. Andrew Achenbaum has been passionately interested in recovering the history of old age. In his new work, Crossing Frontiers, he endeavors to explore gerontology’s emergence through its early proponents and its later institutions. He particularly highlights historical ideas and events that in his view prefigure gerontology’s current structures and needs.

Achenbaum’s text is divided into two main sections. The first examines the pre-World War II historical actors whom he believes to be most important to gerontology’s history. The second section consists of case studies of gerontological institutions, including the Gerontological Society of America and Achenbaum’s own Institute of Gerontology at the University of Michigan. The work is clearly well researched, and the footnoted references are extensive. The reader is very aware of the author’s passion for the subject matter, as well as his position as advocate for the scientific study of old age.

While Achenbaum’s commitment to gerontology is undeniable, his enthusiasm limits his historical analysis. Rather than exploring historical actors’ language in order to discuss key words and metaphors in gerontology, he brings in a wide variety of supporting materials that show his ideas about connections between ideas without necessarily showing connections in gerontology. For example, he repeatedly invokes a frontier metaphor, but he explains it in terms of the historiography of western expansion rather than explaining what meaning (if any) the idea of a frontier had for early gerontologists. A thorough historical analysis of the language used in a field can illuminate professional strategies (see, for example, JoAnne Brown’s Definition of a Profession [1992], an exploration of early-twentieth-century psychologists’ use of medical and engineering metaphors to expand their profession); Achenbaum, however, does not analyze the use of language by those interested in old age in the past.

In addition to imposing meaning onto his sources’ language, Achenbaum uses present-day imperatives to structure his history. For example, he clearly articulates his belief that a multidisciplinary approach is essential to gerontology’s future, and so his account works hard, at the expense of other potentially important historical themes, to demonstrate that crossing disciplinary boundaries has been a successful approach in the past. Sometimes he stretches his evidence very thin to suit his present agenda, as when he overreads the Veterans Administration’s importance to gerontology by eliding veterans with old people, assuming that a federal concern for veterans equaled a concern for the elderly (he cites but does not engage Theda Skocpol’s valuable discussion of the twentieth-century transformation of veterans’ benefits into old age pensions in Protecting Soldiers and Mothers [1992]).

In his acknowledgments, Achenbaum expresses his hope that this volume will be part of a trilogy of works on gerontology’s history to help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Gerontological Society of America. His work will no doubt succeed in this endeavor, and it will also be a fine reference for those interested in the history and policy issues surrounding gerontology. However, those who are interested in the ways in which people and institutions of gerontology have fit into a broader social and cultural landscape will be disappointed with, Crossing Frontiers.