[Intergenerational communication by age-integrating structures? Remarks on on gerontologic utopia]

In their "aging and society" paradigm Riley and collaborators conceptualize the ideal type of an age-integrated society in which the social segregation of different age groups is removed. They claim that in the future the life-world areas of education, work and leisure will no longer exclusively follow the triple division of the life course but will be visited repeatedly in different phases of life. Therefore, they argue, age barriers would be dissolved in many areas, which would lead to more contact and cooperation and to a greater solidarity between the generations. This conception shall be rejected as an utopia because it contradicts central functional mechanisms of modern societies; at best it might be imagined as a "reflexive modernization" of age-segregated structures. A certain distance and alienation between the generations remains a direct, though unintended product of the modernization process and cannot be reversed without welfare losses. A dialogue of generations as a societal project, therefore, implies that the functional differentiation into age groups and life stages will be accepted without referring to pre-modern idealizations of generational relationships.