[Social factors in gerontology]

As an inter-branch research and working field of modern medicine, gerontology has to satisfy health-political requirements to a growing extent. Related to the specific subject of the investigation of aging and its biosocial character, this requires a view of human aging and being old that exceeds the limits of the medico-naturalscintific conceptions. Any analysis of phenomena of aging in later periods of life has to deal with the individual and his/her social environment-two interacting and dynamically changing parts of a global system. Associated therewith is the previously insufficiently solved problem of the clear determination of the "social", of the "social factors". Following already existing approaches, a possible systematization of the conglomerate of social factors is introduced and consequences concerning research and practice are pointed out.