[Utilization dimensions of gerontologic knowledge in the practice of community social politics]

Although disenchantment between "science" and "practice" and complaints about the inadequate utilization of gerontological knowledge are often articulated, the problem of utilization of this knowledge in fields of practice has rarely been the topic of empirical research. By referring to the actual sociological debate about "utilization" the contribution tries to shed light on the complexity of the problem. It is important to realize that for too long utilization of knowledge, quite naively, has been looked at as a process of merely transferring true results in a "right" way. Instead, from a sociological point of view, one has to learn that the most decisive filter in selecting knowledge is represented by the context of utilization and that such contexts display their own specific logic or rationality in processing knowledge. Based on interviews in three German municipalities with employees of department of social planning, state ministries of social affairs, welfare associations and local projects on counselling about old age problems, this thesis is examined in the case of gerontological knowledge. A first partial evaluation of the material from this on-going research project confirms the relevance of this assumption.