Age and the Reach of Sociological Imagination: Power, Ideology and the Life Course by Dale Dannefer, Professor and Chair at the Department of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University in the United States, offers a much-needed critique of traditional discourses associated with human development and ageing. In this 239-page text, Dannefer seeks to instil a shift away from paradigms and modes of thinking that conceptualize development and ageing as universal, natural and homogeneous. Instead, he draws attention to social influences and proposes ‘a foundation for a critical and scientific alternative’ (p. 19), as well as addressing the costs of not doing so, which includes inequalities and discrimination. Invoking C. Wright Mills’s (1961) concept of ‘sociological imagination’, Dannefer argues for an awareness of both social influences upon individual lives and their human origin as a means of overcoming complacency and embracing change. Thus, inherent within this discussion are issues of power and ideology across the lifecourse and confrontation of processes that serve to maintain existing practices. This ten-chapter book begins by raising key arguments (Chapter 1), before giving an outline of the biological and social processes by which humans and social contexts connect (Chapters 2 and 3). Thereafter, the book is framed around three areas where sociological inquiry might further explore the relevance of social influences: structural forces of society (Chapters 4–6), physiological processes (Chapter 7) and scholarly activity (Chapters 8–10).

Chapter 1, ‘Sociological imagination and human ageing’, offers a detailed narrative as an introduction, outlining the claim that existing discourses maintain institutional and personal prejudices. Dannefer begins with a historical account of scientific progress since the 1960s, referencing the emergence of gerontology, the sociology of ageing, and lifespan development during this period. This is a carefully written chapter in which Dannefer recognizes the achievements of many scholars of the time. Nevertheless, he also tells a story of lost opportunities from adhering to existing paradigms within psychology and sociology, the ‘functional-organismic nexus’ (p. 14). He notes: ‘What we see time and again is that each time a new set of insights about the importance of social factors is introduced into the discourses of human development and ageing, a tendency to resist the implications of the discovery regularly surfaces’ (p. 8).

Dannefer uses Chapters 2 and 3 to explore developmental features that may account for human adaptability to various social contexts and the process by which social contexts are constructed. In Chapter 2, ‘Sociomatics: The social structuring of human development and ageing’, he begins with an interesting account of feral children which serves to highlight the social dimension involved in early development. He then utilizes the concepts of exterogestation and neoteny, which describe aspects of infant development, to demonstrate how humans are programmed for ‘lack of specialisation and hard-wiring for flexibility' (p. 42). Progressing from a focus upon human responsiveness to the world, Chapter 3, ‘Agency, intentionality and world-construction’, addresses humans’ capacity to create an ‘ordering structure’ (p. 64), the social context in which they live. This process occurs through intentional action; most often individuals engage with existing structures via their daily habits and routines and hence reinforce the rules and norms of a society.

Social structural concerns are the focus of Chapters 4, 5 and 6, which address how people are socially and temporally organized in society and across the lifecourse. Chapter 4, ‘Historical and cultural variations’, considers how development and ageing vary according to historical periods and cultural settings, to demonstrate that it is far from a universal, natural or homogenous experience. This lays the foundation for Chapter 5, ‘Intracohort variability and cumulative dis/advantage’, and Chapter 6, ‘Cumulative dis/advantage as a cohort phenomenon’, which together address heterogeneity of experience and inequalities associated with available resources and the social gradient of ageing.

In Chapter 7, ‘Sociosomatics and the life course’, Dannefer (with Kathryn Douthit) seeks to demonstrate the impact of social factors upon physical and mental experiences of development and ageing. The chapter includes a discussion of psychoneuroimmunology, gut microbiome and adult neurogenesis. For example, telomeres, associated with the chromosomal integrity and the ageing of cells, become shorter when individuals are exposed to numerous stressors, including those of social origin such as childhood neglect and air pollution.

Chapters 8–10 address the concept of age as a product of scientific endeavour and the connection between science and political, economic and cultural forces within society. Chapter 8, ‘Situating knowledge production: The sociology of scientific work in studying age and the life course’, focuses upon science as a social institution and considers issues such as professional training, the language of individual disciplines, and how language shapes ideas and possibilities for further inquiry. Developing this further in Chapter 9, ‘Bringing ideology back in—Science as a mechanism of naturalisation’, Dannefer considers how science serves economic, political and cultural forces by maintaining existing discourses. These chapters offer a valuable insight into the role of science in the creation of discourses and how such processes occur. In Chapter 10, ‘Age, sociological imagination and human possibility’, Dannefer concludes, querying ‘what can be done to address the humanly destructive aspects of the naturalised logic that mistakes humanly produced patterns and requirements for natural ones?’ (p. 215). He suggests that recognition of the contribution of social influences on individual experiences of development and ageing offers a possibility for change. For example, long-term care settings might reconsider institutional regimes and prescribed relationships between carers and residents by developing more person-centred approaches.

In Age and the Reach of Sociological Imagination, Dannefer aims to focus attention upon missed opportunities in the study of human development and ageing, to identify the impact of this and to draw together arguments in the creation of a new scientific paradigm. Indeed, he has achieved this by synthesizing many seemingly disparate ideas to create a new coherent argument, thereby offering the type of interdisciplinary text that is increasingly needed in scientific inquiry. The book is immensely readable and will be invaluable to anyone interested in development and ageing, both academic and lay readers. Though likely beyond its remit, it would have been interesting to extend the critique of the discipline paradigms to philosophical ideas which underpin them, and also to consider examples of societies where conceptualizing the ageing experience as homogeneous might not be associated with inequalities (e.g. Nordic countries). The real strength of the book is that, although theoretically grounded, it is written in an accessible style that engages the reader, thereby making sociological ideas tangible and relevant to other disciplines. Indeed, in achieving this, Dannefer not only explicates the topic of development and ageing but actively invites the reader to engage with sociological imagination themselves – to move beyond what is taken for granted in everyday life and to imagine what might be gained from acting upon these new insights.