A recent study of fifty older adults from a small community is used to explore the asphalt identikit—possession of a valid driver's license and driving—and its use as a disidentifier of old age. Interview material is used to illustrate the substantive issues of identity that underlie the practical activity of driving. Resistance to giving up driving is strong even as self-imposed limits curtail the kind and amount of driving that is done. Older adults use and maintain this asphalt identikit to ward off the stigma of an old age identity.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
MeadG. H., Mind, Self, and Society, MorrisC. W. (ed.), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1962.
2.
StraussA. (ed.), George Herbert Mead: On Social Psychology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964.
3.
SullivanH. S., Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry, The William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation, Washington, D.C., 1947.
4.
ThomasW. I. and ZnanieckiF., The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, Dover, New York, 1958 (1918).
5.
ShibutaniT., Society and Personality, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1961.
6.
BlumerH. J., Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1969.
7.
TurnerR. H., The Real Self: From Institution to Impulse, American Journal of Sociology, 81, pp. 989–1016, 1976.
8.
TurnerR. H., The Role and the Person, American Journal of Sociology, 84, pp. 1–23, 1978.
9.
RiesmanD., The Lonely Crowd, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 1961 (1950).
10.
BergerP. L. and LuckmannT., The Social Construction of Reality, Anchor, Garden City, New York, 1966.
11.
LaschC., The Minimal Self, W. W. Norton, New York, 1984.
12.
LyndH. M., On Shame and the Search for Identity, Harcourt, Brace and World, New York, 1958.
13.
StraussA. L., Mirrors and Masks: The Search for Identity, The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1959.
14.
StraussA. L., Transformations of Identity, in Human Behavior and Social Process, RoseA. M. (ed.), Houghton Mifflin, Boston, pp. 63–85, 1962.
15.
GlaserB. G. and StraussA. L., Awareness of Dying, Aldine, Chicago, 1965.
16.
KlappO. E., Collective Search for Identity, Holt, Rinehart, New York, 1969.
17.
GoffmanE., The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1959.
18.
GoffmanE., Stigma, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1963.
19.
McHughP., Defining the Situation: The Organization of Meaning in Social Interaction, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1968.
20.
HewittJ. P. and StokesR., Disclaimers, American Sociological Review, 40, pp. 1–11, 1975.
21.
HochschildA. R., The Unexpected Community, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1973.
22.
JacobsJ., Fun City: An Ethnographic Study of a Retirement Community, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1974.
23.
MatthewsS. H., The Social World of Old Women, Sage, Beverly Hills, California, 1979.
24.
MatthewsS. H., Participation of the Elderly in a Transportation System, Gerontologist, 22, pp. 26–31, 1982.
25.
MarshallV. W., No Exit: A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective on Aging, International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 9, pp. 345–358, 1978.
26.
WardR. A., The Impact of Subjective Age and Stigma on Older Persons, Journal of Gerontology, 32, pp. 227–232, 1977.
27.
WardR. A., The Marginality and Salience of Being Old: When is Age Relevant?, Gerontologist, 24, pp. 227–232, 1984.
28.
WilkinD., Conceptual Problems in Dependency Research, Social Science and Medicine, 24, pp. 867–873, 1987.
29.
SchmidtW. E., The Graying of America Prompts New Highway Safety Efforts, New York Times, pp. A1, A17, April 6, 1988.
30.
KalishR. A., Late Adulthood: Perspectives on Human Development, Brooks/Cole, Monterey, California, 1975.
31.
HarrisR. J., Recent Trends in the Relative Economic Status of Older Americans, Journal of Gerontology, 41, pp. 401–407, 1986.
32.
StoneG. P., Appearance and the Self, in Human Behavior and Social Processes, RoseA. M. (ed.), Houghton Mifflin, Boston, pp. 85–118, 1962.
33.
LukenP. C., Social Identity in Later Life: A Situational Approach to Understanding Old Age Stigma, International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 25, pp. 505–511, 1987.
34.
KroutJ. A., Correlates of Service Utilization among the Rural Elderly, Gerontologist, 23, pp. 500–504, 1983.
35.
McGheeJ. L., Transportation Opportunity and the Rural Elderly: A Comparison of Objective and Subjective Indicators, Gerontologist, 23, pp. 505–511, 1983.
36.
CowleyM., The View from Eighty, Penguin, New York, 1982.
37.
RyderN. B., The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change, American Sociological Review, 30, pp. 843–866, 1965.
38.
de TocquevilleA., Democracy in America, HeffnerR. D. (ed.), New American Library, New York, 1956 (1835).
39.
NeugartenB. L. and NeugartenD. A., Age in the Aging Society, Daedalus, 115, pp. 31–49, 1986.
40.
ButlerR. N., Why Survive? Being Old in America, Harper and Row, New York, 1975.
41.
RosowI., Old Age: One Moral Dilemma of an Affluent Society, Gerontologist, 2, pp. 182–191, 1962.
42.
RosowI., The Social Context of the Aging Self, Gerontologist, 13, pp. 82–87, 1973.
43.
RosowI., Socialization to Old Age, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1974.
44.
CallahanD., Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987.
45.
LyndR. S. and LyndH. M., Middletown, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1956 (1929).