Looking Backward While Gazing Ahead: An Historian of Aging Reflects on Time’s Borders

W. Andrew Achenbaum
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W. Andrew Achenbaum: Institute for Spirituality and Health, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA

Societies, 2017, vol. 7, issue 2, 1-8

Abstract: Looking backward for a usable past has long been an instructive way to gaze into the vagaries of an uncertain future. I learned the merits of this approach training to be an historian. And as an historian interested in gerontology, I grew to appreciate the value of studying continuities and changes in human development set into motion before late life. This essay begins in the present with my imminent retirement. It then looks retrospectively at my academic career with the hope that emerging scholars can profit from the journey.

Keywords: past; present context; future uncertainties; individual development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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