The mechanisms for making the gerontological models in traditional and contemporary culture are described in the article. Viewson the age in a culture are able to simulate human life and are used by a culture subject for understanding and explaining different situations of development, as well as its mental acceptance or rejection. Age stereotypes reflect characteristics and properties specified by the culture for people of certain age, and are set by the society through traditions. Individual age differences in each culture reflect the corresponding properties of the age layers and have their own regulatory controls: age ceremonies. Modern cultural approach is able to explain the phenomenon of old age from the perspective of changing values and moral qualities of the aging individual. The mental world of old age can accommodate the whole system which is directly or indirectly associated with old age and aging representations formed in both individual and collective consciousness of culture subject.Structuring these ideas can be performedon various bases: detaillevel; comparative context; domination of intellectual forms; acceptance / rejection of old age, etc. Gerontological model in a culture can be built on actual bases: substrate, space, time, energy, and information; while the factor of acceptance or rejection of certain grounds of the models will be dominant. Acceptance or rejection of oneself in old age suggests a kind of mental process of "trying on" certain age stereotypes by the culture subject. The results of this process directly depend on the age potential and individual horizons of opportunities. Ideally, each culture subject makes a decision on what can or cannot be done within the framework of his/her age. Cultural capacity of mentalnon- aging lies in the strengthening of all life potentials of a "man of culture".
age symbolism, old age, gerontological model, traditional culture, contemporary culture, acceptance / rejection of old age, cultural potential of old age.
Жизненный путь индивида, его возрастная стратификация осмысливаются и легитимизируются обществом через систему представлений и образов, которые тесно связаны с символизмом в культуре и понятием возраста. Такие взаимосвязанные элементы, как нормативные критерии возраста, аскриптивные возрастные свойства, символические представления о возрасте, возрастные обряды, возрастные субкультуры, отражают возрастной символизм как подсистему культуры.
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