www.emeraldinsight.com/info/journals/ijssp/ijssp.jsp Estes, Carroll and Elena Portacolone. 2009. Maggie Kuhn: Social Theorist of Radical Gerontology. International Journal of Sociology & Social Policy 29 (1&2), 15-25.
Maggie Kuhn with author Carroll Estes
Maggie Kuhn: Social Theorist of Radical Gerontology Carroll L. Estes & Elena Portacolone “We may not be able to butter our bread, but we can change the World”
ABSTRACT This paper explores the roots of critical thought in social gerontology through the writing, speaking, and actions of Margaret Eliza Kuhn, better known as Maggie, co-founder and convener of The Gray Panthers in 1972. The authors contend that much of the intellectual work of Maggie Kuhn and the Gray Panthers (GPs) antedated and contributed
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significantly to Theories of Age. The key themes and contemporary relevance of this work for social gerontology and critical gerontological perspectives are located and traced. Theoretical contributions include Maggie Kuhn’s and GP analyses of: (1) identity politics; (2) intersectionality; (3) cultural, communications and cognitive sciences; (4) forces and factors in the developing political economy of aging; (5) globalization and imperialism; and (6) the “sociology of knowledge” of gerontology. The life and postretirement career of Maggie Kuhn was one of a Public Sociologist in the full sense of Michael Burawoy’s (2005) meaning.
Controversial, charismatic, a “change agent”. Margaret Eliza Kuhn, better known as Maggie Kuhn, embodied all those traits. “Do something outrageous every day” was her motto (Kuhn, 1991, p. 232). Co-founder and Convener of the Gray Panthers (GPs) from 1972 to 1995, Maggie Kuhn is well known for her social action and her mobilization of a national social movement against ageism in combination with multiple other “isms.” Less well known is that her intellectual prowess was every bit as ferocious as her fiery tongue and pen. This article explores Maggie Kuhn’s theoretical and analytical contributions to social gerontology and more broadly to the advancement of critical and public sociology (Burawoy, 2005). Maggie Kuhn’s and the GPs theoretical contributions include analyses of, and related to: (1) identity politics; (2) intersectionality; (3) cultural and media studies and the cognitive sciences; (4) the forces and factors in the developing political economy of ageing including critiques of the ageing enterprise and the medical industrial complex; (5) the sociology of knowledge of gerontology; and (6) globalization and world
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imperialism. The concluding section argues that the post-retirement career of Maggie Kuhn was one of a Public Sociologist.
Although this article attributes ideas, theories, insights and strategies to Maggie Kuhn, she would never claim sole ownership, having committed her life to work with collaborators and “co-conspirators,” many of whom were formidable scholars and critics themselves, and many of whom also were co-founders and convenors of the GPs and its Network chapters. Undoubtedly Maggie Kuhn would insist that this larger “social surround” (Gouldner, 1970) and the communities in which she lived and worked would trump the credit that this article accords to her. Nevertheless, having traveled with, shared podiums with, and dialogued with Maggie Kuhn for more than two decades, article author, Estes, is convinced of the veracity of Maggie Kuhn’s profound intellectual contributions in the work described here.
Maggie Kuhn graduated with honors and a Sociology Bachelors degree from the College for Women at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio (Bader, 2000). In her biography No Stone Unturned, Sociology is described as introducing her “to the societal and class structure in America and the relationship of institutions to that structure. I was inspired by the early great thinkers … Comte, … Marx, and … Weber” (Kuhn, 1991, p.39). Later, she speaks of the connection of private troubles to wider social issues and problems, referring to C Wright Mills work (Minkler and Estes, 1984, pp. 79).
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The intersection of biography and history is well represented in the snapshot of Maggie Kuhn at age 65, forced to retire and unable to bear the thought of spending the rest of her life locked in her Philadelphia house with her new sewing machine, the gift she received at her retirement party. The next twenty-four years of her life would become dense with battles in the name of social justice. She was stepping into a familiar terrain, having worked her way out her family paternalism and devoting her professional life to the YMCA and The United Presbyterian Church on a social change mission including efforts to attain universal health care and the empowerment of women and ethnic minorities. Her next battle would be the mobilization of those oppressed by the pervasive ageism of American society. In 1972 Maggie Kuhn started a social movement, the “Consultation of Older and Younger Adults,” later re-named The Gray Panthers” (GPs) with five women similarly outraged by the lack of roles available for retirees. The GPs were the expression of a widespread indignation against a conservative ideology discriminating against those who failed to be at the same time employed, fit, male and white. Their first actions were to work on the human bonding of old and young together and ageism defined as “the notion that people become inferior because they have lived a specified number of years” (Hessel, 1977, p. 13). Maggie Kuhn argued that the old could take risks that the young could not and that the fates of young and old were inextricably linked. In less than ten years the movement could count on 60,000 subscribers and one hundred chapters all over the nation (Portacolone and Estes, 2008).
(1) Identity Politics.
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In the early 1970s Maggie Kuhn was speaking out in the genre of what sociologists now call, “identity politics.” She exposed how discrimination based on age was not an isolated and individual event, but was indeed systemic and structural. Her analysis and cause against ageism was at the structural and ideological level as demonstrated by her words and actions. For Maggie Kuhn, identity politics were, first and foremost, the politics of age. She denounced ageism as a “crucial problem of alienation and oppression for the religious community of America,” her initial work environment (Hessel, 1977, p.15; for more on ageism see also Butler, 1975; ILC-USA, 2006; Palmore, Branch & Harris, 2005; Bytheway, 1995; Laws, 1995; Nelson, 2002).
Maggie Kuhn characterised public stereotypes and images of the old as mindless, sexless, and wrinkled babies (People Magazine, 198516) as not only disrespectful and denigrating, but also incredibly disempowering, disabling, and “dehumanizing” to elders, and in ways that are experienced on a deeply personal as well as the system level. She intuitively grasped such concepts as “learned helplessness” and “self-fulfilling prophecy,” as she articulated the damaging effects of these “myths,” which terrorised and shamed old people and their families into believing in their own mindlessness and babyhood. Maggie Kuhn railed against the manifestations of ageism in the terrible conditions of nursing homes and against the medicalization of ageing, in which there was so much ignorance and so little attention to the complex health, social, and chronic care needs of elders – but, as important, to the dignity, respect and wisdom of the old. She would hold up her crumpled arthritic hands at Commencement speeches at medical colleges and tell the graduating physicians that they were ill prepared for the older
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patients who would make up more than one-third of their patient care practices and that chronic illness needed the attention of medical educators, practitioners and health insurance coverage in parity with the acute care technologies. Maggie Kuhn fought against all forms of age-segregation in society including old-age communities. She created and lived a new model of intergenerational housing beginning in her own home with young persons and later co-founded the National Shared Housing Program to promote multi-generational co-housing.
Maggie Kuhn was an intellectual pioneer offering a Standpoint Theory of Age, and one in which her epistemic advantage of being old and female herself was being fully exploited (see Harding, 1996, for a discussion of standpoint theory and epistemic vantage-point and Smith, 1990, for a reflection of the deleterious consequences of “Women’s exclusion from the governing conceptual mode” and the urgency of “Knowing society from within: A feminist perspective,” p. 18 and 20). It is no surprise that Maggie Kuhn also translated her experience in empowering women to own their sexuality into her writing and speaking on sexuality and ageing. She reached out to and empowered the many young people with whom she came in contact. “We are free to fight against the forces that suppress us…. We have nothing to lose and nothing to fear by being so involved” (Kuhn, 1974, p. 3).
In contrast to some sociological work on identity politics that ignore or denigrate the import of class, Maggie Kuhn’s concern with ageism highlighted social class as a source of enormous conflict, inequality, and oppression. Proposing shared identity politics, she
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addressed the analogy between the oppressions of (1) ageism and racism that deprive individuals in both groups of their own destinies, access to power, and their societal contributions, while generating “social and economic discrimination and deprivation” (Kuhn, 1976, p. 15); and of (2) younger disabled adults and the old, both of whom are victimized, discriminated against, stereotyped, and marginalized (Kuhn, 1986, p. 15). (2) Intersectionality Maggie Kuhn was early on the scene with strident critiques of “our sick society” rife with ageism, racism, sexism, and class inequalities. Her theory and action spring from the ideological and structural connections and intersections of ageism, racism, sexism, ablebodied-ness, sexual preference, and social class. She does this years ahead of the present sociological “intersectionality” vogue. “The convergence and interaction of liberating forces at work in society against racism, sexism, ageism and economic imperialism are all oppressive ‘isms’ and built-in responses of a society that considers certain groups inferior …. All have resulted in economic and social discrimination …. [and] have brought on individual alienation, despair, hostility, and anomie” (Kuhn, 1984, pp.7-8). Intersectionality in action was accomplished via alliances between and among the oppressed and marginalized. “Coalition building is a basic strategy for today’s liberation struggles.” (Kuhn, 1985).
A core element of Maggie Kuhn’s thinking on intersectionality was her claim of the strong interdependence of individuals and generations upon one another. She insisted that the fate of young and old are intertwined and united; that every generation needs
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those before them and those after them, not only to survive but also to thrive; and that a just society cannot exist without fairness and justice for all generations. Social Security and universal health care (or the lack of it), she argued, illustrate the vital interdependence of generations and, conversely, the harms of pitting the cause of one generation at the expense of another. She and the GPs advocated a full-employment economy with a fair wage (related to labour’s contributions) in order to ensure the resources to meet the American social contract of economic security for the retired, disabled, and survivors. Maggie Kuhn’s insights are further codified and extended in Patricia Hill Collins’ (1991) Theory of Interlocking Oppressions. Subsequent work on the political economy of ageing and critical gerontology builds upon the critical analyses of both theorists (Estes, 2001).
(3) Cultural and Media Studies and the Cognitive Sciences Maggie Kuhn’s work on ageism in media programming and advertising constituted an important step forward in the field of cultural and media studies as well as the cognitive sciences (e.g., political linguistics of Lakoff, 2004;Lakoff and Rockridge 2006). The GPs Media Watch was an innovative action research project in which activists monitored TV for negative programming and ads about older persons and an excellent example of the current vogue in community-based participatory/action research. Maggie Kuhn’s Congressional testimony on the Media Watch Report spurred a federal investigation and the adoption of TV media standards on age by the Federal Communications Commission. Maggie Kuhn regaled TV audiences with her appearance
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on The Johnny Carson Show, yet made her point that the ageist skits featuring “Aunt Blabby” involving Carson and Carol Burnett were damaging and not acceptable. As a consequence, Carson produced and starred in a “politically correct” skit that poked fun at Maggie Kuhn while providing humorous, yet positive consciousness-raising about old age and ageing. Despite her diminutive appearance, Maggie Kuhn was a legendary media giant. She immediately grasped the vital stakes in crafting “the message.” Maggie Kuhn was first to fight against the labeling and political struggles (persistent as of today) surrounding the identities of old and young. Far from seeing the generations as fighting one another in a hypothesised “intergenerational war,” her analysis provides a strong bulwark against such “war” rhetoric. Maggie Kuhn was among the first (if not the first) to comprehend the deep political and economic peril that ageism in capitalist society may portend. These are issues to which political economists have subsequently applied themselves: understanding the key role and content of social constructions of reality of old age and ageing, as well as the danger of hegemonic crisis declarations that are employed by opponents of the particular groups (e.g., elders) and the welfare state (Estes, 1979; Binney and Estes, 1988; Estes, 2001). Maggie Kuhn recognised the high stakes in the successful “labeling,” naming, and framing of an issue, for they are crucial to our effective power and agency in the struggles to transform oppressive “social structures” through social action. Her speaking and writing are living examples of George Lakoff’s point that “framing itself is an action” (Lakoff and Rockridge, 2006, p. 25) and that “Reframing is social change” (Lakoff, 2004 page xv). Working on multiple analytic levels to deliver trenchant critiques that resonated with broad public audiences, Maggie
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Kuhn and the GPs pioneered some of the best and most accessible ethnographic work in the field. With it Maggie Kuhn and the GPs would shake the cultural foundation of expectations as to how old persons should act. Their spoken and printed words were often accompanied by “outrageous” actions through guerrilla theater and other eyepopping, and sometimes hysterically funny, tactics that successfully garnered national media attention. Two elements of their approach are now commonplace in the communications and cognitive sciences: (1) studies of public persuasion and the construction of persuasive positive and negative images; and (2) how images popular in media content (e.g., negative stereotyping of elders) become prominent in the minds of readers and audiences, ultimately influencing the agenda setting process (Priest, 1996, p. 49). (4) The Political Economy of Ageing In 1978 and 1979, Maggie Kuhn and the GPs were developing The Study Guide on Economic Rights – Economic Security, A Working Document for Study by the Gray Panthers Task Force for a New Economic System . It opens with, “What we expect of an economic system: [That] An economy ought to serve human needs [and] …. An economy ought to be directed by Democratic means” (Gray Panthers, 1978, p.1). In addition, it stated that, “Gray Panthers believe that the major causes of the current economic deficit are the bloated military budget and inequitable tax cuts to corporations and individuals.” The study charted the principles of economic democracy incorporating a structural analysis and critique of capitalism. In 1982,
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the GPs released a Position Paper on a Secure Social Security for All Americans that clearly states, “Gray Panthers believe that Social Security is a contract between the American people and their elected government to provide every citizen with the dignity of financial independence. It is based on the constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans including women, minorities, disabled, young, widowed, and orphaned as well as the aged” (Gray Panthers, 1982, p.1). Listening to Maggie Kuhn speak, it was clear that she had the structural analysis down pat: “Go to the roots,” she would say. “Look for the origins of problems. This is where the solutions are – not in the symptoms.” More explicitly she states that, “Ageism, sexism, racism and economic imperialism are grounded in an economic system that oppresses most of us and sharpens the class divisions among us. Our competitve profit-centered society is divided by social class, income, age, race, and education” (Kuhn in IHA and WID, 1986, p. 14). These and other elements of her critique and analysis reside and resonate in the early theoretical development of the political economy of ageing and, thus, have contributed both directly and indirectly to current developments in critical gerontology. One year after the GP Study Guide on Economic Rights appeared, Carroll Estes’ The Ageing Enterprise (1979) offered a critical analysis of programs and services for the elderly in the U. S. The complementarity between Maggie Kuhn’s analysis and that offered in the Estes book reflect a synergy of intense dialogue and intergenerational
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interchange and friendship between the two women commencing in 1974. When Estes’ initial formulation of the political economy of ageing was published, Maggie Kuhn took the book “on the stump,” lambasting the ageing enterprise for producing and perpetuating the marginalization and commodification of older adults through a chain of public policies that benefit industry and the professions most - and the old and society, the least. She railed against the avarice of the private health conglomerates and others. Kuhn and Estes concur on three aspects of the ageing enterprise, that it (1) provides social control by the bureaucrats, the professionals, and the state; (2) promotes power and profits for the experts and private industries; and (3) instantiates dependency-generating treatment of elders through the atomized provision of individual commercial services, in opposition to collective or public solutions for the old and the broader intergenerational society in which they reside. The GPs and Maggie Kuhn challenged the “corporatization of the health care system” and urged monitoring “for-profit hospital chains” and worked endlessly for a comprehensive public single payer health care system. Maggie Kuhn and Elma Greisel (Holder) collaborated with Ralph Nader on a report, Paying Through the Ear (Nader, 1973), that excoriated the “rip offs” of the hearing aid industry.1 The GPs published the handbook “Nursing Homes: Citizen Action Guide” signaling institutional abuses and malpractices. These and other analyses provide are a basis for later critiques of the commodification and financial exploitation of the elderly that constitute a core element of the political economy of ageing. 1
Paying Through the Ear was co-developed with and through Ralph Nader’s organization, which eventually closed its old age program, making a $25,000 grant to Maggie’s operation to carry on the important work they both had started. The work on nursing homes that grew out of the Nader project would later be realised through the National Center for Citizens for Nursing Home Reform, a former housemate of Maggie’s (Elmer Greisel Holder) who founded it with Maggie’s blessing.
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Theoretical and empirical work on the political economy of ageing builds upon a larger body of critical theory and the Frankfurt School. Applied to ageing, this perspective analyzes the human and social condition of old age and the social order as outcomes of power struggles. Attention is accorded to the power and conflicts of structural interests and ideology, both within and between the state and different corporate sectors as well as in the larger economic system of capitalism and the society’s political and socio-cultural systems. Ideological hegemony is central to understanding the social construction of old age and societal ageing, the problems defined therein, and the lines of public and private action that are deemed feasible and appropriate within the existing economic, cultural, and political system (Estes, 2001). Scholars working from this perspective are committed to social justice and to praxis, linking social analysis to political change. (For a detailed exposition see Estes and Phillipson, 2007; Estes, Biggs and Phillipson, 2003; and Estes and Associates, 2001).
(5) Maggie Kuhn’s Sociology of Knowledge Maggie Kuhn was one of the earliest theorists of the Sociology of Knowledge of Ageing, producing biting critiques of what she generally described as the gerontologists’ contribution to the objectification, individualization, and trivialization of the condition of old age in America. Her activism occurred during a time of ferment in academic intellectual circles signaled by the publication of Alvin Gouldner’s Coming Crisis in Western Sociology (1970), Jim O’Connor’s Fiscal Crisis of the State (1973) and other work from The Left. The Vietnam War and the unrest of the 1960’s had unleashed a resurgence of critical work that largely lay dormant after the 1930s and the early 1940’s.
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Maggie Kuhn was blazing her own parallel path, attracting overflow public audiences to hear her challenges to the dominant practice and scholarship in social gerontology, as well as to the public policies that were creating, in her words, “play pens,” (Senior Centers) and other pacification techniques for the ageing. In the late 1970s Maggie Kuhn came to the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) as a Senior Scholar in the Institute for Health & Ageing (headed by Estes), where she read and discussed James O’Connor’s (1973, 1976), Vicente Navarro’s (Navarro, 1975, 1976, 1977) and other works in critical sociology and the political economy of capitalism. At the 1977 San Francisco Annual Meeting of the Gerontological Society (GS), Maggie Kuhn engaged in a debate with Society President George Maddox. In a sharp rebuke, Maggie Kuhn and the GPs widely circulated a cartoon and pamphlet before her debate with George Maddox at the Gerontological Society. The cover portrays the Gerontological Society as a shark circling defenseless older persons (as research subjects) in the roiling water. Subsequent to the debate, she wrote the “Open Letter” to members of the GS, which contains a critique that is solidly in the genre of the sociology of knowledge (a reflexive aspect of sociological knowledge drawing upon critical sociology) ).(See Gouldner, 1970; Burawoy, 2005). The Maggie Kuhn letter appeared together with a Reply from Dr. George Maddox, in The Gerontologist (1978). Maggie Kuhn argues that public policy creates dependency and enormous power deficits for elders as she takes aim at “The government-funded service delivery system to older peoples [that] has been designed in such a way as to foster, on the one hand, a self-
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perpetuating service delivery network and, on the other hand, a client population that is increasingly dependent on that system for food, recreation, housing, transportation, and similar programs of social welfare. Since the service system exists at the behest of the provider of services rather than the consumer, it is not surprising that it serves primarily the needs of practicing gerontologists and only secondarily those of older people” (Kuhn, 1978, p.423). Boldly, Maggie Kuhn asserts that “The Gerontological Society has a corporate responsibility and accountability for the social impact and consequences of the scholarly researches and clinical practices of its members” (Kuhn, 1978, p. 424). She urges GS members to engage in “participatory radicalism” by working “with the oppressed rather than for the bureaucratic world which regulates the oppressed and determines the condition for their survival” (Kuhn, 1978, p. 424). She charges that, “To the extent that gerontologists fail to challenge the system and its social controls, they become agents of social control for older people” (Kuhn, 1978, p. 423). Maggie Kuhn is acutely aware of, and deeply concerned about the installation of a vast army of gerontological experts and their role in disempowering elders. She argues “for a radical gerontology which goes beyond the usual social divisions of sex, race, and age. I believe its scope should be beyond ‘life satisfaction adjustment’ to the structural conditioning and constraints of society, and to the forces that improve and enhance the quality of life and make society more humane and just” (Kuhn, 1978, p. 422).
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Maggie Kuhn delivers, not only a critique of the paradigms and theories employed by gerontologists, commencing with disengagement, activity, and life cycle developmental theories, but also a critique of what she and the GPs analyze as research scholarship and science that disempowers and objectifies older persons, while ignoring and obviating the richness and value of their experience and wisdom. The argument is for research beyond the individual personality, life-course, or behavioral level, instead investigating institutions of oppression and social control at structural and ideological levels. Moreover, her argument constitutes a serious intellectual challenge to the (dubious) claims of value-neutrality and objectivity in the gerontologists’ construction of social facts. Maggie Kuhn and the GPs are challenging positivist research approaches and the scholars who claim objectivity via sterile quantitative methods, utilizing deductive reasoning and methods that ignore (or trivialize) the real lives, experiences, and social conditions of the voiceless, invisible, and powerless. Here, they are in the vanguard of what will become the intellectually sophisticated re-emerging 1970s debates (to the present) concerning the philosophy of science, epistemology (ways of knowing), and ideology. In today’s lingo, Maggie Kuhn and the GPS are challenging the mainstream methods and science of gerontology because they are seen to impose (privilege) empiricist approaches to and interpretations from a standpoint of those who are dominant (e.g., that of white male elites), in contrast to other ways of knowing that respect and include the lived experiences, meanings, and real conditions of marginalized others. As significant is their critique that gerontological researchers demonstrate little or no commitment (indeed, have an aversion) to tight linkages between theory, research, and
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action (praxis) - with the negative exception of employing the research to bolster the ideology, power and control of experts and practicing gerontologists and geriatricians over a subjugated and pacified people. Although gerontologists (socially) construct a “fact based” reality, purportedly independent of values and somehow objective in interpretation, their methods and theories provide a partial perspective that reflects “the relations of ruling,” (a term later contributed by Dorothy Smith, 1990). In today’s parlance, Maggie Kuhn and the GPs are calling upon leading U.S. gerontologists to reflect upon their craft and to open themselves to epistemological authentication. In so doing, they are working toward the liberative potential of Academic Gerontology (adapting Gouldner’s concept referring to Academic Sociology, 1970, p. 13).
(6) Globalization and Global Imperialism Maggie Kuhn’s lasting commitment to eradicate ageism was fully warranted especially where she located it, as an essential part of global liberation struggles. The globalization ideology and struggles of today only underscore the significance of her position. As a dedicated peace activist Maggie Kuhn spoke often about the global nature of all human relationships and human communities. She was familiar with the devastation of war and the Diaspora of peoples, old and young, black and white, women and men, parents and orphans, rich and poor, North and South, core and periphery. She lectured about the danger of global imperialism and the war machines that its pursuit propagates. As an international traveler, Maggie Kuhn saw, understood, and fostered global connections and networks long before the phenomenon of globalization commanded the scholarly attention it now receives. Under Maggie Kuhn’s leadership, the
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GPs became the first non-governmental member organization in the United Nations, and have, to this day, maintained a vocal and active presence at the U.N. in New York. Maggie Kuhn understood that the struggle against ageism is inextricably linked to other struggles for freedom around the globe such as those against racism, sexism, and the struggles of Third World nations “against U.S. imperialism and Pax Americana.” Ageism, she said, is part of a “worldwide struggle for a new humanity … [for] a new community-based social justice system of human compassion and selfhood.” As “elders of the tribe,” “We are … the experienced ones; we are maturing, growing adults responsible for the survival of our society. We are not wrinkled babies, succumbing to trivial, purposeless waste of our years and our time” (Kuhn in Hessel, 1977, p. 14).
Maggie Kuhn as Public Sociologist Characterizing herself as a “wrinkled radical,” Maggie Kuhn was a public sociologist in the full sense of the concept advanced by American sociologist, Michael Burawoy (2005). Burawoy calls Public Sociology, “the conscience of Policy Sociology,” as he contrasts Public Sociology with Policy Sociology (e.g., health services research), the latter of which is conducted in service of a goal defined by an organizational client and is a form of instrumental knowledge (italics the authors) . In contrast, Public Sociology is the conversation “between academics and various publics about the direction of society” (Burawoy, 2005, p. 11); it is a form of reflexive knowledge (italics the authors), which “interrogates the value premises of society as well as our profession.”
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Maggie Kuhn fully embodies the “original passion for social justice, economic equality, human rights, a sustainable environment, and simply a better world” that Burawoy (2005, p. 5) describes as attracting like-minded people towards sociology (and especially Public Sociology), perceiving its contributions as a potential “moral and political force” (Burawoy, 2005, p.6). Maggie Kuhn fits the profile of Burawoy’s “organic public sociologist,” immersed in her causes and vigorously interacting with counterpublics. As an organic intellectual, working on the ground and from the people, her efforts were ultimately all about praxis in the cause of social justice. She was aligned with the objective of critical theory, a core mission of which is “to understand and change structures of dominance everywhere” (Sardar and Van Loon, 1997, pp. 8-9; italics in original). Her analyses and example both inspired and informed the larger ongoing project in critical sociology and critical gerontology that seeks alternative theoretical frameworks and emancipatory knowledges addressed to concerns of social inequalities and social justice (Estes and Phillipson, 2007; Hendricks, 2005; Katz, 1996, 2001; Moody, 1993; Powell, 2006; Ray, 2003). As Antonio Gramsci (1971) argues, “organic intellectuals” (contrasted with traditional intellectuals) “are directly related to the rising classes or groups which use them to innovate and to establish a new hegemony” (Macey, 2000, p. 282). In one sense, all people are intellectuals on the ground; it is organic intellectuals who openly see, speak, identify, and act with an oppressed class and other oppressed (sub-altern) groups. Organic intellectuals carry the difficult task of transforming the “pessimism of the intellect” into the “optimism of the will” (Sassoon, 2000). Although it is unknown
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whether Maggie Kuhn actually read Gramsci, she intuitively understood and acted as if a new hegemony were possible as she worked nonstop to promote widespread consent for specific political and social reforms. Maggie Kuhn’s “transformational agenda” (Hendricks and Powell, 2007, editors’ personal communication) included nothing less than the creation of “a grounded, radical hegemonic re-thinking and politics” (Sassoon, 2000) aimed at radical social change.
Maggie Kuhn walked and worked in virtually all of the liberation struggles of her time. There is no moment of opportunity to be passed up. Observing that, “I have never been able to turn down a good cause. … I’ve come to see all injustices, not matter how small or seemingly unrelated, as linked” (Kuhn, 1991, p. 222). Maggie Kuhn fulfils the promise of the Project of Public Sociology, which “is to make visible the invisible, to make the private public, to validate these organic connections as part of our sociological life” (Burawoy, 2005, p. 8). Maggie Kuhn’s mentorship and example moved forward the work of multiple generations of scholars, including this article’s authors. She lived and produced critical social analyses in pursuit of emancipatory knowledges. Her work is one of the earliest forms, if not the first, of critical pedagogy in gerontology; she promoted and advanced discourses of resistance. Maggie Kuhn was an engaged and outraged, practicing organic intellectual - the epitome of what bell hooks (1994) means by “teaching to transgress” and “education as the practice of freedom.” In the twenty-four years after her involuntary retirement, this was Maggie Kuhn’s full-time transformational agenda.
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References: Bader, Jeanne E. . 2000. "Maggie Kuhn: “She was much shorter than I expected her to be!" Contemporary Gerontology 6:104-08. Binney, Elizabeth A. and Carroll L. Estes. 1988. "The Retreat of the State and Its Transfer of Responsibility - the Intergenerational War." International Journal of Health Services 18:83-96. Buroway, Michael. 2005. "For Public Sociology - the 2004 Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association." American Sociological Review 70:4-28. Butler, Robert. 1975. Why Survive? Being Old in America. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. Bytheway, B. 1995. Ageism. Bristol, PA USA: Open University Press. Collier, Barnard 1975. "Fight retirement, enjoy sex and don't become a "wrinkled baby" says Gray Panther leader Maggie Kuhn." People Magazine. Collins, Patricia Hill. 1990. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. Boston: Unwin-Hyman. Estes, Carroll L., Biggs, Simon., Phillipson, Chris. 2003. Social Theory, Social Policy and Ageing. London: Open University Press. Estes, Carroll L. 2001. "Social Policy and Aging: A Critical Perspective." Social Policy & Ageing Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA.. Estes, Carroll L. 1979. The Aging Enterprise. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Estes, Carroll L. and Chris Phillipson. 2007. "Critical Gerontology." in Handbook of Age and Ageing, edited by J. Birren. NY: Elsevier. Gouldner, Alvin. 1970. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Basic Books. Gramsci, Antonio, Quintin Hoare, and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. 1971. Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. London, UK: Lawrence and Wishart. Gray Panthers. 1976. "Special Report on the Elderly." CA parks & recreation. —. 1978. Study Guide on Economic Rights – Economic Security, A Working Document for Study by the Gray Panthers Task Force for a New Economic System. Philadelphia PA: The Gray Panthers. 1-5. —. 1982. A Secure Social Security for All Americans: A Gray Panther position paper." Philadelphia, PA: The Gray Panthers 1-5. Harding, Sandra. 1996. "Standpoint Epistemology (A Feminist Version): How Social Disadvantage Creates Epistemic Advantage." Pp. 146-160 in Social theory and sociology: the classics and beyond, edited by S. P. Turner. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Hendricks, Jon. 2005. "Moral economy and aging." in The Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing, edited by M. L. Johnson, V. L. Bengtson, P. G. Coleman, and T. B. L. Kirkwood. Cambridge UK: Cambridge Univ. Press. Hendricks, Jon and Jason Powell. 2007. "Personal Communication." Hessel, Dieter. 1977. Maggie Kuhn on Aging: A Dialogue. Edited by Dieter Hessel. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.
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Carroll L. Estes is Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Institute for Health and Ageing at the University of California, San Francisco. She is Past President of the Gerontological Society of America, the American Society on Ageing and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education. Research interests include the political economy of ageing, globalization, and the health and economic security of older women. She can be reached at
[email protected] – Institute for Health and Ageing, 3333 California Street, Suite 340, San Francisco, 94118, USA. Elena Portacolone is a doctoral student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California in San Francisco. She is conducting research on social movements led by older persons, on alternatives to nursing homes, on isolation in “aging in place” settings and on the meaning of community in an individualistic society. She can be reached at
[email protected] – Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, 3333 California Street, San Francisco, 94143-0646, USA.
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