In Disciplining Old Age Stephen Katz gives us a sophisticated and theoretically rigorous approach to what gerentology does. He deftly and subtly combines the theories of Foucault, Bourdieu, and the Althusser in his analysis of what he calls the "gerontological web."

Katz explores how political and social sciences have differentiated the elderly as a special kind of population characterized in negative terms, and he examines the literature of the discipline and shows how gerontology as built itself as a discipline through its journals, associations, funding agencies, and "schools of thought."