The concept of family in Brazilian Geriatrics and Gerontology: echoes from multidisciplinary dilemma

Over the past few decades a process of construction and deconstruction of the concept of old age has been noticed in the western societies, a theme which has proved to be an object of further investigation and reflection in several fields of knowledge. Old age has equally become an object of increasing intervention, which is generated among different agencies and agents pertaining to the same trend. Thus, the production of legitimate discourses concerning old age has been followed by a number of actions that have been organized on some basic assumptions. In the academic field such a tendency has given rise to geriatricians, specialized doctors, and gerontologists, specialized non-doctors, who have been both legitimated by the institutions they create, such as the prestigious Sociedade Brasileira de Geriatria e Gerontologia (SBGG), which holds scientific knowledge about old age. This paper presents some of the issues, which have arisen in a wider project on age categories, concerning the discourse and praxis of geriatricians and gerontologists. Such discourse and praxis are related to family topics in an attempt to clarify some of their non-explicit assumptions, which guide their actions.