TY - JOUR TI - Connecting Life Span Development with the Sociology of the Life Course: A New Direction IS - 2 N1 - This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/openaccess.htm). Y1 - 2015/05/12/ VL - 50 N2 - The life course has become a topic of growing interest within the social sciences. Attempts to link this sub-discipline with life span developmental psychology have been called for but with little sign of success. In this paper, we seek to address three interlinked issues concerning the potential for a more productive interchange between life course sociology and life span psychology. The first is to try to account for the failure of these two sub-disciplines to achieve any deepening engagement with each other, despite the long-expressed desirability of that goal; the second is to draw attention to the scope for enriching the sociology of the life course through Erik Erikson?s model of life span development; and the last is the potential for linking Eriksonian theory with current debates within mainstream sociology about the processes involved in ?individualisation? and ?self-reflexivity? as an alternative entry point to bring together these two fields of work. SN - 0038-0385 EP - 315 SP - 301 ID - discovery1469959 JF - Sociology KW - Erik Erikson KW - Identity KW - Life course sociology KW - Life span psychology KW - Reflexivity UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038515577906 A1 - Gilleard, C A1 - Higgs, P AV - public ER -