Time & Society

This article argues that human futurity is central to cultural being in general and contemporary social life in particular. It suggests that the social sciences have difficulty engaging with this important subject matter; that it poses problems at the level of theory and methodology. In his methodological writings, Max Weber addressed social futurity implicitly through the concepts of rationality and progress, ethics and values, purposes and motives, options and choices, calculation and the means-end schema, responsibility and vocation. This article uses Max Weber's methodological writings to focus discussion on some of the central tensions and difficulties that arise when sociologists seek explicitly to encompass in their work the temporal domain of the `not yet'. The overall aim of the article is to open up futurity and contemporary social extension into the long-term future as issues for social science consideration and debate.

This essay seeks to explain the constitutive role that space-time plays in the dynamics of capital accumulation. Through a close reading of David Harvey's work, I show that time and space work together in ways particular to the capitalist mode of producing, distributing, selling, consuming and disposing of commodities. This does not, I argue, mean that space-time is reducible to capital accumulation — there are, to be sure, other forms of space-time that are relatively autonomous from the now dominant mode of production. My aim is not to provide a definitive account of space-time tout court but, instead, to show both the organic connection between space and time within capitalism specifically as well as the necessary — rather than simply contingent — role that space-time plays in the dynamics of accumulation. My argument is that capitalist space is inconceivable in abstraction from capitalism's temporal compulsions, and that space-time functions as a concrete abstraction that internalizes the whole gamut of contradictions that Marx identified over a century ago. The essay makes its analytical contribution by surveying previous Marxist and non-Marxist contributions to understanding space and time in the social sciences, en route to a close reading of Harvey's Limits to Capital. The political implications of paying careful attention to capitalist space-time are explored by counter-posing Harvey's work with Doreen Massey's recent writings about spatio-temporality.

The information and communication technology (ICT) driven, real-time tendencies of global capitalism are predominant, but they are not universal. Fast, short-term profits undermine long-term strategies of capital accumulation. In this respect, the structures and activities of global capitalism are riven by temporal contradictions. Such is evident between and within different fractions of capital. Fast and long-term imperatives also conflict within transnational corporations and business administration. On a global scale, the clash between different cultural traditions of corporate capitalism reflects opposing temporal logics of profit maximization. How then do these temporal contradictions play out empirically? My response to this question explores the general idea that spatio-temporal fixes enable the cohesion and reproduction of capitalist systems. To this end, I will point out that under global capitalism spatio-temporal fixes cannot be guaranteed. There are no built-in congruities interlinking state, nation, economy and society. Global networks of finance, production and corporate governance may weaken the conjunctures between nation, state, economy and society and exacerbate temporal disjunctures within them. From these observations, I will argue that state-centred constructions of time and temporality are weakening against the general, real-time tendencies of global capitalism. This sharpens temporal conflicts within the nationally constituted economy and the nationally circumscribed state. As upper reaches of the nation state conform to the temporal urgency of institutionalized supranational decision making, the marginalized national polity is answerable to the slower temporal rhythms of representative assembly, the election cycle, public policy formation and civil society. Against this background, worldwide coalitions opposed to ruling global interests are also riven by conflicting temporalities. Such conflicts reflect the temporal contradictions of global capitalism and the associated temporal conflicts within states, nations and economies.

Recent scholarship on the governmentality of risk has revealed ways in which rationalities of government are directed at the transformation of mundane time consciousness in daily conduct. Reflexive temporalities are inscribed through what Ulrich Beck has termed the `individualization of risk'. Such an account, however, has been criticized for its overemphasis on the reflexive, cognitive dimensions of temporal practice, by theorists drawing on a Bourdieusian notion of the habitus, as a pre-reflexive basis for action. This article attempts to mediate these two positions by emphasizing the practical work by which individual temporalities are made reflexive. Drawing on the theory of ethical practice developed in Michel Foucault's later work, the governmentality of temporality is read as a multi-dimensional practice of ethical self-transformation. More precisely, drawing on Bourdieu, this article considers the pre-reflexive, unthought and embodied future orientations incorporated in the bodily habitus as the ethical substance of a reflexive project of temporal self-government.

This article addresses the timing of family transitions in early adulthood. Theoretical and empirical analyses are used to investigate the appropriateness of the notions of destandardization, differentiation and individualization for characterizing recent changes in West German life courses. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) are used for a comparison of (West German) birth cohorts and the respective timing of moving out of the parental home, first marriage and first parenthood. These transitions have, in fact, undergone a certain temporal destandardization. However, the results suggest that this destandardization is limited to certain dimensions, is clearly socially structured and is in part brought about by changing structural conditions. Furthermore, these changes in timing can be partly explained by differentiation according to education. Individualization, too, is only applicable to a certain degree and in particular to women's life courses.

This article seeks to increase understanding of the temporal aspects in technological innovation processes. Based on an empirical case, the aim is first to identify various types of time and then to study how R&D professionals in chemistry interact with time as they collaborate in developing and applying technological inventions. The article suggests that the distribution of work to collaborators can be seen as an attempt to extend the time resources in a project. Furthermore, participation of R&D professionals in short-term projects can be seen as an attempt to build long-term collaborative relationships. The study participates in a debate on how people in an R&D context approach collaboration from the time perspective.

This article juxtaposes `temporary' versus `permanent' based on a study of the Israeli Prime Minister's `permanent incapacity' (the result of illness) and of the President's `temporary incapacity' (the result of a police investigation). Analysis indicates that: a) temporal maps are mainly framed by focusing on `temporary' states; b) the temporal structure of `temporary' is associated simultaneously with a sense of stability and with a search for change and transition; c) the temporal structure of `permanent' is linked both to uncertainty and confusion and to the maintenance of continuity. It seems that the inherent tension between `temporary' and `permanent' is challenged by the notion of risk and the rise of `second modernity'.