Time & Society

The term “shortening of time” is related to the Judeo-Christian tradition that announces the end of time as the moment when God, for the sake of the elect, shortens the duration of days and hours, because without this shortening no one would survive (This means that only a God's will could ended Time. The Christian perspective believes that the last days will be chaotic, and God will preclude History, ending time, to save a few men of goodwill.). While in this sense salvation is associated with divine intervention, the thesis of acceleration would reverse the above formula, making human beings responsible for the narrowing of time. But if the shortening of time in the Apocalypse is aimed at the salvation of the World: Where does acceleration, a secular idea of the shortening of time, aim? What is it that justifies the increase in the speed of completing tasks that previously took considerable time, which are today performed in just a few hours? How can we justify the frenzy to obtain what we want in the shortest time possible? In this paper we propose to address this and other questions, in order to show the relationship between a sociological understanding of acceleration with a theological-Christian view of time. In other words, the main claim exposes the transfer of teleology from a religious conception to a historical-worldly conception of time.

What does it mean not to wait? It is possible to live in ways which do not entail waiting? Through close examination of time and its articulations among a group of US 1960s-generation ‘hippies’ and younger ‘drop outs’ in a rural backwater of Hawai‘i, I argue in this paper that it is possible to live without waiting. Drawing on Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953) and Baba Ram Dass’ countercultural invocation to ‘remember, be here now’, I explore unexpected interruptions to anticipated temporal flows. Structured around three vignettes on failing to hitchhike, learning to do ethnographic fieldwork through stopping trying to do ethnographic fieldwork and an unexpected interruption in the supermarket, this paper builds up a picture of non-waiting in action. Located against a backdrop of waiting as temporal interruption and affective mode, I argue that this group sought to collectively disrupt the affective modes of indifference and/or frustration they grew up with in urban mainland America. Through new forms of affective engagement they became able to collectively reframe temporal interruption as existing within rather than without local temporal flows, interruptions ceased to be ruptures to temporal textures but part of their very fabric. Located within temporal flows, they did not force individuals out of a moral community of (time is money) efficient, productive citizens but reframed productivity itself in terms of producing sociality, positive affective experience and communitas. Out of a multitude of moments of not waiting, a temporal texture of American counterculture emerges.

Based on empirical research on the emergence of consumerism in Saudi Arabia, this article examines the shifts in the understanding of time that emerge in the competing paradigms of traditional and Islamic time, globalised world time and the individualisation of time in consumer pursuits. While Islamic time still provides the dominant frame for social life in Saudi Arabia, there have been adaptions to global time. While these are relatively unproblematic and technical, both traditional Arab and postmodern consumer times are less compatible, and especially the latter is posing a challenge to both Islamic and traditional timings.

Institutional change is a response to socioeconomic pressures caused by resource scarcity, population growth, cultural change, and economic inefficiency. Historical evidence shows that the unequitable resource redistribution among groups caused by institutional change can indirectly reduce income, particularly when it leads to civil conflicts. A more equitable and effective approach to institutional change would seek win–win solutions. To examine this possibility, I review historical examples of institutional change in China to show how gradual institutional change that lets all stakeholders share the economic benefits is the most successful path. Therefore, innovation to replace or modify old institutions and equitably increase economic growth will be a key approach. This win–win approach requires persuasion, compromise, demonstration projects, competition, and embracing institutional diversity. Increased economic benefits come from economic innovation and encouragement of stakeholders to participate in institutional change, but require nurturing of new social groups that will drive the change process.

There are many theories of what is causing a sense of social acceleration and the ‘time squeeze’ in modern society, such as the notion that individuals are ‘doing more’ through increased consumption, or the increasing difficulty that many people face coordinating with networks due to de-synchronised and de-routinised employment and life-style practices. In this regard qualitative empirical work has often been focused on dual-income middle-class couples. To explore an under-developed area, this article considers the socio-temporal organisation of 10 working sole fathers’ and 17 working sole mothers’ daily lives. This study finds that for working sole parents a sense of time squeeze or acceleration is principally due to structural aspects of workplaces and parenting practices. In particular, parenting routines, school and childcare times and work times are fixed events which create a time squeeze in the mornings and evenings. These normative and structural temporalities appear more influential on working sole parents’ daily lives than consumption norms or de-synchronisation aspects of managing networks.

Future time perspective is a personality trait that involves people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions related to their futures. However, no multidimensional measures of future time perspective have been developed within Chinese cultural context. This study examined the structure of future time perspective by developing and validating a Future Time Perspective Scale for Adolescents and Young Adults in middle school and college student samples. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses resulted in a final measure that included 28 items loading onto six factors: Future-negative, future-positive, future-confusion, future-perseverant, future-perspicuity, and future-planning. The six-factor structure with high reliability and strong patterns of validity estimates was established. Future Time Perspective Scale for Adolescents and Young Adults will be useful in studies testing adolescents’ and young adults’ future time perspective. Future directions for the study of future time perspective in adolescents and young adults and limitations of the current study were discussed.

The aim of the present research was to explore the role of individual differences in time perspective (TP) in predicting two relationship quality indicators: general relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction, in romantic heterosexual couples. A total amount of 100 dyads took part in the study. Our study revealed that relationship satisfaction indices are predicted by partners’ time perspectives; both actor and partner effects proved significant. For instance, past-negative was related to lower general relationship satisfaction, whereas past-positive proved detrimental to sexual satisfaction. Higher relationship (but not sexual) satisfaction was related to a more balanced time perspective. Moreover, we demonstrated that the role of some time perspective dimensions may change with relationship length, e.g., a relationship between future-positive (FP) time perspective and females’ relationship satisfaction proved to change across relationship course from significantly negative to strongly positive. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found no evidence for assortative mating effects for time perspective dimensions. The present results provide evidence for the role of psychological temporality in relationship functioning and suggests potential utility of time perspective theories in practical interventions aimed to improve romantic relationships’ quality.

In this article, Compton-Lilly proposes that time acts as a constitutive dimension of people’s experiences that significantly affects the ways people make sense of their worlds. After briefly examining the ways time has been conceptualized in educational practice, she explores the temporal affordances of three highly influential theories described by Bakhtin, Bourdieu, and Lemke. To illustrate the temporal potential of these theories, Compton-Lilly draws upon data from a 10-year case study of one student and his family. Temporality is revealed as a multifaceted contextual dimension. Attending to the various ways people operate within time provides important insights into the construction of longitudinal processes including identity construction, literacy learning, and becoming a student. These insights are important not only to researchers who attempt to make sense of the experiences of children and teachers, but also to educators who must seek ways to acknowledge and effect the longitudinal trajectories of children.

Time perspective is crucial in adolescence and youth, when individuals make important decisions related to their present and future. The focus of this research was to use the six-factor short version Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (S-ZTPI) scale in a sample of adolescents and young adults, and to analyse its associations with decision-making, relational styles and engagement. A structural equation model of the effects of S-ZTPI on these variables was computed, and its psychometric properties were found adequate. The results underline that young people’s present orientation is associated with a relational style based on confidence in oneself and others, and with active engagement in terms of responsibility and trust in a better future. Our findings suggest a positive description of adolescents’ views, as they are able to enjoy the time they are living in without giving up their responsibilities for making a better world for the future.

This article presents the introduction and the update of an ethnographic research on temporality among indigenous groups, published in 2011 in its full version as a book in Spanish. It seeks to prove the usefulness of the conceptual distinction between time, defined as the phenomenon of becoming in itself, and temporality, defined as the human apprehension of becoming in a cultural context. Furthermore, the existence of non-hegemonic temporalities is exemplified by a case study of originary temporality with Mocoví indigenous societies in Argentina’s Chaco region. The methodology built for studying temporality in different social groups, termed here as cultural rhythmics, is also introduced. By studying different rhythmic experiences integrated in the participant observation, the rhythmic method enables us to interpret social facts that are implicit in the everyday practices of organisation, in the economic–political relations, and in the group’s worldviews.

Belonging is a fundamentally temporal experience, yet there exists to date little research on belonging as a temporal phenomenon. This paper offers an important contribution to the literatures on belonging, time and the self by exploring how the experience of belonging is tethered to time. Focussing on the temporal dimensions of the interconnection between belonging and the self contributes to our understanding of how people experience time and construct a sense of self. The data comprise 62 accounts on belonging written by members of the Mass Observation Project’s panel of volunteer writers residing in Great Britain. Two dimensions of duration are explored: first, enduring belonging compared to fleeting belonging and second, belonging that endures ‘out of time’. In relation to the first dimension, I argue that the duration of belonging aids in constructing a coherent self over time and thus speaks to a person’s moral character. The second dimension of duration illustrates experiences of belonging that defy understandings of linear temporality and a singular self, thus demonstrating the fundamentally distributed nature of the self. Attending to the duration of belonging also adds to our empirical understanding of how time is experienced by people.

The question when people work is almost always reduced to the question how much people work on (non-)standard working hours. In this contribution, we applied optimal matching techniques using Belgian data from a weekly work grid (n = 6330) to identify individuals’ work timing patterns, offering a richer analytical approach than most previous studies on (non-)standard work time. Results show that such analysis captures much more and much more relevant variation in the timing of work than simple questions. Three general and 10 more detailed weekly work patterns are identified based on two dimensions of paid work: the number of hours worked and the percentage of hours worked on non-standard periods of time. Additional analyses show that men’s work patterns depend only on job characteristics. For women, work patterns are also explained by socio-economic factors including education, presence of working partner and presence of children.

In an interview study among 25 architects we investigated how activities were allocated over time in the design phase of an architectural project. Specifically, linking the literatures about pacing behavior and incubation, we set out to identify patterns related to how the interviewees paced their activity before a deadline. We used two types of materials to stimulate the answers in the interview: 1) standard graphs, developed in previous research; 2) a timeline. Five main themes emerged, that were termed pacing; milestones; multiple projects; deadlines; and quality–time trade-offs. Based upon the results we propose a model that includes overlapping U-shapes of activity, that is, most activity at the start of a project and right before a deadline. A second study provided a comparison of the pacing patterns among 85 respondents in jobs that required different levels of creativity. Not only U-shape pacing, but also deadline pacing was more common in creative jobs, whereas early starting patterns were less common. The two studies provide insight into how professionals in creative jobs deliberately use pacing that allows for incubation.

Sociological work has often characterized the contemporary future horizon as a space crowded with risks and contingencies. This view has prompted a number of claims that young adults conceptualize the future predominantly in terms of the choices and plans that they make to mitigate against such concerns. As an extension of this logic, a number of studies have suggested that young adults conceptualize the long-term future extending beyond their own lives separately from their more immediate horizon of planning (Leahy et al., 2010; Toffler, 1974). This paper discusses how young adults relate to the long-term and more immediate future concurrently, and in doing so considers the points at which the strategies that they use to cope with contingency in their own lives may intersect with the ways that they approach their fears, hopes and imaginings of the long-term future. The data for this paper are drawn from an interview project in which young adults (aged 18–34) were asked to discuss their own futures, and a general idea of the future. The findings are used to form the beginnings of a typology of the approaches that young adults may adopt when engaging with the future, which is then drawn upon to propose that the ways in which they engage with the long-term future are often related to the strategies that they employ when facing their own futures.