Time & Society

The purpose of this paper is to outline the “ecology of social time” as an empirical concept of time to bridge the gap between theory and empirical research in the sociology of time. First, this paper proposes that social time could be considered as an institutionalized referential mechanism that enables social interactions to occur at a specific time point by coordinating the social actions of various agents. Examining the condition of temporal coordination and diagnosing its fairness critically may be the tasks involved in the sociology of time. Second, this paper suggests that the ecology of social time is a useful concept for integrating the theses and tasks applied in the sociology of time. Finally, this paper presents an ecological model of social time as a possible framework for subsequent empirical research in the sociology of time.

Through the revisit of a previous study, conducted in 1980, the present research inquiries, in 2010, the relationship between economic and social circumstances, territorial rootedness, and temporal experience among the workers of a Portuguese industrial community. Interlocking ethnographic observation, biographic interviews, and extensive survey, the research explores the inflection, occurred between 1980 and 2010, in the interpretation of historical change spread among those workers, especially the transformation of their retrospective vision of the past dictatorial regime of Estado Novo (1933–1974). The research brings, therefore, a contribution to the study of the schemata of temporal perception and interpretation used in a particular community, pointing especially to the verbal and emotional expressions that constitute there the remembrance of the past. Nostalgia or melancholy emerges, thus, as expressions introduced by the changes on the local systems of expectations and opportunities of the community and, simultaneously, as personal and collective tactics used to cope with the present situation through the rehabilitation of the memory. At the same time, this article shows the pregnancy in revaluating or reproducing preceding researches, in the original or similar sites of inquiry, with a reflexive posture regarding the situated production of knowledge.

Clock-time differentiates and systematises in a way rarely endorsed by small-scale societies, where the tendency is to reject hierarchy based on the measurement of time. Taking my lead from the Karawari-speaking Ambonwari of the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, I introduce the concept of egalitarian temporality produced by never ending competition between different individuals and groups. The villagers are themselves responsible for creating periods and ways of being in both their environment and society, and they actively participate in dramatic episodes intended to cut into their existent ways of life. These ‘cuts’ then create desired changes. I argue that time in the Sepik and egalitarian small-scale societies in general is very much agentive and thus possessed, held and seen by individuals and groups, with periods defined by and organized around future oriented projects.

Although we all live in the present and often hear about the importance of living “here and now”, every moment of our lives is highly influenced by explicit and implicit thoughts about our past and potential future. The present study investigated the relation between individuals' tendencies to either drift towards the past by, e.g. constantly re-evaluating and regretting past choices, towards the future by, e.g. basing present actions on anticipated future consequences, and their inclination to deal with the present by either committing to chosen alternatives or procrastinating on their implementation. Finally, the influence of these factors on participants' satisfaction with their chosen college major was also explored. The obtained results indicate a close relationship between the assessed considerations of different temporal directions. Furthermore, regret, procrastination, commitment (choice closure), and consideration of future consequences (future focus) were revealed as statistically significant predictors of students' satisfaction with their college major. These findings indicate that individuals' considerations of various temporal directions influence their valuation of own choices and life outcomes and open new questions regarding the general relevance and effects of mental time travel.

The paper analyzes young cannabis users’ experiences of time from two different perspectives, one looking at how their everyday life is related to social time structures and another looking at their actual time management strategies. The paper shows that intense drug use is a reason behind the interviewees’ underinvolvement in interaction time, institutional time, and cyclic time. Yet, drug use may also be an attempt at solving problems with time management, a strategy that again brings the users further away from the social time structures of society. We identify temporal synchronicity, or rather the lack of this, as a central challenge for the interviewees’ social identities and general feelings of a meaningful everyday life. Further, we argue that the young cannabis users are both social and temporal “outsiders” to society and that new time management strategies are key to reversing this process of social marginalization. The paper is based on qualitative interviews with 30 young cannabis users in outpatient drug treatment in Denmark.