The Sociology of Time: A Critical Overview

281 Pages·2021·3.121 MB·English

by  Jiří Šubrt

The Sociology of Time
A Critical Overview
Jiří Šubrt
The Sociology of Time
Jirí̌ Šubrt
The Sociology
of Time
A Critical Overview
Jirí̌ Šubrt
Faculty of Humanities
Charles University
Praha, Czech Republic
ISBN 978-3-030-83288-9 ISBN 978-3-030-83289-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83289-6
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A
cknowledgements
The topic of time first came to me in 1980, when I was studying sociology
at Charles University, then still in so-called normalizing Czechoslovakia. In
my interest, I was supported by Associate Professor Eduard Urbánek, who
gave me valuable early advice. As a student, I formed an opinion very close
to Georges Gurvitch’s idea of the multiplicity of social times, but after
some time I abandoned this view and leaned towards a monistic concept of
time. Access to foreign professional literature was very limited in then-
socialist Prague, so a more significant shift in my studies could only occur
when I got internships at universities after 1989 in Austria (Vienna and
Graz), Germany (Berlin, Tübingen, Konstanz, Hamburg, and Nuremberg,
Erlangen), and the United Kingdom (Cambridge). Occasionally, I had the
opportunity to consult questions with foreign colleagues, who at various
times included, for example, Prof. Thomas Luckmann, Prof. Ilja Srubar,
Prof. Werner Bergmann, Prof. Hans Joas, Prof. Patrick Baert, Prof. Johan
Goudsblom, Prof. Kurt Lüscher, and Prof. Reinhold Knoll, and also Prof.
Jirí̌ Musil and Prof. Richard Jung in the Czech Republic. I should add that
my interest in time has since intertwined with other thematic areas, espe-
cially the history of sociology, contemporary sociological theory, and his-
torical sociology. At first I thought that the perspective of time would allow
me to look into these areas from a unique, privileged position, but gradu-
ally I abandoned this notion. However, I did not abandon the belief that
the study of the sociology of time provides a number of intellectual chal-
lenges, inspirational stimuli, riddles, and puzzles, for which the topic
deserves deeper attention. Over the past decades, I have managed to study
dozens of books and articles on the subject; what I have not been able to
v
vi ACKNOWLEdGEMENTS
do so far is to find interactive partners for my thoughts. So now I present
this book to readers in the belief that at least some may be stimulated to
enter into dialogue with the author. The fact that the text of the book is—
according to the early reflections of my colleagues on its manuscript—
accessible to the reader, I owe primarily to the help of my long-term
language advisor Edward Thomas Everett.
j. š.
c
ontents
1 Labyrinth of Questions and Answers: Introduction 1
Bibliography 5
2 Time and the Civilizing Process 7
2.1 T ime from the Perspective of Sociology of Knowledge 8
2.2 M etamorphoses of Time 12
2.3 A Brief Digression to the History of the Time Measurement 17
2.4 T ime, Asceticism, and Discipline 22
2.5 M odern Tyrant 26
2.6 T he First Law of Economics 33
Bibliography 37
3 Time as a Social Category 41
3.1 T he Rhythm of Collective Life 42
3.2 C ritical Data in Collective Life 51
3.3 A Brief Excursion to the Issue of the Calendar 55
3.4 D igression on Astrology and Astronomy 62
3.5 The Dynamics of Modern Life and Historical Consciousness 66
3.6 T he Historical Perspective and Historization 69
3.7 C oncept of Memory Frames and Collective Memory 72
3.8 A Long Time of History 78
3.9 C ourte durée and Longue durée 82
3.10 S patio-Temporal Dimension of Analysis of the Social Process 84
Bibliography 89
vii
viii CONTENTS
4 Time and Human Action 95
4.1 T he Present as the Locus of Reality 96
4.2 T ime, Meaning, and Intersubjectivity 103
Bibliography 113
5 Time: The Key to the Analysis of Social Reality 115
5.1 F unctions of Social Time 116
5.2 A nthropological Inspiration 125
5.3 H ot and Cold Societies 129
5.4 T ime and Order 135
5.5 T he Plurality of Social Times 139
5.6 P aradigms of the Human Condition in the Perspective
of Comparative Civilization Analysis 143
Bibliography 146
6 The Role of Time in Theoretical Systems of Sociology
at the End of the Twentieth Century 149
6.1 S ystems Theory and Analysis of Temporal Structures 150
6.1.1 Temporalization as Reduction of Complexity 151
6.1.2 Social Systems and Evolution 159
6.1.3 World Time 163
6.2 T ime and Space in Structuration Theory 165
6.2.1 Two Basic Dimensions 166
6.2.2 Zones and Regions 168
6.2.3 Duration—Dasein—Long Duration 171
6.2.4 Anti-evolutionism 175
Bibliography 179
7 The Time of Physics and Thermodynamics:
(an Excursion into the Field of Natural Sciences) 183
7.1 A mbiguous Time 185
7.2 T he Arrow of Time 188
7.3 D issipative Structures and Chaos 192
Bibliography 194
8 The Sociology of Time or Temporalized Sociology 197
8.1 T hematic Orientation of Sociology of Time 197
8.2 T he Project of Temporalized Sociology 204
CONTENTS ix
8.3 H istorical Sociology as Temporalized Sociology 211
8.4 Sociology as Science About Social Processes 213
Bibliography 216
9 Balance and Prospects 225
9.1 A Problem We Created Ourselves 225
9.2 Asymmetry of Time 228
9.3 Structures of Duration 230
9.4 Pluralism and Monism 231
9.5 Reversibility: Yes or No? 234
9.6 Time and Modernity 235
9.7 A Transversal Problem 237
Bibliography 241
10 Epilogue 245
Bibliography 250
Bibliography 253
Index 273
CHAPTER 1
Labyrinth of Questions and Answers:
Introduction
Reflections on time tend to be full of paradoxes and relativizing perspec-
tives. Thus, we begin with a thematic reflection presented more than 20
years ago, but since which nothing significant has changed. Under the title
“The Legacy of Sociology—The Promise of the Social Sciences”, the
then-President of the International Sociological Association (ISA),
Immanuel Wallerstein, delivered a lecture at the World Sociological
Congress in Montreal, Canada, in 1998, in which he tried to characterize
the path which sociological thinking had taken, and at the same time out-
line views that were opening up to researchers at the time. Through a criti-
cal analysis of the intellectual heritage of previous generations, Wallerstein
drew conclusions about the perspectives of the social sciences for the
forthcoming century. Among these was the question of time, because, as
he stated: “The flow of time (…) cannot be avoided and it is not even pos-
sible to predict it; there are always bifurcations ahead of us, the result of
which is inherently indeterminate. Furthermore, despite the ‚stream of
time’, there are many times. We can afford to neglect neither the struc-
tural time of long duration nor the cyclical rhythms of the historical system
that we analyse. Time is far more than chronometry, and chronology.
Time is also duration, cycles, and disjunction.” [Wallerstein 1999: 11].
This, however, was nothing new in sociology. A number of great figures
of sociological thought have speculated over the issue of time (e.g.
E. Durkheim, G. H. Mead, P. A. Sorokin, A. Schütz, G. Gurvitch, and
many others). Philosophical concepts (such as those by H. Bergson,
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2021
J. Šubrt, The Sociology of Time,
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