The Sociology Of Time

The volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the sociology of time. Based on selected contributions from leading writers, it illustrates the range of issues and perspectives which define the field. The volume traces distinct traditions of time analysis in social science and uses these to explain, for example, the development of capitalist time-consciousness, the ways we structure time in organizations and institutions, and how our time perceptions change in line with changes in culture. The book is for those who wish to understand how time comes to condition our everyday actions and affairs.

In a critical, comparative study of the sociological literature, this book explores the term “time,” and the various interconnections between time and a broad cluster of topics that create a conceptual labyrinth. Various understandings of time manifest themselves in the context of many individual social problems—there is no single vision in sociology of how to grasp time and address within social theory. This book, therefore, attempts to define an approach to the concept of time and its associated terms (duration, temporality, acceleration, compression, temporal structures, change, historical consciousness, and others). The volume is guided by a critical engagement with three main questions: a) the formation of human understanding of time; b) the functioning of temporal structures at different levels of social reality; c) the role and place of time in general sociological theory.

The speed of social dynamics has overtaken the speed of thought. Adopting a dialectical perspective towards reality, social theory has always detected faults in the dominant social pattern, foreseeing crises and outlining in advance the features of new social models. Thought has always moved faster than reality and its ruling models, ensuring a dynamic equilibrium during modernity. Despite any dramatic social crisis, theory has always provided exit routes. The tragedy of current crisis lies in the fact that its social implications are exasperated by the absence of alternative views. This book identifies the causes of this mismatch between thought and reality, and illustrates a way out.

What do variables really tell us? When exactly do inventions occur? Why do we always miss turning points as they transpire? When does what doesn't happen mean as much, if not more, than what does? Andrew Abbott considers these fascinating questions in Time Matters, a diverse series of essays that constitutes the most extensive analysis of temporality in social science today. Ranging from abstract theoretical reflection to pointed methodological critique, Abbott demonstrates the inevitably theoretical character of any methodology. Time Matters focuses particularly on questions of time, events, and causality. Abbott grounds each essay in straightforward examinations of actual social scientific analyses. Throughout, he demonstrates the crucial assumptions we make about causes and events, about actors and interaction and about time and meaning every time we employ methods of social analysis, whether in academic disciplines, market research, public opinion polling, or even evaluation research. Turning current assumptions on their heads, Abbott not only outlines the theoretical orthodoxies of empirical social science, he sketches new alternatives, laying down foundations for a new body of social theory.

The new edition of Doing Time brings this widely recognized book up-to-date and provides an accessible and informed discussion of current debates around prisons and penal policy. Drawing on a range of international material the book provides a critical sociological analysis of developments in imprisonment.

Why should the sociologist concern himself with time? asks Franco Ferrarotti in his latest work. Temporality is, he argues, the essential fluid dimension in the study of the social. Including time as a factor in sociological analysis is the only way to reintroduce the dynamic moment of social reality as a mental construct into an analytical process otherwise reified by the limits of quantitative methods. Ultimately, Ferrarotti contends, the usual way of laying out and proceeding with sociological analysis must be decisively inverted. This book is challenging reading for the sociologist and philosopher alike. Why should the sociologist concern himself with time? asks Franco Ferrarotti in his latest work. Temporality is, he argues, the essential fluid dimension in the study of the social. Including time as a factor in sociological analysis is the only way to reintroduce the dynamic moment of social reality as a mental construct into an analytical process otherwise reified by the limits of quantitative methods. The biographical and autobiographical approaches are also rooted in time. They elicit a problematic human situation and distinguish radically between the technical problem, resolvable through the exact practical application of a given, ideally indifferent, and interchangable formula, and the human dimension. Ultimately, Ferrarotti contends, the usual way of laying out and proceeding with sociological analysis must be decisively inverted. The order of priorities in the research process now followed in the human sciences tends to encourage the loss of the sense of the problem through the crude postulation of technical and human problems as equivalent. Time, Memory, and Society will be challenging, thought provoking reading for the sociologist, social theorist, and philosopher.

Examining how people alter or customize various dimensions of their temporal experience, this volume discovers how we resist external sources of temporal constraint or structure. These ethnographic studies are international in scope and look at many different countries and continents. They come to the overall conclusion that people construct their own circumstances with the intention to modify their experience of time.