THE SOCIOLOGY OF TIME

Also by John Hassard

TIME, WORK AND ORGANIZATION (with P. Blyton, S. Hill and K. Starkey) THE THEORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ORGANIZATIONS (edited with D. Pym)

The Sociology of Time

Edited by John Hassard University of Keele

Palgrave Macmillan

ISBN 978-1-349-20871-5 ISBN 978-1-349-20869-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20869-2

© John Hassard, 1990 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990

All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

First published in the United States of America in 1990

ISBN 978-0-312-04151-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The sociology of time/edited by John Hassard. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-312-04151-9 1. Time-Sociological aspects. I. Hassard, John, 1953-HM208.S65 1990 304.2'3-dc20 89-28434

CIP

Contents

Preface

List of Tables

Notes on the Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Sociological Study of Time John Hassard

PART I THE CONCEPT OF TIME

1 The Enigma of Time Elliott Jaques (1982)

2 The Problem of Time Georges Gurvitch (1964)

PART II SOCIAL-TIME

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xviii

Xx

1

21

35

3 Time, Technics and Society 47 Radhakamal Mukerjee (1943)

4 Social-time: A Methodological and Functional Analysis 56 Pitirim Sorokin and Robert Merton (1937)

5 Varieties of Social-time 67 Georges Gurvitch (1964)

6 The Structures and Meanings of Social-time 77 J. David Lewis and Andrew J. Weigart (1981)

P ART III CAPITALISM

7 The Making of a Capitalist Time Consciousness Nigel Thrift (1981)

8 Capitalism and the History of Work-time Thought Chris Nyland (1986)

PART IV WORK AND ORGANISATIONS

9 Time and Job Satisfaction Donald Roy (1960)

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105

130

155

VI Contents

10 Private-time and Public-time 168 Eviatar Zerubavel (1979)

11 Time and the Long-term Prisoner 178 Stanley Cohen and Laurie Taylor (1972)

PART V CULTURE AND PERSPECTIVE

12 Time Perspective and Social Structure 191 Lewis Coser and Rose Coser (1963)

13 Time-reckoning in the Trobriands 203 Bronislaw Malinowski (1927)

14 Time Perspectives of the Kabyle 219 Pierre Bourdieu (1963)

Bibliography 238

Index 252

List of Tables

7.1 The curtailment of wakes in the Northampton area 113 7.2 Times kept by public clocks in England, Wales and

Scotland, 17 February 1852 124 l2.1 Dominant and divergent time perspectives 196 13.1 Names of days in second and third quarters of the

moon 13.2 Table of the moons

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207 213

Preface

ORIGINS OF THE BOOK

The origins of this volume lie in a series of studies into the sociology of time conducted at the Universities of Aston, Cardiff and Keele during the 1980s. Together with colleagues of the Association for the Social Study of Time (ASSET), and in particular Peter Clark (Aston), Paul Blyton (Cardiff) and Ken Starkey (Nottingham), the writer has for several years been part of a research team exploring relationships between the concept of time and a number of contem­porary sociological issues (e.g., leisure patterns, work scheduling, decision-making, organisational structures, economic planning). 1

However, in the course of this research one thing has continued to hinder the researchers - the lack of a formal collection of authori­tative contributions to the field. While there remain several personal theses in the area (cf. Gurvitch, 1964; Lauer, 1980; Jaques, 1982; Young, 1988), and also several collections of conference proceedings (e.g., Fraser and Lawrence, 1976; Fraser et al., 1978; Frankenberg, 1989), no one volume yet collates significant works from a range of perspectives and paradigms. This has been particularly regrettable in that many of the more influential works in the sociology of time are found in either specialist journals or in books which are now out of print.

It has therefore, been with the lack of such a volume in mind that the present collection has been assembled - a collection to provide the newcomer with a guide to the many concepts, themes, and issues which define the sociological study of time.

PLAN OF THE BOOK

The volume consists of five main parts preceded by an introduction and review. Early sections of the volume (Parts I and II deal with philosophical and conceptual issues, later sections with specific research topics (Parts III, IV and V). The reader moves from discussions of basic philosophical assumptions about time (Chapters 1 and 2), to theories of the structure and meaning of social-time (Chapters 3-6), and to a range of issues stemming from time

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research in the social sciences (Chapters 7-14). The reader will find that the volume is not restricted to contributions from sociology alone, but that works are included from a number of social science disciplines - e.g., social philosophy, social history, industrial eco­nomics, and (especially) anthropology. It is hoped that this variety gives the volume both breadth and richness.

OVERVIEW OF CONTENTS

Part I: The Concept of Time

In Part I, The Concept of Time, we lay some conceptual foundations for the sociology of time. Specifically, we present extracts from two landmark studies in social philosophy - The Form of Time (1982) by Elliott Jaques, and The Spectrum of Social Time (1964) by Georges Gurvitch. These works address some of the basic assumptions upon which the sociology of time rests.

The extract from Jaques's (1982), 'The Enigma of Time', considers basic philosophical questions such as: 'Does time flow?' 'Is there an arrow of time and does it flow in one direction?' 'Is the future different from the past?' (1982, p.xi). Jaques argues that the. 'failure to illleviate the confusion bound up in such questions and to establish a sound philosophical understanding of the nature of time . . . has been a major factor in the lack of development of a sound under­standing of the nature of man and society' (p. xi). In debating these questions, Jaques develops two main themes. The first concerns the 'nature of motion in the atomic world', and thus questions of 'structure, flux and becoming', and the second - which is of more direct relevance to us - analytical differences between the Greek time concepts of chronos and kairos - i.e., differences between 'the time of episodes with a beginning, a middle and an end' (chronos) and of the 'living time of intentions' (kairos). These differences between the scientific and logical time of chronos - associated with the idea of 'clock-time' - and the human cyclical time of kairos - associated with the idea of 'existential-time' - find expression in many of the more directly sociological works we present later.

In Chapter 2, 'The Problem of Time', Georges Gurvitch also addresses socio-philosophical issues. Drawing upon the works of Piaget, Bergson and Bachelard, Gurvitch considers a range of time definitions available to social scientists (although his prime purpose

Preface Xl

here is to establish his own definition of time as 'convergent and divergent movements which persist in a discontinuous succession and change in a continuity of heterogeneous moments': 1964, p.18). Gurvitch develops this analysis by relating these definitions to an issue central to debates in the sociology of time - i.e., the possibility of 'multiple-time'. Here he addtesses the problem of time in con­temporary physics - and notably with reference to Einstein's work -in order, then, to consider the question of 'multiple manifestations of time in different sciences'. This analysis paves the way for his well known typology of 'multiple social-times', which we present in Chapter 5.

Part II: Social-time

The four chapters in Part II offer various interpretations of the meanings and structures of social-time. Here chapters vary in style from a monologue (Chapter 3), to a treatise (Chapter 4), to a typology (Chapter 5), and to a set of operational hypotheses (Chapter 6).

In Chapter 3, Radhakamal Mukerjee presents a monologue on the topic of 'Time, Technics. and Society'. Mukerjee introduces the concept of social-time through a general discourse of differences between 'astronomical-time' and 'time in society', the former being characterised by uniformity and homogeneity, the latter by discon­tinuity and heterogeneity. Mukerjee's chapter anticipates many of the themes developed later'in the volume - especially in his contrast­ing of cyclical and linear temporality, his views on differing forms of time-reckoning (in which he draws examples from anthropology), and his remarks on the impact of industrialism and the technology of machine systems.

In Chapter 4 we present our first 'theory' of social-time. In what is widely regarded as a classic study, Pitirim Sorokin and Robert Merton offer a 'Methodological and Functional Analysis' of social­time. In this analysis, which is largely Durkheimian in orientation, they argue, firstly, that astronomical-time is only one of several concepts of time, and secondly, that the need for social collaboration is at the root of social systems of time. After Durkheim, they suggest that social-time is qualitatively differentiated according to the beliefs and systems common to the group (1937, p. 615), an argument which draws heavily on anthropological assumptions. Above all, they draw attention to the fact that social-time is not continuous, but is

xii Preface

punctuated by critical and meaningful points of reference. They thus argue that all calendrical systems arise from and are perpetuated by social requirements - they arise from social differentiation and a widening area of social interaction (p. 615).

The theme of multiple systems of social-time is developed in the formal typology offered by Gurvitch (Chapter 5). Also influenced by the Durkheim school, and especially the work of Marcel Mauss, Gurvitch develops the latter's concept of the 'dialectic between time and total social phenomena' in order to explore the various 'depth levels' of social time (see Mauss, 1966). For Gurvitch, an explicit typology of times is necessary because, 'we must try to arrive at a more concrete idea of social-time ... to study the different manifesta­tions of social-time which collide and combine in the involvement of different levels' (1964, p. 30). In Chapter 5 we see the result of this endeavour - Gurvitch's famous eight point typology of enduring­time, deceptive-time, erratic-time, cyclical-time, retarded-time, alternating-time, time pushing forward, and explosive time.

Part II is completed by a discussion of the 'Structures and Mean­ings of Social-time' by David Lewis and Andrew Weigart (Chapter 6). Here Lewis and Weigart attempt to develop a 'paradigm' for the sociology of time. After describing some of the defining character­istics of social-time, they discuss relationships between 'biographical and interactional structures' and 'institutional and cultural structures' in order to present their own typology of social-times - a typology ... corresponding to different levels of social structure. The structure of this typology is based on what they feel are the three concepts at the heart of social-time - embeddedness, stratification, and synchronisa­tion. The chapter is concluded when Lewis and Weigart succeed in integrating their typology which these central concepts in order to develop a formal theory of social time. The potential of the theory is demonstrated when Lewis and Weigart extract and relate some key propositions and corollaries which are implicit in their discussion - a series of concrete research hypotheses upon which to found their paradigm.

Part III: Capitalism

In Part III we begin our exploration of particular topics of time research in social science. Initially, we focus on issues relating to time and Capitalism, and explore two contrasting areas of research -firstly, of historical research into the making of capitalist time

Preface Xlll

consciousness (Chapter 7), and secondly, of economics-based re­search into the development of capitalist work-time patterns.

In Chapter 7 Nigel Thrift offers an explanation of the change in time consciousness over the period from the fourteenth century to the late nineteenth century, a period which sees the demise of feudalism and the rise of industrial capitalism. Thrift argues that during this period we can chart the 'gradual diffusion of a new type of time, based upon calculative rationality' (1981, p.57). This period, he argues, sees this new conception of time change from being an extraordinary item that is subject to debate to the point where it has sedimented into the 'interstices of practical consciousness' - i.e., when it becomes just another part of the hegemony of capitalism. The chapter concludes with an analysis of one episode in the development of the new time consciousness - the diffusion of Greenwich Mean Time - to show the regional specificity and uneven development of this process.

In Chapter 8, the emphasis changes to a socio-economic analysis of working-time, and in particular to a discussion of the debate sur­rounding 'Capitalism and the History of Work-Time Thought'. Here Chris Nyland explains how the history of industrial capitalism has been one characterised by reductions in the length of time employees spend at work, and how during this history mercantilists, classicists, Marxists and marginalists have devoted a great deal of effort to explaining why standard times should tend to change. Nyland overviews the major contributions to the debate, and then places the various theories within an historical context. He outlines how marginalism's preference argument, which presently dominates th~ debate, is challenged by showing that within Marxism there exists an abundance of this phenomenon which is not based on income but on the innate limitations of human beings (1986, p. 513). Nyland develops this position to argue that until the 1950s the human limits argument dominated the whole issue of work-time, and that the essence of this contribution has never been refuted but has simply been deleted from the discussion. Consequently Nyland argues that the whole contempor­ary debate is being conducted on the basis of unjustified assumptions and this renders discussion increasingly sterile (p. 513).

Part IV: Work and Organisations

The topic of Part IV is Work and Organisations. In this section we ex­amine relationships between time and various aspects of organisational

xiv Preface

experience in particular, job satisfaction (Chapter 9), role segmentation (Chapter 10), and long-term detention (Chapter 11).

Chapter 9 presents excerpts from Donald Roy's famous study, 'Banana Time: Job Satisfaction and Informal Interaction'. In this study, Roy adopts an anthropological perspective to document the interaction between a small group of factory operatives engaged on mundane tasks. As these operatives were engaged in work which involved repetition of very simple operations over an extra-long working day (6 days a week) he focussed on how the group dealt with the 'beast of monotony'. Roy's analysis of how the group 'kept from going nuts' by developing their own event-based time-reckoning system - one based on a daily round of 'peach-time', 'banana-time', 'window-time', 'pickup-time', 'fish-time', and 'coke-time' - has served as a model for a series of similar anthropologies of qualitative time-reckoning at work (see Ditton, 1979; Cavendish, 1982; Hassard, 1985, Chapter 4).

In Zerubavel's work on 'Private-time and Public-time' (Chapter 10) we see a discussion of the separation between person and role, and in particular between the private self and the public self. Zerubavel argues that one of the key characteristics of modern social organisation is its 'separation between the private and public spheres of the individual's life'. Although Zerubavel suggests that the con­cepts of public-time and private-time are distinct from those of work and leisure, he feels nevertheless that it is in the domain of work that we can best appreciate the temporal segmentation of the private from the public self. For Zerubavel, the temporal aspect of the 'bureaucra­tic segmentation' of the individual into 'a person and an incumbent of a particular occupational role' is seen in the fact that the 'partiality of his involvement in that role is often defined in temporal terms'. He outlines how most occupational commitments are defined in 'hours per day' or 'days per week' (not to mention the common distinction between full-time and part-time work), and how even that part of the year during which one is not actively involved in one's occupational role - i.e., the vacation - is still defined primarily in temporal terms. Zerubavel's analysis concludes with a detailed case study outlining the temporal forces which impinge on professional commitments in health services.

The final chapter in Part IV sees a return to social anthropology, but this time to a consideration of temporal experience in a primarily non-work organisation, the prison. In Chapter 11, Cohen and Taylor discuss the particular time problems confronting long-term prisoners

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- individuals who have been given time as a punishment, who are 'doing time'. Cohen and Taylor note how for these prisoners time has been abstracted by the courts like a monetary fine. For them, time has become an external control rather than a personal resource - 'it has to be served rather than used'. As with Roy's factory workers in Chapter 9, Cohen and Taylor describe the ways long-termers sustain their lives through developing ways to mark out time - ways of 'differentiating and dividing time'. They outline the various 'temporal stages' created by long-termers, and thus how they 'build their own subjective clock in order to protect themselves from the terror of "the misty abyss'" (1972, p. 95).

Part V: Culture and Perspective

In the final section of the volume, Culture and Perspective, anthro­pology again plays a central role. Indeed, as we note in the Intro­duction (see below), of all the social sciences it is probably anthropology which has contributed most to time studies. Therefore in the final part of the volume we offer insights into the forms of time perspective found amongst three very different peoples - modern Americans (Chapter 12), the Trobriand islanders (Chapter 13), and the Kabyle of Algeria (Chapter 14).

Part V begins with excerpts from the article 'Time Perspective and Social Structure' by Lewis and Rose Coser (Chapter 12). The Cosers introduce the general area of social time-reckoning, and then develop this by outlining concepts from landmark anthropologies by, for example, Florence Kluckholm and Irving Hallowell. However, this initial discussion serves primarily to pave the way for analysis of the cultural time orientations of Western societies, and in particular of time perspectives in America. Indeed the centrepiece of the chapter is an attempt to develop a typology of the 'dominant and divergent time perspectives in American culture'. This typology explains differ­ences between four main social perspectives - individualistic and active, collective and active, collective and passive, and individualistic and passive - and how these relate to four different time perspectives - (I)conformist; (lla )individual/ collective/future; (lib) future (utopian) ; (III) chiliastic; and (IV) hedonist. From this analysis, the Cosers argue that, 'the choice of one or another of these orientations by individuals and groups does not appear to be fortuitious ... time perspective constitutes an important element in the determination of human activities' (1963, p. 647).

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In Chapter 13, we focus more directly on the anthropological method, and offer the first of two classic works from the literature on culture and time perspective - studies which illustrate forms of time-reckoning far removed from the dominant Western model of linear clock-time. The first case is Bronislaw Malinowski's study of 'Lunar and Seasonal Calendar in the Trobriands', a study in which he explains the centrality of the sun, moon and stars for primitive time­reckoning, and how such time-reckoning can be influenced by myths and legends about astronomical activity. In discussing the role of the sun for example, Malinowski notes how the 'style of magical invoca­tion stands in close relation with the main practical use made of the sun for time-reckoning - i.e., the meaning of the times of the day' (1926, p. 205), and how as a result of this, 'a comprehensive series of expressions describe early morning, the time before sunrise, sunrise, the time when the sun's rays aJ:e horizontal, tilted, overhead, aslant, toppling over, right down' (p.205). Malinowski explains, however, that it is the moon rather than the sun or the stars which plays the major part in Trobriand time-reckoning; although for the most part there there is 'no magic to do or undo moonshine, and no lunar ritual of any sort'. In contrast to solar beliefs, natives have few myths about the waning or waxing moon - the connection between certain months and various economic pursuits are entirely empirical. Indeed as Malinowski states, 'the enormous importance of the moon in tribal life, and the interest of natives in it are entirely direct and non­symbolic' (p. 206). Malinowski explains in detail the importance of moonlight for time-reckoning in a country where artificial illumina­tion is extremely primitive.

The final chapter of the volume presents excerpts from another classic anthropological account of time-reckoning - Pierre Bourdieu's analysis of 'The Attitude of the Algerian Peasant Toward Time' (Chapter 14). Bourdieu explains how (in contrast to Western time orientations) for the Kabyle 'nothing is more foreign ... than the attempt to secure a hold over. the future ... [for he is] bound up in immediate attachment to the directly perceived present' (1963, p. 55). Bourdieu suggests that the Kabyle peasant is generally incap­able of envisaging a remote future, and that it is necessary to see his time attitude as one of 'submission' to the passage of time - i.e., of 'a simple abandonment to the hazards of climate, the whims of nature, and the decisions of the divinity' (p. 55). Bourdieu offers a detailed analysis of this 'submissive' attitude, and hbw this is inseparable from the attitude of submission to the 'rhythms of nature' (p. 57). It is a

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perspective which is captured by Bourdieu in his observation that, 'the profound feelings of dependence and solidarity toward that nature whose vagaries and rigours he suffers ... foster in the Kabyle peasant an attitude of nonchalant indifference to the passage of time which no one dreams of mastering, using up, or saving ... All the acts of life are free from the limitations of the timetable' (p. 57). Bourdieu describes a perspective in which 'haste is seen as a lack of decorum' and where 'a whole art ... of taking one's time, has been developed'. It is a culture free from concerns for schedules, free from the tyranny of the clock (sometimes called 'the devil's mill'), and one in which the peasant 'works without haste, leaving to tomorrow that which cannot be done today' (p. 58).

Note

1. Output from this programme has appeared in a number of conference papers, doctoral theses, journal articles and books (see e.g., Clark et at., 1984; Blyton, 1985, 1987; Clark, 1982, 1989; Hassard, 1985, 1988a, 1988b, 1989; Hassard and Hutchinson, 1990; Starkey 1985, 1986; Blyton et at., 1989).

Notes on the Contributors

Pierre Bourdieu was formerly Director, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France.

Stanley Cohen is Professor of Criminology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Lewis Coser is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA.

Rose Coser is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA.

Georges Gurvitch was formerly Professor of Sociology at the Univer­sity of Strasbourg, France.

Elliott Jaques is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at BruneI University, England.

J. David Lewis is Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, USA.

Bronislaw Malinowski was formerly Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, England.

Robert Merton was formerly Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.

Radhakamal Mukergee was formerly Professor of Sociology at the University of Lucknow, India.

Chris Nyland is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Wollon­gong, Australia.

Donald Roy was formerly Professor of Sociology at Duke University, USA.

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Notes on the Contributors XIX

Pitirim Sorokin was formerly Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.

Laurie Taylor is Professor of Sociology at the University of York, England.

Nigel Thrift is Reader in Geography at the University of Bristol, England.

Andrew J. Weigart is Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, USA.

Eviatar Zerubavel is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.

Acknowledgements

The preparation of this volume owes much to the advice and assistance provided by Roisin Hutchinson, a post-graduate student at the University of Keele.

The editor and publishers acknowledge with thanks permission from the following to reproduce the chapters in the volume.

Heinemann (Chapter 1). D. Reidel (Chapter 2). Sociology and Social Research (Chapter 3). University of Chicago Press (Chapter 4). D. Reidel (Chapter 5). Social Forces (Chapter 6). Australian National University (Chapter 7). British Journal of Sociology (Chapter 8). Society for Applied Anthropology (Chapter 9). Social Forces (Chapter 10). Penguin Books (Chapter 11). L. and R. Coser (Chapter 12). Executors of B. Malinowski (Chapter 13). Mouton (Chapter 14).

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JOHN HASSARD