Hegemonic metronome: the ascendancy of Western standard time

Abstract

To date, studies of international politics have little space for time. In this article, I argue that time is constitutive of the international system by offering a genealogical historical sketch of the coeval rise of territorial state sovereignty and Western standard time (consisting of seconds, minutes, and hours). Sovereignty is rightly a foundational concept of both the international system and the field of International Relations (IR), but the emergence of the contemporary method of reckoning time during the Enlightenment also supported the project of political modernity, and is thus critical to IR. The genealogical motive of the sketch is to understand what have become naturalised, global social conventions as historically contingent, cosmopolitical phenomena that resulted from significant socio-political efforts and conflicts. I locate ‘sites’ where modern sovereignty emerged and explicate contemporaneous processes, factors, and events implicated in the rise of modern time at those sites. In doing so, I outline how particular modes of understanding space and time were bred in Western Europe, spread around the world via colonialism, and embedded during the eras of global war and post-colonialism. I conclude by contrasting current challenges to territorial state sovereignty with Western standard time's untrammelled global hegemony.

The Slowly Structured Classroom: Narrative Time, Lived Experience and the Contemporary He Classroom

“…The good academic is the fruitful academic who publishes, attends conferences and acquires grants. This is very similar to the historical work on time produced by Hom (2010), who looks to the evolutionary development of monasteries and suggests that the good monk -like the contemporary academic -was judged on his ability to efficiently negotiate the demands of time by carving out appropriate space for both prayer and the everyday tasks. But there is more to be said about the controlling aspect of time in higher education.…”

“…She does not engage with the intersection of causality and social science methodologies in this particular work. What is interesting, however -and what is hinted at in the works of Hom (2010) and McIntosh (2015) -is the simultaneous rise in a particular form of knowledge. As the philosopher came to cement his role as knowledge predictor, there was, at the same time, an emerging focus on universal knowledge claims to the detriment of particular and idiosyncratic interpretations of the social and natural world.…”

“…1 Hutchings's claims are supported by the writings of other contemporary scholars. For example, Hom (2010) documents the relationship of clock time and the unfolding of history. He suggests that institutional practices such as colonialism, the Great War and the effects of post-colonialism contributed to the mutually supportive role of time and the rise of the modern global state.…”

“…What is more, Hutchings (2008) reflects on the agents (the philosopher) that helped this dominance come to pass. To wit, Hom (2010) and McIntosh (2015) reveal it to be a relationship that remains firmly in place within the academe, prompting academics to adopt a particular voice as they negotiate the demands of research and publications. I suggest that this singular influence is likewise evident in the teaching demands of the contemporary academic.…”

“…Much like Breuner (1991), Crossely's (2000) work hints at the possibility of narrative moving beyond structure in order to understand the subjective positioning of self in the various worlds of which we are a part. We do not live guided by time, as Hom's (2010) descriptive unfolding of western accounts of time suggests. Rather, multiple interpretations and understandings of time interweave within our daily lives.…”