Time and Postmodernism

Abstract

In this essay we discuss changes in the cultural meaning and significance of time in postmodernism. We begin by examining the experience of time and space in the Middle Ages and its radical alteration following the Renaissance. After a relatively brief period of optimism during the Enlightenment regarding the scientific control over time and space, a new crisis beginning in the mid‐nineteenth century emphasized the increasing disjuncture between external, objective notions of time and the way time was experienced subjectively. We argue that the current literature on time and post‐modernity is best understood in this context, where earlier disequilibriating effects brought about by modern technologies are exacerbated by new developments in transportation and communications technology. Here we discuss the particular effects on topics of interest to social scientists such as changes in notions of personal identity and the effacement of historical time. We conclude with a call for more empirically grounded work on questions concerning time in postmodernism. We lament the paucity of concrete data as well as the excess of useless polemics and recommend several researchers already conducting work in this field.

Time-scarcity, ready-meals, ill-health and the obesity epidemic

“…In psycho-social theory, time is considered a social construct, the purpose of which is to regulate social behaviours (when meals are eaten, household tasks are carried out, journeys commenced, etc). In richer, industrialised societies, time is viewed as scarce (Dickens & Fontana, 2002). For any activity (based on complexity and need for precision) and individual (based on motivation and personal preferences), modulated by the demands of others, productivity is optimal at a certain level of perceived time-pressure, above or below which productivity falls.…”

Paradise Lost: Explaining Populism as a Response to the Fragmentary Nature of Time, Space, and the Rapid Pace of Technological Advancement

“…We conceptualize these phenomena and the forms they take as constructs shaped by specific social, political, and cultural contexts (Dickens and Fontana, 2002). As cultural constructs, different space/time in Harvey, 1990).…”

Geography's place in time

“…It had this effect because of the way it reduced the apparent temporal and spatial distance between what was past and the present, a separation on which the role of tradition had depended (Benjamin 1969;Caygill 1994). In a more recent incarnation, as the disjunctured moment favoured by postmodernists (Jameson 1991(Jameson , 2003Dickens and Fontana 2002), time is seen as disjunctured by a break in the flow of meaning from past to present. As in Benjamin's thinking, it draws partly on the way in which the time-space compression brought about by globalization has changed our experience of time-space (Harvey 1989) so that we can 'make an approach to spatiality only through what it does to time' (Jameson 2003, p. 706;Thrift 2000, p. 35).…”