Timespace

Geographies of Temporality

Jon May, Nigel Thrift, Jon May, Nigel Thrift

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134677849
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Timespace undermines the old certainties of time and space by arguing that these dimensions do not exist singly, but only as a hybrid process term. The issue of space has perhaps been over-emphasised and it is essential that processes of everyday existence, such as globalisation and environmental issues and also notions such as gender, race and ethnicity, are looked at with a balanced time-space analysis.
The social and cultural consequences of this move are traced through a series of studies which deploy different perspectives - structural, phenomenological and even Buddhist - in order to make things meet up. The contributors provide an overview of the history of time and introduce the concepts of time and space together, across a range of disciplines. The themes discussed are of importance for cultural geography, sociology, anthropology, cultural and media studies, and psychology.

1 INTRODUCTION

Jon May and Nigel Thrift

The impetus for the current collection arises out of a growing sense of dissatisfaction with two recent and related developments in social theory and the social sciences and humanities more broadly. The first of these, evident from the mid-to-late 1980s and of growing significance across an increasing body of work from the early 1990s onwards, concerns the increasing prominence of space and spatiality. Whether relatively simple assertions of the ‘difference that space makes’ (Sayer, 1985), more grandiose claims as to the inherent spatiality of the postmodern condition (Jameson, 1991), or the growing tendency to draw upon a language of space and place, location and position in writings on subjectivity and identity (Keith and Pile, 1993), as Doreen Massey has remarked, ‘ “space” is very much on the agenda these days’ (Massey, 1994: 249). As geographers we must welcome such developments. But this sudden ‘reassertion of space in social theory’ as Soja (1989) has described it, also makes us a little uneasy. Certainly, we share the kind of concerns expressed by Smith and Katz (1993), for example, that much of this talk about space is just that; that in the work of cultural theorists especially, there is in fact very little to suggest that the ‘spatial turn’ has progressed beyond the level of metaphor (see also Cresswell, 1997). More fundamentally, though, our concern is with the basic formulations of space evident within the spatial turn, formulations that appear to us curiously one-dimensional and which, at root, seem premised upon a familiar and unhelpful dualism moving around the foundational categories of Space and Time.

Whilst there is no need to rehearse the details of an argument already cogently expressed elsewhere, suffice it to say that we are then in broad agreement with both the central tenets and general conclusions of Massey’s recent critique regarding the limitations of the dualism upon which the spatial turn would seem to be premised (see Massey, 1992a). These are, first, that in the writing of authors otherwise as different as Laclau (1990) and Jameson (1991) the tendency has been to draw a strict distinction between Time and Space. Within such a dualism, where

Time is understood as the domain of dynamism and Progress, the spatial is relegated to the realm of stasis and thus excavated of any meaningful politics (see also Harvey, 1993; cf. Massey, 1993; Hetherington, this volume). Second, that this dualism has yet to be seriously challenged by those who would champion a more dynamic conception of space in line with the reconfiguration of the socio-spatial dialectic under the auspices of a radical geography (Soja, 1980). Instead, here too the tendency has been to work within a basic duality, albeit one within which it is space rather than time that is prioritised, such that in place of an earlier and debilitating historicism it may be that social theory is moving towards a creeping – and just as debilitating – ‘spatial imperialism’ (see also Crang and Thrift, 2000). And third, that rather than continue to see-saw between a prioritisation of either space or time, or attempting to adjudicate as to the political potential of either, we need instead to ‘overcome … the very formulation of space/time in terms of this kind of dichotomy … [and to recognise instead] that space and time are inextricably interwoven’ (Massey, 1994: 260–1) part of a multi-dimensional space-time able to cope with multiplicity (Rodowick, 1997; Assad, 1999).

Though her aim is to move beyond such dualistic thinking, it would be fair to say that Massey’s primary concern is with drawing attention to the limitations such dualisms impose upon our theorisation of the spatial. Yet at the same time, and providing for a second source of dissatisfaction, it appears to us that a very similar set of problems have become apparent in recent writings about time. Whilst perhaps less widely acknowledged, the same period that has seen increased attention turned to questions of space and spatiality has also seen renewed interest in questions of time and temporality across a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology and – to a lesser extent – human geography (see, for example, Bender and Wellbery, 1991; Gell, 1992; Thrift, 1996; Urry, 1999; and the journal Time and Society). Whilst, as Massey herself makes clear, recent thinking on time has been strongly influenced by developments in both philosophy and the natural sciences, within the social sciences the majority of such work has been concerned with extending our understandings of the nature and experience of social time rather than with an examination of the nature of time itself (Adam, 1990; Wood, 1990). Much of this work has proved extremely valuable, adding to our understandings of social time in a number of ways. Not least, in contrast to earlier formulations, social time is now recognised as multiple and heterogeneous, varying both within and between societies and individuals and according to social position (see Adam, 1995; Davies, 1990).

The problem is that too much of this work is itself characterised by exactly those limitations noted by Massey in relation to recent writings on space and place. Not least, and especially in the more abstract accounts, attempts to develop what Nowotny (1992) has called a ‘social theory of time’ have foundered as they have continued to work within the confines of a powerful and persistent dualism.

In other words, and even when considering the work of those for whom the two are clearly inseparable (for example, Bergson, Sorokin or Giddens) rather than seeking to clarify their inter-dependency, such accounts have too often proceeded as though questions of time and space are able to be treated in isolation (see, for example, Adam, 1990; Bergman, 1992). As such, and though certainly enabling a far clearer understanding of the complex timings of social life, such accounts have in the main generally failed to acknowledge the extent to which time is irrecoverably bound up with the spatial constitution of society (and vice versa) or recognised the implications of this for a more developed understanding of social meaning and action. Nor have they yet taken on board the full implications of those studies which point to the spatial variation evident in the making and experience of social time itself (see, for example, Davison, 1992; Howell, 1992; Pawson, 1992). As Glennie and Thrift have argued there is, and always has been, a ‘geography of time, timing and time-consciousness’ (1996: 280).

And yet from this apparently simple assertion, at least two things follow. First, any search for a singular or universal social theory of time must be doomed to failure as both that which it seeks to account for (the timing of social life) and the frame within which those timings may be set is itself variable across both time and space (and see Adam, 1990). Second, rather than seeking to think in terms of what Massey refers to as a four-dimensional space-time, the more difficult challenge is in fact to think in terms of a multiplicity of space-times or what, in a conscious attempt to move still further away from any separation of the two, we have called TimeSpace. It is this challenge that we have set our contributors.

Practising and imagining TimeSpace: a conceptual framework

Before moving on to a discussion of the essays we want to say a little more about our own understanding of this concept and the logic of the collection. Our starting point here is that just as it has been recognised that the nature and experience of social time is multiple and heterogeneous, so it follows that the manner of its construction – the means by which a particular sense of time comes into being and moves forward to frame our understandings and actions – is in turn both multiple and dynamic. In making sense of its construction we need to pay attention to questions of social practice in four inter-related domains, each of which is spatially constituted (and see Thrift, 1988).

First, a sense of time is still to some considerable extent shaped by our responses to a series of timetables and rhythms set according to the inter-relations of Time and Space in the natural universe, ranging from the diurnal cycle to the rhythms of the seasons, the rhythms of the body to the turning of the tides (Parkes and Thrift, 1980; Young, 1988). Though apparently universal, the extent to which a society remains bound up with such rhythms varies across space and over time as the relative import accorded those rhythms shifts and changes in relation to the import accorded to a sense of time moving out of each of the other domains sketched below. So too their effects might be considered socially uneven even as those same rhythms often provide the basis for the regulation of social difference (as with the menstrual cycle, for example). Variation is also apparent across the life course with this too subject to social regulation. For example, at the level of the individual whilst the shift worker must learn to adapt their ‘body clock’ and the dieter their pangs of hunger, the child works to procure an ever later ‘bedtime’ (Valentine, 1997). At a broader level of analysis, whilst the calendar first traces then shapes the timing of the harvest (Durkheim, 1915/1965) street lighting moves out from the central districts of the city only gradually, providing for an uneven and ever-changing geography of the night (Schivelbusch, 1988; Schlör, 1998).

Second, a sense of time is thus both shaped by and enacted through various systems of social discipline – be they broadly secular or religious. Each such system takes shape within particular settings and achieves purchase according to the spatial arrangements evident within those settings (whether the monastery or factory, office or home). For example, where greater productivity depends upon and (apparently) imposes strict time-discipline so too the worker’s use of time can only be properly monitored through an appropriate use of space within the workplace – so as to enable easy surveillance (Stein, 1995). Likewise, just as ‘work’ time gives shape to ‘family’ time or ‘leisure’ time (and vice versa) so such time only acquires full meaning when enacted in the appropriate setting (with feelings of frustration apparent when a person ‘brings their work home with them’, for example, or when time at the office is disrupted by the demands of family or friends) (Hareven, 1982; Massey, 1995; Shaw, this volume).

Third, a sense of time emerges from our relationships with a variety of instruments and devices – ranging from the sun dial to the thermodynamic engine and the video recorder – devised either to mark the passage of time or which work to alter our conception as to the nature and direction of its duration and passing (Adam, 1992). Here, just as many devices which may primarily be thought of as instruments of time work to alter our conceptions of space (as, for example, the advent of the VCR has altered our perceptions as to a shared broadcasting community and hence a wider spatial collectivity) so too devices that appear primarily concerned with space may likewise have significant impact upon our understandings of time (for example, the telephone, telegraph or live satellite broadcast) (Kern, 1983; Urry, 1995). Fourth, a sense of time emerges in relation to various texts that may be more properly understood as vehicles of translation (attempts to render social meaning from new conceptualisations of Time itself) and which in setting out particular understandings of time return to regulate that which we would codify (for example, the books of hours).

As a sense of social time is made and re-made according to social practices operating within and across each of these domains so this four-part schema stands in contrast to more familiar accounts of the making of social time which are apt to privilege one domain at the expense of others and so tend towards a certain determinism (see, for example, Harvey, 1989; Thompson, 1967 on labour control and social discipline; Kern, 1983; Urry, 1995 on technology; Young, 1988 on the timetables and rhythms of the natural universe). Further, adding to the various spatialities always already embedded within them, the senses of time associated with developments in each of these latter three domains especially vary according to their impact and reach across space. Thus, the picture that emerges is less that of a singular or uniform social time stretching over a uniform space, than of various (and uneven) networks of time stretching in different and divergent directions across an uneven social field – think, for example, of the uneven dissemination of the mechanical clock through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries or of railway time in the mid to late nineteenth century (Barrell, 1982; Glennie and Thrift, 1996). Finally, with the impact and reach of developments in different domains varying across space so a further geography is described, as the (already partial and uneven) networks that constitute one domain connect (or fail to connect) with the (partial and uneven) networks constituting another. The result is therefore a radical unevenness in the nature and quality of social time itself, with this spatial variation a constitutive part rather than an added dimension of the multiplicity and heterogeneity of social time or what, for precisely these reasons, we prefer to call TimeSpace. Such unevenness extends, of course, to any broad historical changes in either the nature or experience of TimeSpace, an argument that we develop below.

Before illustrating in more detail precisely why thinking in terms of (a multiple, heterogeneous and uneven) TimeSpace rather than only time and space may be important, and how the conceptual framework sketched above may help us in this task, we want to stress three further points. First, just as any one of these networks of TimeSpace may work to shape numerous and often incompatible if not contradictory senses of time, so we need always to remember that none stands in isolation. Rather, our sense of time is a product of the inter-relationships between each and these relationships are both dynamic and unequal. Second, insofar as it is being constantly reproduced through our material practices, it makes little sense to talk of either the ‘making’ or the ‘living’ of TimeSpace but only of what we have (rather clumsily) referred to as Making-Living TimeSpace. And third, whilst in the last of these domains such practices may well involve the production and dissemination of various texts we would not reduce these codifications of TimeSpace to the physical text itself. Rather, whether in oral, printed or electronic form the manner in which we conceptualise TimeSpace has import for the way in which we come to act in TimeSpace (and see Loy, this volume). As such nor would we draw any strict distinction between the ‘living’ and ‘thinking’ of TimeSpace and though for the sake of clarity we have set out the remainder of this introductory chapter, and the collection itself, under the headings of Practising (Making-Living) and Imagining (Living-Thinking) TimeSpace we hope that these somewhat artificial divisions are accepted for what they are; a heuristic device designed only to enable the reader to find their way around the collection more easily.

Practising TimeSpace

It would be possible to elaborate upon the conceptual schema outlined above in a number of ways. For example, we could deploy a notion of these multidimensional networks of TimeSpace to rework traditional accounts of the making of time consciousness in early modern England – a task already under way elsewhere (Glennie and Thrift, 1996, 1998; Thrift, 1988, 1996; cf. Thompson, 1967). Alternatively, it could be used to develop a more sophisticated understanding as to the radically uneven development of systems of Standard Time in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whether within or between different countries (Davison, 1992; Pawson, 1992). Or it could be used to demonstrate the numerous ways in which questions of time and space interact to provide for radically different experiences of TimeSpace for men and women (Davies, 1989, this volume).

But the example we wish to develop here concerns that radical reworking in the nature and experience of time and space usually referred to by the shorthand of ‘time-space compression’ (Harvey, 1989). We have chosen to illustrate our thinking around TimeSpace in this way for three main reasons. First, because in its most basic form a thesis of time-space compression moves around precisely that inter-dependency of time and space we would wish to champion – as changes in the nature and experience of one impact upon changes in the nature and experience of the other. Second, because the main elements of such a thesis are by now not only relatively well known but may indeed have assumed the position of something akin to received wisdom (Castells, 1989; Robins, 1991; Urry, 1995). And third, because notwithstanding such widespread acceptance, we would point to a number of quite fundamental problems with the way in which accounts of time-space compression usually proceed. Whilst drawing upon the more developed conceptual schema traced above gives rise to a quite different picture of those changes in the nature and experience of time and space usually associated with a period of time-space compression, we believe that this more nuanced account has implications for how we think about both time-space compression itself and our understandings as to the making and re-making of TimeSpace more generally.

Let us turn first, then, to an outline of the better known elements of such a thesis. The narrative goes like this. From about the middle of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War, and again towards the end of the twentieth century, there occurred a radical restructuring in the nature and experience of both time and space. Though different commentators identify different processes as underpinning these changes (cf. Harvey, 1989; Kern, 1983) considerable agreement exists as to both the main characteristics of this restructuring and its consequences. In regard to the former, the general consensus seems to be that both periods saw a significant acceleration in the pace of life concomitant with a dissolution or collapse of traditional spatial co-ordinates (changes usually expressed via some kind of discourse on speed – or space divided by time). For the latter, the argument is most often that this restructuring was and is profoundly unsettling, as in its midst people must struggle to hold on to more familiar understandings of space and place and negotiate the consequences of radically foreshortened time horizons.

That such a thesis has become so widely accepted is, at first sight at least, hardly surprising. Certainly, when considering the period from the middle of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there occurred a radical if not revolutionary change in the nature and experience of both time and space through those years. So too, for both those living through them and those subsequently mapping these changes, the overwhelming impression seems to have been one of a radical compression of spatial and temporal horizons – a notion captured in contemporary accounts of a ‘great acceleration’ or the progressive ‘annihilation of space by time’ (Marx, 1987). Indeed, as the century progressed evidence as to this ‘great acceleration’ was everywhere apparent, discussed most frequently both at the time and since in relation to a series of developments in transport and communication technologies out of which it is in turn usually understood as having arisen.

Consider first developments in transportation. In Britain the beginning of the nineteenth century saw a rapid expansion of the stage coach network and a progressive reduction in journey times such that by 1830 movement between Britain’s major towns and cities was some four to five times faster than in 1750. With the development of the railway network journey times were reduced even further whilst the rapid expansion of that network had the effect of opening up these ‘technologies of speed’ to a considerably enlarged public; by 1870, for example, some 333.6 million journeys had been made by rail, the vast majority of them by third class passengers (Thrift, 1994). Nor were such developments restricted to an increase in the speed of movement between places. Within cities too, the speed of tr...