Political and transformative uses of time

Abstract

Taking time as a political relation and politics as a temporal one, our focus in this Special Issue is on contemporary case studies from a variety of geographical and political contexts. Using a wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches from across the social sciences, we use a temporal lens to study structures of power and inequality. Attentive to uncertainty, indeterminacy, and contingency, the contributions to this issue are especially attuned to the political salience of collectively produced temporal agency. Based on empirical case studies, the articles in this collection apply, critique, refine, and extend existing temporal concepts to uncover the political and transformative uses of time. Conscious of time's intimate entanglement with power, inequality, social transformation, and social justice, we hope to contribute a politically relevant, empirically and conceptually rich collection of articles to critical time studies and to studies of politics, social change, and social movements.