The Spectrum of Social Time

Abstract

the introduction revolves around the totallity of the social phenomena and its complexity. The sociological research (the depth level reseach) goes from the superficial deeper into the more hiden structures of society. In the bottom of the social reality lies the "collective mentality". The depth analysis "in reealing the excptional richness of social realit, represents the triumph of a super-relativism and a consequent empiricism". (5) social life always takes place in divergent and often contradictory manifestations of social time. Ever class, group and actvity has its own time. Societies try to correlate to a certain extent the different times. Gurvich has identified 8 different kinds of social time: enduring, deceptive, erratic, cyclical, retarded, time pushing forward, explosive, and alternating time.(13) This multiplicity of time is significant for 3 different reasons: 1. the differences beween the times of different peoples which is exposed when the collectives come i contact. 2. multiplicity of social time as a problem in the sociology of knowledge: how is time percived, symbolized etc. 3. the problem of the validity of social determinism (?) Quates Paul Fraisse's "The psychology of time" (1957) which claims that all research of time is devided into 3 aspects: 1. The conditioning of time (a recipprocal process in which time is conditioned by the "total social phenomena" but the social phramework is also conditioned by time as it acts within it. 2. the perception of time - this aspect, Gurvich finds insufficient. He prefers "becoming conscious of time" as it includes knowing time intuitively, represnting it and symbolizing it, measuring it and quantifying it. 3. Mastery of time - meaning according to Fraisse the "estimation, conceptualiztion and quantification of time". Chap 2- The problem of time - a definition of time: "Convergent and divergent movements which persist in a discontinuous succession and change in a continuity of heterogeneous moments." Avoids the philosophical question if time is objective or subjective. Claims that there are different times and that their synchronization is an effort taken by socities. a definition of social time: "the time of convergency and divergency of movements of the total social phenomena whether the total social phenomena are global, group or microsocial and whether or not they are expressed in the social structure. The total social phenomena both produce and are products of social time. [...] thus social time cannot be defined without defining the total social phenomena." (27) The definition of "the total social phnomenum goes back to Mauss (society is a whole that should not be reduced by sociologists to disected levels which satnd on their own. The economic, political, intelectual, the rites and mentality are only manifestation of the whole, of the total social phenomena. This is equivelent to the concept of a "total man". Men do not have an economic level, a political level etc. They are whole and should be understood that way). Goes one step further when he applies dialectic thinking to ana;yzing both the total social phenomena and social time. In pp. 31-33 the author discusses the different social times and tries to connect them to specific sociaties or to segments of the society. For example, the "enduring time" is a time in which "Kinship and locality groupings, especially the rural, tend to move in". "Time in advance is connected to the proletarion and to capitalism. The differences between historical and sociological time (34-38)