Abstract
In developing the account of agency and structure suggested earlier, I have proposed that the conception of structuration introduces temporality as integral to social theory; and that such a conception involves breaking with the synchrony/diachrony or static/dynamic divisions that have featured so prominently in both structuralism and functionalism. It would be untrue of course to say that those writing within these traditions of thought have not been concerned with time. But the general tendency, especially within functionalist thought, has been to identify time with the diachronic or dynamic; synchronic analysis represents a ‘timeless snapshot’ of society. The result is that time is identified with social change.
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Notes and References
Cf. the comments of Gluckman on ‘data and theory’, in Max Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965).
Cf. Gellner: ‘How can one say, as some anthropologists seemed to say almost with one breath, that the past of a tribal society is unknown, and that is known to be stable?’ Emest Gellner, Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld, 1964) p. 19.
J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time (London: Methuen, 1972).
For a conservative analysis of the development of hermeneutics, and a critique of Enlightenment, see H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method. On writing and culture, see particularly Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge University Press, 1977). Cf. Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, pp. 288ff.
Cf. Wilbert E. Moore, Man, Time and Society (New York: Wiley, 1963);
Georges Gurvitch, The Spectrum of Social Time (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1964).
Cf. however, Shils: ‘Time provides not only a setting which permits the state of one moment to be compared heuristically with that of another moment. Time is also a constitutive property of society. Society is only conceivable as a system of varying states occurring at moments in time. Society displays its characteristic features not at a single moment in time but in various phases assuming various but related shapes at different and consecutive moments of time.’ Edward Shils, Center and Periphery (Chicago University Press, 1975) p. xiii.
Marshall McCluhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (Toronto University Press, 1962).
Cf. Whitman: ‘It seems that, however accurate the repetitive control elements of the clock may be, one can never arrive at a concept of standard time-duration without prior reference to space congruence. In fact, the more accurate the clock, the more complex are the spatio-temporal physical laws which have to be known and utilised.’ Michael Whitman, Philosophy of Space and Time (London: Allen and Unwin, 1967) p. 71.
On the development of time and space concepts with the decay of feudalism, see Agnes Heller, Renaissance Man (London: Routledge, 1978) pp. 170–96.
Alan Pred, ‘The choreography of existence: comments on Hägerstrand’s time-geography and its usefulness’, Economic Geography, vol. 53 (1977) p. 208.
John Rex and Robert Moore, Race, Community and Conflict (London: Oxford University Press, 1967),
Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1959); for the same author’s more recent views on some overlapping issues, see Goffman, Frame Analysis.
Kathleen Archibald, Wartime Shipyard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947) p. 159.
Cf. David Lockwood, The Black-coated Worker (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969) for a discussion in the context of broader issues of class theory.
Cf. R. E. Pahl and J. T. Winkler, ‘The economic elite: theory and practice’, in Philip Stanworth and Anthony Giddens, Elites and Power in British Society (Cambridge University Press, 1974).
Lewis Mumford, Interpretations and Forecasts (London: Secker and Warburg, 1973) p. 272.
R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: Free Press, 1963) pp. 64–5. Italics in original.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford University Press, 1950);
also Bryan Wilson, Rationality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1970), and numerous other contributions.
Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge University Press, 1977) p. 83.
Cf. Raymond Williams, Keywords (London: Fontana, 1976).
E. H. Carr, A History of Soviet Russia, vol. I (London: Macmillan, 1969) p. 88.
Cf. Nisbet’s criticisms of metaphors of growth, linked to ‘immanent causation, continuity, differentiation, necessity and uniformitarianism [sic]’. Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969) p. 251 and passim.
For a relevant discussion, see Herminio Martins, ‘Time and theory in sociology’, in John Rex, Approaches to Sociology (London: Routledge, 1974).
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-system (New York: Academic Press, 1974) p. 348.
Fernand Braudel, Écrits sur l’histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 1969) p. 50.
William Dray, ‘The historical explanation of actions reconsidered’, in Sidney Hook, Philosophy and History: A Symposium (New York University Press, 1963) p. 105.
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© 1979 Anthony Giddens
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Giddens, A. (1979). Time, Space, Social Change. In: Central Problems in Social Theory. Contemporary Social Theory. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16161-4_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16161-4_7
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