Social Relations, Space and Time

Abstract

It is now becoming common to argue that one considerable deficiency of much of the contemporary social sciences is their neglect of time and space. Social analyses are held to be curiously negligent of the spatio-temporal location and structuring of the phenomena under investigation.¹ This is by obvious contrast with physical science where, for instance, Whitehead claimed that ‘It is hardly more than a pardonable exaggeration to say that the determination of the meaning of nature reduces itself principally to the discussion of the character of time and the character of space.’² However, there are very considerable problems in seeing how space and time can be built into the examination of social relations. I will make a number of points of clarification to begin here.