cloth 0-87722-788-8 $39.95, Jan 91, Out of Print
250 pp
Time is at the forefront of contemporary scholarly inquiry throughout the humanities and the natural sciences. During the last twenty years, the study of time has fueled a rapidly growing exchange of ideas between different disciplines. Yet the social sciences have remained substantially isolated from time-related concerns in other fields. Taking on the task of changing that situation, this book is an exciting academic exercise in its own right. But more importantly, it serves to focus concern upon issues that have emerged as central to an adequate understanding of the social world in the late twentieth century.
Through her analysis of time, Barbara Adam shows that our contemporary social theories are firmly embedded in Newtonian science and classical dualistic philosophy. She then exposes these classical frameworks of thought as inadequate to the task of conceptualizing our contemporary world of standardized time, computers, nuclear power, and global telecommunications.
The author argues that the complex aspects of time should be made a key part of social theory especially if individuals are to take responsibility for their actions: past, present, and particularly the long term future. An explicit understanding of time Adam contends, generates not only a basis for a more adequate social theory, but a chance to be a participating agent in a world where human creations have all too often become the factor controlling human life. To grasp the multiplicity of time is to come to terms wit the complexity of our times.
This book will be of great interest to anyone working in social theory, cultural theory, sociology, and philosophy.
Excerpt available at www.temple.edu/tempress
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Time is a Fact of Life
1. Time in Social Theory: Destiny, Necessity, and Enigma
The Diversity of Contemporary Approaches
Dualisms and Disciplinary Isolation Rejected
Making Distinctions Philosophy's Way
All Time is Social Time
Reflections
2. From the Measure of Motion to Entropy
The Newtonian Measure
Relative Time and Quantum Temporality
Thermodynamic Change
Reflections
3. Rhythmicity: Source of Life and Form
Biorhythms: The Clock that Time Us and Know Time
Organisms and the Machine Metaphor
Living Change
Reflections
4. Human Time Studied
Aspects of Mind
Time Budgeted
Orientation and Perspectives
The Life Cycle
Social Change and Order
Reflections
5. Industrial Time and Power
Timed Social Life
Social Time Controlled
Waiting
Reflections
6. Time Transcended
Life Unto Death and Beyond
The Extended Present and the Myth of Eternal Return
The Future: Expanded, Colonized, and Lost
The Past: Possessed, Recorded and Constructed
Reflections
7. Time for Social Theory: Points of Departure
Social Time and Natural Time Revisited
Knowing through Metaphors
Resonance and Non-hierarchical Levels
Simultaneity and Extended Time-Spans
References
Index
Barbara Adam is a British sociologist.
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