Time

This work explores our understanding of the nature of time, paying particular attention to time in relation to modernity. The development of industrialism, the author points out, was based upon a linear and abstract conception of time. Today, that form of production, and the social institutions associated with it, are surplanted by flexible specialization and just-in-time production systems. New information and communication technologies have made a fundamental impact here. But what does all this mean for temporal regimes? How can we understand the transformations of time and space involved in the bewildering variety of options on offer in a postmodern world? The author provides an analysis of the temporal implications of modern communications. She considers the implications of world-wide simultaneous experience, made possible by satellite technologies, and considers the reorganization of time involved in the continuous technological innovation which marks this era. In this puzzling universe of action, how does one achieve a "time of one's own"?
The discovery of a specific time perspective centred in the individual, she shows, expresses a yearning for forms of experience which are subversive of established institutional patterns. This study should be of interest to students and professionals working in the areas of social theory, sociology, politics and anthropology.