Time and Society


Book Description

Time-consciousness—long a shared objective of philosophy and social thought—is key to understanding different cultures and their cognitive adaptation to one another. Warren D. TenHouten's remarkable book achieves this goal by providing a bold and original three-level theory of time-consciousness, its neurocognitive basis, and social organization. Using classical and contemporary ethnographies of Australian Aborigines and Euro-Australians to support his theory, TenHouten shows how involvement in hedonic sociality—emphasizing equality and community—leads to time that is cyclical, present oriented, and more generally natural; whereas agonic sociality—based on inequality and agency—leads to time that is linear, future oriented, and more generally rational.




Time and Society


Book Description

This is the first general theory of time-consciousness and social experience ever developed.




Collaborative Innovation in the Public Sector


Book Description

Public sector innovation is important because the pressures of growing expectations from citizens, budget crunches, and a surge of complex governance problems cannot be solved by standard government solutions or increased funding. In order to innovate, government increasingly needs to collaborate with networks of partners across agency boundaries and especially with the nonprofit and private sectors to find new solutions. This interaction within a network can enhance creative and effective governance solutions. In this book, Jacob Torfing closely examines the link between network-based collaborative governance and innovation, proposes a framework for the study of collaborative innovation, and discusses this approach in light of theoretical insights from other disciplines and from examples of public innovation drawn from the United States, Europe, and Australia. This book will move scholars closer to being able to develop a theory of collaborative innovation.




Time, Space, and Society


Book Description

Time and space are two of the most basic dimensions of human life. They envelop all human beings from birth to death. As such, they provide the context for human existence. At the same time, however, time and space also serve as major influencing factors in mankind's actions. Hence, a vast literature has developed on time and space as separate dimensions, and recently on time-space as joint dimensions. Interestingly enough, the social connotations of time and space have mostly been studied with the individual human being in mind. The more societal significance of time and space, whether separately or jointly, have been relatively neglected. It is the purpose of this volume to help fill this lacuna through discussions on some of the many junctions of time, space, and society at large. The discussion will naturally involve concepts and findings from more than just one discipline -- notably, geography, sociology, social history and political science. It is, thus, obvious that the topic may be highlighted from several perspectives. Given my own education and work, the approach will lean more to the geographical perspective. Geography has a special merit as an integrating framework for the study of time, space, and society. It is a discipline that has space at the center of its raison d'etre and, as such, has always striven for integration, holism and comprehensiveness.




Time and the Rhythms of Emancipatory Education


Book Description

Time and the Rhythms of Emancipatory Education argues that by rethinking the way we relate to time, we can fundamentally rethink the way we conceive education. Beyond the contemporary rhetoric of acceleration, speed, urgency or slowness, this book provides an epistemological, historical and theoretical framework that will serve as a comprehensive resource for critical reflection on the relationship between the experience of time and emancipatory education. Drawing upon time and rhythm studies, complexity theories and educational research, Alhadeff-Jones reflects upon the temporal and rhythmic dimensions of education in order to (re)theorize and address current societal and educational challenges. The book is divided into three parts. The first begins by discussing the specificities inherent to the study of time in educational sciences. The second contextualizes the evolution of temporal constraints that determine the ways education is institutionalized, organized, and experienced. The third and final part questions the meanings of emancipatory education in a context of temporal alienation. This is the first book to provide a broad overview of European and North-American theories that inform both the ideas of time and rhythm in educational sciences, from school instruction, curriculum design and arts education, to vocational training, lifelong learning and educational policies. It will be of key interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, sociology of education, history of education, psychology, curriculum and learning theory, and adult education. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.




Reading Clocks, Alla Turca


Book Description

Up until the end of the eighteenth century, the way Ottomans used their clocks conformed to the inner logic of their own temporal culture. However, this began to change rather dramatically during the nineteenth century, as the Ottoman Empire was increasingly assimilated into the European-dominated global economy and the project of modern state building began to gather momentum. In Reading Clocks, Alla Turca, Avner Wishnitzer unravels the complexity of Ottoman temporal culture and for the first time tells the story of its transformation. He explains that in their attempt to attain better surveillance capabilities and higher levels of regularity and efficiency, various organs of the reforming Ottoman state developed elaborate temporal constructs in which clocks played an increasingly important role. As the reform movement spread beyond the government apparatus, emerging groups of officers, bureaucrats, and urban professionals incorporated novel time-related ideas, values, and behaviors into their self-consciously “modern” outlook and lifestyle. Acculturated in the highly regimented environment of schools and barracks, they came to identify efficiency and temporal regularity with progress and the former temporal patterns with the old political order. Drawing on a wealth of archival and literary sources, Wishnitzer’s original and highly important work presents the shifting culture of time as an arena in which Ottoman social groups competed for legitimacy and a medium through which the very concept of modernity was defined. Reading Clocks, Alla Turca breaks new ground in the study of the Middle East and presents us with a new understanding of the relationship between time and modernity.




The Time of the Tribes


Book Description

In this exciting book Michel Maffesoli argues that the conventional approaches to understanding solidarity and society are deeply flawed. He contends that mass culture has disintegrated and that today social existence is conducted through fragmented tribal groupings, organized around the catchwords, brand-names and sound-bites of consumer culture. The book provides a rich backcloth against which to consider the rise of `identity politics' and the `proliferation of lifestyle cultures'.




Organizations and Society


Book Description

What are the costs and consequences of living in a society that has undergone an "organizational revolution"? To what extent is social life in the 21st century dominated by the rational control that is characteristic of bureaucratic organizations large and small? Organizations and Society addresses these broader human questions with a critical perspective, while at the same time explaining the main concepts and theories in the field. Students of all interests—those who wish to run organizations someday, study them, or simply understand their importance in the contemporary social order—will benefit from the insights and cogent arguments of this text for undergraduate classrooms.




Water and Society from Ancient Times to the Present


Book Description

As water availability, management and conservation become global challenges, there is now wide consensus that historical knowledge can provide crucial information to address present crises, offering unique opportunities to appreciate the solutions and mechanisms societies have developed over time to deal with water in all its forms, from rainfall to groundwater. This unique collection explores how ancient water systems relate to present ideas of resilience and sustainability and can inform future strategy. Through an investigation of historic water management systems, along with the responses to, and impact of, various water-driven catastrophes, contributors to this volume present tenable solutions for the long-term use of water resources in different parts of the world. The discussion is not limited to issues of the past, seeking instead to address the resonance and legacy of water histories in the present and future. Water and Society from Ancient Times to the Present speaks to an archaeological and non-archaeological scholarly audience and will be a useful primary reference text for researchers and graduate students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds including archaeology, anthropology, history, ecology, geography, geology, architecture and development studies.




Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity


Book Description

Threats of terrorism, natural disaster, identity theft, job loss, illegal immigration, and even biblical apocalypse--all are perils that trigger alarm in people today. Although there may be a factual basis for many of these fears, they do not simply represent objective conditions. Feelings of insecurity are instilled by politicians and the media, and sustained by urban fortification, technological surveillance, and economic vulnerability. Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity fuses advanced theoretical accounts of state power and neoliberalism with original research from the social settings in which insecurity dynamics play out in the new century. Torin Monahan explores the counterterrorism-themed show 24, Rapture fiction, traffic control centers, security conferences, public housing, and gated communities, and examines how each manifests complex relationships of inequality, insecurity, and surveillance. Alleviating insecurity requires that we confront its mythic dimensions, the politics inherent in new configurations of security provision, and the structural obstacles to achieving equality in societies.