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The Sociology of Time
A Critical Overview
Jiří Šubrt
The Sociology of Time
 Jiří Šubrt

The Sociology
of Time
A Critical Overview
Jir ̌í Šubrt
Faculty of Humanities
Charles University
Praha, Czech Republic

ISBN 978-3-030-83288-9    ISBN 978-3-030-83289-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83289-6

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 Acknowledgements

The topic of time first came to me in 1980, when I was studying sociology
at Charles University, then still in so-called normalizing Czechoslovakia. In
my interest, I was supported by Associate Professor Eduard Urbánek, who
gave me valuable early advice. As a student, I formed an opinion very close
to Georges Gurvitch’s idea of the multiplicity of social times, but after
some time I abandoned this view and leaned towards a monistic concept of
time. Access to foreign professional literature was very limited in then-
socialist Prague, so a more significant shift in my studies could only occur
when I got internships at universities after 1989 in Austria (Vienna and
Graz), Germany (Berlin, Tübingen, Konstanz, Hamburg, and Nuremberg,
Erlangen), and the United Kingdom (Cambridge). Occasionally, I had the
opportunity to consult questions with foreign colleagues, who at various
times included, for example, Prof. Thomas Luckmann, Prof. Ilja Srubar,
Prof. Werner Bergmann, Prof. Hans Joas, Prof. Patrick Baert, Prof. Johan
Goudsblom, Prof. Kurt Lüscher, and Prof. Reinhold Knoll, and also Prof.
Jiří Musil and Prof. Richard Jung in the Czech Republic. I should add that
my interest in time has since intertwined with other thematic areas, espe-
cially the history of sociology, contemporary sociological theory, and his-
torical sociology. At first I thought that the perspective of time would allow
me to look into these areas from a unique, privileged position, but gradu-
ally I abandoned this notion. However, I did not abandon the belief that
the study of the sociology of time provides a number of intellectual chal-
lenges, inspirational stimuli, riddles, and puzzles, for which the topic
deserves deeper attention. Over the past decades, I have managed to study
dozens of books and articles on the subject; what I have not been able to

v
vi Acknowledgements

do so far is to find interactive partners for my thoughts. So now I present

this book to readers in the belief that at least some may be stimulated to
enter into dialogue with the author. The fact that the text of the book is—
according to the early reflections of my colleagues on its manuscript—
accessible to the reader, I owe primarily to the help of my long-term
language advisor Edward Thomas Everett.
j. š.
 Contents

1 Labyrinth of Questions and Answers: Introduction  1

Bibliography  5

2 Time and the Civilizing Process  7

2.1 Time from the Perspective of Sociology of Knowledge  8
2.2 Metamorphoses of Time 12
2.3 A Brief Digression to the History of the Time Measurement 17
2.4 Time, Asceticism, and Discipline 22
2.5 Modern Tyrant 26
2.6 The First Law of Economics 33
Bibliography 37

3 Time as a Social Category 41

3.1 The Rhythm of Collective Life 42
3.2 Critical Data in Collective Life 51
3.3 A Brief Excursion to the Issue of the Calendar 55
3.4 Digression on Astrology and Astronomy 62
3.5 The Dynamics of Modern Life and Historical Consciousness 66
3.6 The Historical Perspective and Historization 69
3.7 Concept of Memory Frames and Collective Memory 72
3.8 A Long Time of History 78
3.9 Courte Durée and Longue Durée 82
3.10 Spatio-Temporal Dimension of Analysis of the Social Process 84
Bibliography 89

vii
viii Contents

4 Time and Human Action 95

4.1 The Present as the Locus of Reality 96
4.2 Time, Meaning, and Intersubjectivity103
Bibliography113

5 Time: The Key to the Analysis of Social Reality115

5.1 Functions of Social Time116
5.2 Anthropological Inspiration125
5.3 Hot and Cold Societies129
5.4 Time and Order135
5.5 The Plurality of Social Times139
5.6 Paradigms of the Human Condition in the Perspective
of Comparative Civilization Analysis143
Bibliography146

6 The Role of Time in Theoretical Systems of Sociology

at the End of the Twentieth Century149
6.1 Systems Theory and Analysis of Temporal Structures150
6.1.1 Temporalization as Reduction of Complexity151
6.1.2 Social Systems and Evolution159
6.1.3 World Time163
6.2 Time and Space in Structuration Theory165
6.2.1 Two Basic Dimensions166
6.2.2 Zones and Regions168
6.2.3 Duration—Dasein—Long Duration171
6.2.4 Anti-evolutionism175
Bibliography179

7 The Time of Physics and Thermodynamics:

(an Excursion into the Field of Natural Sciences)183
7.1 Ambiguous Time185
7.2 The Arrow of Time188
7.3 Dissipative Structures and Chaos192
Bibliography194

8 The Sociology of Time or Temporalized Sociology197

8.1 Thematic Orientation of Sociology of Time197
8.2 The Project of Temporalized Sociology204
 Contents  ix

8.3 Historical Sociology as Temporalized Sociology211

8.4 Sociology as Science About Social Processes213
Bibliography216

9 Balance and Prospects225

9.1 A Problem We Created Ourselves225
9.2 Asymmetry of Time228
9.3 Structures of Duration230
9.4 Pluralism and Monism231
9.5 Reversibility: Yes or No?234
9.6 Time and Modernity235
9.7 A Transversal Problem237
Bibliography241

10 Epilogue245
Bibliography250

Bibliography253

Index273
 CHAPTER 1

Labyrinth of Questions and Answers:

Introduction

Reflections on time tend to be full of paradoxes and relativizing perspec-

tives. Thus, we begin with a thematic reflection presented more than 20
years ago, but since which nothing significant has changed. Under the title
“The Legacy of Sociology—The Promise of the Social Sciences”, the
then-President of the International Sociological Association (ISA),
Immanuel Wallerstein, delivered a lecture at the World Sociological
Congress in Montreal, Canada, in 1998, in which he tried to characterize
the path which sociological thinking had taken, and at the same time out-
line views that were opening up to researchers at the time. Through a criti-
cal analysis of the intellectual heritage of previous generations, Wallerstein
drew conclusions about the perspectives of the social sciences for the
forthcoming century. Among these was the question of time, because, as
he stated: “The flow of time (…) cannot be avoided and it is not even pos-
sible to predict it; there are always bifurcations ahead of us, the result of
which is inherently indeterminate. Furthermore, despite the ‚stream of
time’, there are many times. We can afford to neglect neither the struc-
tural time of long duration nor the cyclical rhythms of the historical system
that we analyse. Time is far more than chronometry, and chronology.
Time is also duration, cycles, and disjunction.” [Wallerstein 1999: 11].
This, however, was nothing new in sociology. A number of great figures
of sociological thought have speculated over the issue of time (e.g.
E. Durkheim, G. H. Mead, P. A. Sorokin, A. Schütz, G. Gurvitch, and
many others). Philosophical concepts (such as those by H. Bergson,

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2 J. ŠUBRT

E. Husserl, M. Heidegger, and N. Whitehead) as well as discoveries in the

field of physics (particularly the special and general theory of relativity of
A. Einstein) and other sciences have also had their influence. Nevertheless,
for many decades the issue of time existed rather as a marginal topic,
remote from the mainstream of sociological research. That situation did
not change until the mid-1970s, when attention to the phenomenon
grew, and this interest continued to the following decades. Time is increas-
ingly seen not only as a kind of secondary factor (gaining relevance, for
example, in connection with the issue of social change), but also as a prob-
lem in itself.
However, these developments have raised many more questions than
answers. A contemporary author once ironically remarked that time
behaves irreverently to social scientists: it puts on various hats, which it
rarely takes off unambiguously in front of them [Nowotny 1992: 486].
Although the volume of literature devoted to the sociological issues of
time has grown at an unprecedented rate in the more than a quarter of a
century since, nothing significant in this “disrespectful behaviour” seems
to have changed.
Jan Sokol, in his book Time and Rhythm, stated that, in human experi-
ence captured by language, one can distinguish four senses in which time
is captured: (a) time as an entity that flows, (b) time as duration, (c) time
as measurement, (d) time to do something [Sokol 1996: 21–24]. Some
analysts additionally identify time with change.

• Time as Passing. Every day human life brings large amounts of evi-
dence of the unstoppable and irreversible march of time, in which
many (new) things come, but also (often forever) go. The general
variability of the world was expressed by Heraclitus of Ephesus in his
memorable thesis Panta Rhei. As far as narration is concerned, order
is necessary to make it clear and comprehensible. Even if narration is
not structured in time, its logical succession must be identifiable.
• Time as Duration. The basic human experience means that life and
things around us “endure”. Some things, in our human perspective,
last but briefly, while others last longer, and some last so long that
they seem everlasting. Unlike the Heraklitean picture of a flowing
river, the term duration may encourage us to believe in the image of
a time “reservoir” (Giddens would say “container”), in which indi-
vidual partial durations are as it were “embedded”. Philosophers
sometimes define time as a “way of duration”. Because different
 1 LABYRINTH OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: INTRODUCTION 3

things and human lives last for variable periods, there is, among
other things, what can be described as the problem of the “non-­
present present”.
• Time as Measure. As Sorokin and Merton showed, in ancient societ-
ies there were very diverse, locally differentiated systems of counting
and measuring of time, influenced by the nature of the activities
engaged in (for example, the word “harvest” used to mean what we
call the year). Modern industrial society established a uniform, finely
dispersed time-slot pattern of hours, minutes, and seconds. Perhaps
it is not necessary to emphasize that for historical narration the pre-
cise definition of the time coordinates in which stories happen is
crucially important, as the location of action in these coordinates is
one of the prerequisites for appropriate understanding.
• Time for Something. In archaic consciousness, time was often attrib-
uted certain qualities, which could be “good” or “bad”, “favour-
able” or “unfavourable”. The ancient Greeks used the notion of
kairos as markers of time, representing favourable moments for
action not to be missed. The necessity of deciding what action is
appropriate for what time is something even today people have not
dispensed with. In historical reflection, we encounter formulations
such as “the moment of decision”, testing times, or fruitful times
of action.
• Time as Change. If nothing changed, we could not perceive time.
Particularly in ancient consciousness, which attributed certain quali-
ties to time; time was recorded only when something took place. If
nothing happened, it was as if time had stopped. Examples of this
tendency can, however, be found in contemporary thinking. Let us
recall for instance that in some literary-philosophical reflections, the
period of normalization in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s
was referred to as “timelessness”.

Let us add that in philosophical thinking, time can have many different
aspects. It can be measured, and thus calculated. In Aristotle’s conception,
time is what makes it possible to measure movement. Yet time is not only
what happens outside us, but something we perceive and experience. For
this reason, another Greek philosopher, Plotinus, associated time with
changes of states in the life of the soul. St. Augustine considered that the
perception of time, both by counting and in experience, was connected
with the soul and memory. John Lock later associated time with duration
4 J. ŠUBRT

and movement taking place in our minds. For Immanuel Kant, time, like
space, was what allowed us, as an a priori equipment of our reason, to
organize chaotic perceptions into certain, understandable units. From
similar positions, the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl approached the
study of acts of inner temporal consciousness. Henri Bergson distinguished
between time as an external measurable variable, and internal duration,
associated with the experience of flow, stability, and change. Martin
Heidegger claimed that our existence, Dasein, took place over time, but at
the same time related to time in some way and thus co-created it in a cer-
tain way. People lived in the circumstances into which they were cast, but
also projected circumstances themselves; meanwhile in the background
there was what Heidegger called Sein zum Tode (Being to death).
English philosopher John Ellis McTaggart (1866–1925) spoke of two
conceptions of time: an objective one, distinguishing between earlier and
later stages, and a subjective one, including observers in its analysis.
If event X happened before event Y, X would always precede Y (for
example, Caesar died before Queen Victoria, people are young before
they grow old, and the car at first is shiny and later rusts). McTaggart
termed these relationships time series B. Time series A, however, put
McTaggart himself into a relationship with the past, present, and future.
In this sense, time was relative, because marking something as past, pres-
ent, or future depended on the author of the statement and the context
[Adam 1990: 20].
Series B was considered sufficient to describe and explain nature. To
explore the human world, however, it was considered necessary to use both
types of series, because the human consciousness of time included both the
experience of real successions and the ability to remember, think, and
expect. Series B (before/after) formed a time structure related to events
(thus excluding the person from the analysis as a creator of symbols). The
relationship thus described was the same for all observers. In series A (past,
present, and future), by contrast, the definition of today, tomorrow, and
yesterday changed in dependence on the observer and his consciousness.
Contemporary sociologist Barbara Adam shares the view that all societ-
ies distinguish events according to both time series A and B, even those
societies that do not distinguish between times in their speech, or do not
have a separate concept for what we call time [Ibid.: 21]. Nature without
a human element can be characterized and even understood on the basis
of four dimensions: three spatial and one temporal. When we think of
human societies, we consider the creators of the symbols made to describe
past, present, and future things.
 1 LABYRINTH OF QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: INTRODUCTION 5

If we introduce this symbolic description of the world, we inevitably

introduce another dimension: the dimension of time, a natural part of
which is self-awareness.
In this context, the question is often asked about the source of time (in
other words, what time represents). A large number of contemporary
studies offer a wide range of incompatible views, including, for instance,
entropic processes; the life processes of growth and extinction; natural and
social rhythms; mechanical, biological, and social interaction; memory;
and history; as well as the ability to communicate, synthesize, and abstract.
The unwary reader thus can get into a real labyrinth (B. Adam even talks
about a “maze of conceptual chaos”), in which one seldom encounters a
clear sign. Theories are built around a common direction, but anyone
seeking to learn from this mass of ideas soon encounters a considerable
problem: how to handle diversity, to navigate using this heterogeneous
thought equipment, to connect isolated concepts and turn them into a
coherent meaningful whole [Ibid.: 15]. The complexity of the image cre-
ated by the natural sciences is due, among other things, to the fact that
man comes into play as the creator of symbols, and that the question of
human consciousness, memory, and knowledge must take into account
the specifically human relationship to the past, present, and future.
In contemporary sociology there is a consensus mainly that time has
not hitherto been studied in a satisfactory manner and is not yet ade-
quately dealt with in the context of social theory. Efforts to date to over-
come this situation have focused on solving three interrelated problems:
(a) the constitution of time as a social category, (b) the functioning of
temporal structures at different levels of social systems, and (c) the place
and role of time in general sociological theory.

Bibliography
Adam, B. 1990. Time and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Nowotny, H. 1992. “Time in the Social Sciences. Theoretical and Empirical
Approaches.” In: Dierkes, M.; Biervert, B. (eds.) European Social Science in
Transition: Assessment and Outlook. Frankfurt am Main: Campus
Verlag: 481–525.
Sokol, J. 1996. Č as a rytmus. (Time and Rhytm). Praha: OIKOYMENH.
Wallerstein, I. 1999. “Dědictví sociologie – pr ̌íslib společenských věd.” (“The
Heritage of Sociology—The Promise of Social Science”) In: Sociologický c ̌asopis,
Vol. 35, No. 1: 3 – 15.
 CHAPTER 2

Time and the Civilizing Process

Human ideas about time evolve and change as knowledge and ways of life
change. In the work Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation: Soziogenetische und
psychogenetische Untersuchungen (1939)—The Civilizing Process:
Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, Norbert Elias formulated a
theoretical conception of the process of the long-term, continuous change
that led to the creation of modern society. This conception concerned the
development of the personality structures of humanity and its conduct
(psychogenetic investigation), as well as the development of social struc-
tures of inequality, power, and order (sociogenetic investigation).
Elias dealt with an expanse of history dating from the Early Middle
Ages to so-called modern times. He understood psychogenesis as a pro-
cess of the gradual creation of psychic structures regulating individual
actions (in Freudian terminology, these structures were termed the Super-­
ego). This process was characterized by the gradual suppression of instincts
and affections in human action. The shift towards the control of impulses
and affections was first of all effected by pressure from outside, by others
(Fremdzwang, external restraint), which, however, to be permanent, had
to be transformed into self-restraint (Selbstzwang, self-restraint) [Šubrt
1996: 39].
A central theme of Elias’s sociogenetic investigation was the process of
state formation, the question of how and why large absolutist states
emerged from the sixteenth century, where power was concentrated in the
hands of one person, so that all, including the aristocracy, obeyed it. Elias

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8 J. ŠUBRT

showed that the formation of the state coincided with changes in human
instinctive and affectual life towards its increasing control, and what’s
more, that these developmental processes—psychogenesis and sociogen-
esis—were mutually dependent.
The early developmental stages, compared to the later ones, were deter-
mined by the dominance of the natural economy and the low degree of
centralization of sovereign power, characterized by a low level of pacifica-
tion, a high level of physical danger, and the resulting constant uncertainty
of individuals. The formation of the state was accompanied by a process of
transformation. The government and the power apparatus, the laws, and
police power began to govern social coexistence and force individuals to
control themselves, while at the same time having power over these affec-
tions. Psychogenesis and regulation of affects thus correspond with the
sociogenesis of the state [Ibid. p. 52].

2.1   Time from the Perspective of Sociology

of Knowledge

Norbert Elias looked at the problems of time through the lens of the soci-
ology of knowledge. Time for him was not a priori given, or something
corresponding to human nature, but rather a social phenomenon, a prod-
uct of the synthesizing power of a long process of development of knowl-
edge. The historical development of human understanding of marking
and measurement of time is an example of a long-term social process. Elias
put this area of his research in the context of civilizational theory and
examined the development of the understanding and determination of
time from early forms of society up to the period of industrialism.
The genesis of the terms referring to time reaches deep into the past via
two types of evolutionary process: the first was the ability of people to cre-
ate through thought processes a certain synthesis accustomed to chrono-
logical arrangement and synchronization; the second concerned the
development of societies themselves. In Elias’s civilizational theory, the
perception and recording of time are interpreted as examples of social
pressures leading to self-control and “self-constraint” (in early develop-
ment a person ate when hungry and slept when tired; today these animal
cycles are regulated by social organization and structured to the point
where our “physiological clock” is set according to the “social clock”).
 2 TIME AND THE CIVILIZING PROCESS 9

Elias critically addressed both the Newtonian concept that time is like
any other physical given of the eternal natural order, and Kant’s assump-
tion that time is the universal structure of human knowledge [Elias 1988:
101–102]. Time, according to Elias, was neither an attribute of an object,
nor a priori equipment of knowledge, but a synthetic human performance
following a lengthy process of learning. The problem of time could not be
understood in isolation but must be seen in its essential social contexts
(mainly represented by issues of power and control) and social functions
(coordination and integration). Elias understood time as an orientational
tool. What we call time is, according to him, a framework of a certain ref-
erence serving people to create landmarks within a continuous stream of
change and at the same time allowing the comparison of individual phases
of processes (socially standardized landmarks include a variety of repetitive
or unique events: the seasons, low tide and high tide, the return of the full
moon, the continuum of movement of the Earth and the Sun, the birth of
Christ or the prophet Muhammad).
Elias concentrated his efforts on the attempt to develop an approach to
capture developmental changes in the perception of time. The difficulties
which this effort encountered were in his opinion caused by the absence
of an evolutionary theory to enable the creation of the abstraction, and
respectively synthesis of human knowledge. The situation was further
complicated by the tendency to ascribe time to properties of the process
itself. According to Elias, timing arose from the ability to interconnect two
or more different sequences of continuous change, one of which serves as
a benchmark for the other(s). The concept of time is based on what is
common to these sequences, regardless of their substantive differences;
the word time is a symbol for the relationship that human groups (which
means groups of animals with biologically given abilities to remember and
synthesize) establish between two or more courses of events [Elias 1988:
12] (continuums of this kind can include the movement of the Sun or
Moon although people may choose a different measure).
To mark certain events as “time” means the connection between at
least three elements: between people and two or more continuums of
change, one of which is a human group selected as the standard contin-
uum, as a reference framework. Humankind first used continuous
sequences of what we call natural events, then increasingly ​​mechanical
sequences. In this act of thought, memory is of crucial importance. Terms
like “before” and “after” were manifestations of the human ability to put
together what had not happened simultaneously, and what was not even
10 J. ŠUBRT

lived through mutually. A necessary part of the human ability to create

syntheses is played by memory in all forms of time determination (it would
be absurd to say that now it is four o’clock, had it not previously been two
o’clock and later will be six o’clock).
Many authors (among them Durkheim and Sorokin) placed the issue of
temporal concepts in the context of the development of abstract thinking.
Unlike them, Elias regarded it as more adequate to discuss not the abstrac-
tion (it is hard to say from which specific phenomena time was actually
abstracted), but the synthesis. Time was—similar to the concepts of nature,
cause, or substance—the result of a “high-level synthesis” achieved in the
process of development from particular to generalized syntheses.
Let us add that the assumptions of Elias’s civilization theory were uti-
lized by Johan Goudsblom, who structured the determination of histori-
cal time into four phases: in the first phase there was no tool to measure
time; in the second phase devices were used such as sundials, which, how-
ever, measured time in units (hours) of unequal, variable length; the third
phase was associated with time’s expansion and thus the standardization of
instruments for time measurement (clocks), which anticipated the intro-
duction of units—hours (Uhrstunden)—of equal length; the fourth phase
was characterized by efforts to synchronize time measurement, caused by
the requirements of modern transport and communication means, result-
ing in the creation of a global “time grid” divided into 24 time zones
[Goudsblom 1997: 129–140].
Time, like many other social products, developed to its current state
over the centuries, with the growth of certain social demands (how this
synthesis came about is reflected in such details as the use of the word
“sleep” for what today is called night, and the word “harvest” for what we
now call a year). First and foremost was the need for the coordination and
synchronization of activities among people and in relation to nonhuman
nature. This demand does not arise in all societies with the same intensity;
the larger, more populous, more differentiated and complex the society,
the stronger the demand for it is. It grows amidst increasing urbanization
and commercialization requiring a general reference framework to syn-
chronize the increasing range of human activities—an even, forward-­
running time grid. This task (facilitating among other things the proper
payment of taxes, interest, and the performance of contracts and obliga-
tions) is taken up by central—religious or secular—institutions that find
support in physical models, and supported by technical inventions of
tower-, and later pocket- and wrist-, watches. An all-penetrating time
 2 TIME AND THE CIVILIZING PROCESS 11

consciousness becomes integral to the social “canon” of relatively com-

plex, urbanized societies and the personality structures of their members.
Time is gifted with a coercive power that results from its social functions.

* * *

Elias, in surveying the process of civilization, engaged in an expanse of

history ranging from the Early Middle Ages to modern times. In this
period there were monumental social changes and shifts, for obvious rea-
sons difficult to put in a single explanatory framework. From this perspec-
tive, it is not difficult to find aspects that Elias did not touch on, or which
he registered only marginally. Among such we may recall the issue of the
interconnection of time, rationality, and discipline, which is a major topic
for authors like Max Weber and Michel Foucault.
For Elias (like Durkheim before him),1 time was a social structure.
Elias’s idea of ​​a time grid overlooked one essential aspect of human experi-
ence—the experience of death as an end. Elias’s time as a category or
means of orientation largely reduced time to the problem of its measure-
ment, while ignoring the great issue of the temporality of human exis-
tence, respectively “Being” (Dasein), which Martin Heidegger [1996]
captured in his philosophy. Finally—probably more importantly—a con-
ception of time as a human construct ignores the fact that the direction of
the so-called arrow of time to an end point exists objectively in many dif-
ferent forms, and is definitely not some human invention. Stephen
W. Hawking recognized three arrows: (a) thermodynamic, in whose direc-
tion disorder increases, (b) psychological, cohering in the fact that we
remember the past, but not the future, (c) cosmological, defined by the
direction in which the universe expands rather than contracts [Hawking
1991: 141].
It is difficult to raise substantial objections to Elias’s conception of time
as a landmark, from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, under-
stood as a product of synthesis achieved in the historical development of
human knowledge, but what is missing is the fact that people, despite
constructing the idea of ​​time, do so not on human merit; periods more-
over cannot be derived except in a particular direction—from the past
through the present to the future. A concept of time was created in order
to measure the length of individual periods, but certainly not the arrow of

1
See chapter 3.1.
12 J. ŠUBRT

time itself. It is neither a human invention nor a product of human activi-

ties but something with objective and independent existence.
As a result of his approach to time, Elias did not reflect another impor-
tant thing, namely, that his own conception of the process of civilization is
built upon assumptions of the nature of temporality. A characteristic fea-
ture is processuality and a focus on trends in the development of social and
personality structures. Elias’s interest was attracted by processes of con-
tinuous long-term change, which take place unintentionally and unex-
pectedly and furthermore have neither an absolute beginning (zero point)
from which they unfold, nor end to inevitably go to.
For an author able to track social trends across many centuries, it is a
paradox that the direction of time is applied mainly just as a concealed,
poorly-reflected-on assumption. Although Elias dedicated an individual
monograph to time, he did not address the question of the temporal
assumptions of sociological thought, and dealt with time solely as a means
of orientation. An author in many ways original, remained middle of the
road in his interpretation of the phenomenon of time. The second part of
the problem, the metatheoretical question of what role time could play in
the construction of sociological theory was only hinted at in Elias’s work,
and the reader of his books reaches it only by separately considering the
ontological determinants of processual sociology.

2.2   Metamorphoses of Time

The modern individual, under the influence of upbringing and education,
tends to understand time as something purely quantitative, without prop-
erties, even, regular, and unchangeable, second by second flowing, as a
kind of insubstantial form or set of abstract coordinates, to measure our
lives and the phenomena related to them. This conception, based on a
Newtonian view, is far from as obvious as it might seem at first glance. An
insight into history suggests that such an idea would have been remote to
a person of another era.
This is shown, for example, when we consider the Greek terms chronos
and kairos, both found in biblical texts. While chronos (and phrases derived
from it) penetrated many other languages through Latin, kairos did not
reach beyond the boundaries of classical Greek. From our point of view,
both concepts relate to one phenomenon; each, however, was applied
somewhat differently. Chronos had the meaning of time unfolding in a
certain consecutive sequence, which might be counted down and
 2 TIME AND THE CIVILIZING PROCESS 13

measured. Kairos was not the subject of measurement, but was regarded
in relation to the goal to be achieved; it was the time of opportunity for
human action. Chronos was, as Ivan Dubsky says, the passing time of the
seasons or human age, while kairos meant a favourable moment for action,
the “right time” determined by destiny, the cosmic constellation of God,
which, if missed, could not be regained [Dubský 1990: 4–2]. Chronos was
time flowing objectively and impersonally, kairos was the humanly experi-
enced time of intentions and goals [Jaques 1990: 33–34].
A considerable number of works have attempted to capture the histori-
cal changes that the understanding of time has gone through [Whitrow
1999; Hart-Davis 2011; Cave 1989].
To sketch a picture of the world as seen by medieval man, Romano
Guardini returned to the features shared with ancient man. In his opinion,
both lacked the idea of infinite spatial and temporal connection common
to modern man; they perceived the world as a limited entity. Nevertheless,
according to Guardini, there were significant differences in the framework
of this relationship. Ancient man did not exceed this world, with feelings,
ideas and thoughts rooted in this world, “ignoring the question of what
could be beyond … or above” [Guardini 1992: 9]. This was partly due to
a certain self-limitation of ancient man, founded in an ancient ethos (the
Greek mind was oriented to boundaries and limits), and partly due to the
lack of a fixed point outside the world needed for such a step, because even
the supreme deity was not outside the world, but within it.
By the Middle Ages, this view had changed. Man believed in a God
who was in the world, but sovereign over it, being also above the world,
and therefore out of it. According to Guardini, this created a distance and
overview which could be obtained neither purely on the basis of myths nor
on the ground of philosophy. The attachment of humanity to the world
was loosening. Although the old, Ptolemaic idea of the outer cosmos was
still valid, it was elaborated and given a different character. Guardini char-
acterized this as follows: “The cosmic whole seems like a ball. At its center
is the Earth, which also has a spherical shape. Spheres are circling around
round it, cosmically coated with imperishable substances that carry the
constellations. (…) There are nine spheres: the last, referred to as ‘primum
mobile’, encloses the world. An empyreum is spreading all around, a fiery
brightness … this empyreum is the place of God” [Ibid. pp. 15–16]. The
counterpart of the empyreum was the centre of the terrestrial sphere, its
deepest core, associated with the idea of damnation and hell.
14 J. ŠUBRT

According to Guardini, the medieval appearance of the world began to

fail during the fourteenth century; this process, which continued in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, then prevailed in the seventeenth cen-
tury [Ibid. p. 27]. In the process, the world grew and broke its contours,
revealing that it was possible to go further in all directions.2 In astronomy,
the Earth stopped being the centre of the world; in terms of historical
consciousness, it was based on an ever deeper past, and reached into an
increasingly distant future.
Researchers dealing with the problems of the Early Middle Ages have
concluded that in agrarian society time was determined primarily by natu-
ral rhythms. The life of peasants mainly related to the alternation of sea-
sons and the sequence of agricultural seasons, evidenced, for example, by
the word ar among the Germanic peoples (later the English year, and
German Jahr), which had two basic meanings: 1. a year, 2. a harvest, a
sufficiency [Gurevič 1978: 74–75].
Time, in this sense, was not a kind of empty duration, but the fulfilment
of a certain, concrete content. In the consciousness of the people of that
time, there was no idea of time without properties, a time independent of
what was going on in it. The pace of life and human activities was
controlled by natural rhythms. Time was attributed with certain qualities,
it could be “good” or “bad”, “favourable” or “unfavourable”. It was not
practical to measure it into equal abstract parts.
Tradition, not innovation, played a dominant role in consciousness and
action, largely determined by the cycle of alternating seasons and agricul-
tural work. Value was attributed to regularly repeated acts sanctified by
tradition, not to what was new or unique. The norm, but also the virtue,
was to behave as ancestors behaved [Ibid. p. 77].
Mircea Eliade, who attempted to reconstruct the mindset of people in
ancient society in The Myth of the Eternal Return, showed that their view
of the passage of historical time was associated with the idea of an eternal

2
Historian Zdenek Kalista in the book The Face of Baroque [1983] shows in many places
how the Baroque culture was fascinated by the phenomenon of infinity in its spatial and
temporal meaning. According to Kalista, the Baroque was characterized by birefringence, an
attempt to capture, behind the visible world accessible to the senses, another world, a differ-
ent life, of different spatiality and also atmosphere. Infinity was something that could not be
contained in any sensory experience, being “just as absolute as Nothing” [Kalista 1983: 71]
and only death could be the path to real knowledge. “To the Baroque man death was an
open gate to that immeasurable infinity, into which he wants to penetrate. It is a look into
the ‘other’ ‘second’ world … a place where the real meets the unreal” [Ibid. p. 65].
 2 TIME AND THE CIVILIZING PROCESS 15

cycle of recurrent circular returns. The transition from paganism to

Christianity brought about a significant change in the structure of the
temporal ideas of the people of Europe.
Christianity was associated with a time orientation which differed both
from the ancient orientation to the past and the Judaic-Old Testament
focus on the future [Gurevič 1978: 87].3 Christianity attached importance
to the past associated with the events of which Scripture spoke, and also to
the future associated with the expectation of the Last Judgement. Thus
time straightened and acquired a linear, vector character.
However, since the ancient relationship to time had not been so
uprooted as to be lost, during the Middle Ages two conceptions of time
coexisted: the cyclical time of recurring natural phenomena and seasonal
work, attributed to the agricultural environment, and linear time, attrib-
uted to the world of the Church and “conceived as a continuous line of
moments rushing from the creation of the world, through the brief deci-
sive action of Christ on earth, to the end time” [Smetánka 1992: 114].
The life of medieval man unfolded simultaneously in two time plans, in
the plan of locally limited transient everyday life, and in the plan of all-­
historic events determining the destiny of the world (the time of annuncia-
tion, salvation and damnation). “The fleeting and nugatory life of every
human being unfolded on the background of a worldwide historical
drama, became entwined in it and acquired a new, higher and lasting
meaning from it” [Gurevič 1978: 109].
The understanding of time of the early medieval farmer was signifi-
cantly influenced by the cycle of growth, which determined the nature of
agricultural work—found in numerous illustrations of calendar cycles on
the pages of period manuscripts, and also on reliefs in cathedrals. While

3
The Judeo-Christian tradition is associated with certain notions of the end of the world
and history; it has a strong eschatological character. The term “eschaton” (according to the
Greek “eschatos”—the last) expresses the last things of man and the world, in Christianity
especially the expectation of the Last Judgement and the enthronement of the Kingdom of
God. Eschatological opinion influenced European thought for a long time, being a source of
inspiration for the philosophy of history; it significantly stimulated reflections on the mean-
ing of history. From the Renaissance, secularization tendencies began to manifest themselves
in this thinking, gaining the upper hand in the Enlightenment, which replaced the perspec-
tive of salvation with the idea of progress. The logical outcome of this tendency was Marxism,
in which the end of history took the form of a classless society.
The German theologian Rudolf Bultmann [(1957) 1994] dealt with the issue of the rela-
tionship between eschatology and the philosophy of history in his book History and
Eschatology.
16 J. ŠUBRT

the pace of life and work was controlled by natural rhythms, there was no
greater need for the accurate measurement and determination of time.
The basic time categories in the agricultural environment were seasons,
months, and days, but not hours, and much less minutes. Medieval time is
often characterized as lengthy, slow, and epic.
Other characteristic features included uncertainty and variability. The
boundaries of the working day under normal circumstances were deter-
mined by the variable times of light and darkness. Such a day was more
compact, because its division was roughly determined by the passage of
the sun, especially in two time units—in today’s words, “morning” and
“afternoon” [Smetánka 1992: 117]. An alternative time orientation was
provided by the sound of temple bells inviting devotees to regular services.
According to Z. Smetanka, “farmers of the early Middle Ages did not
know any shorter units of time, nor did they know the instrument by
which to measure them, and they gestated a rough calendar in their heads
and, most importantly, they found it around them in night and day, with
the year only auxiliary, divided by month into individual longer sections,
seven-day weeks with one day of rest. Shorter time units, hours, minutes,
seconds, were a ‘gift’ of the High Middle Ages and the Modern Age”
[Ibid. p. 119].
Gustav Bilfinger dealt with the counting of time in the Early Middle
Ages, and his work from 1892 is still considered exemplary. Bilfinger
stated that the division of time into 12 day- and 12 night-time hours was
known already in ancient times, but their length changed as the length of
day and night changed during the year. In addition to this division of time,
the division of day and night into quarters was used in the Roman Empire
(to this day they are known as the four night-time watches); the day was
divided into four parts by three hours, referred to as tertia, sexta, and
nona. In his study, Bilfinger described the further development of time-­
counting, which led to the medieval division of the day into seven canoni-
cal watches: matutina (before sunrise), prima (early morning), tertia
(morning), sexta (noon), nona (afternoon), vespers (sunset), compline (late
evening) [Bilfinger 1969: 1–5]. Only with the invention of mechanical
clocks, which began to spread from the fourteenth century, did the count-
ing of time in regular periods prevail.
Historian J. Le Goff states that the measures of time and space were an
important tool of social control. The measuring of time in the Middle
Ages was a privilege of the powerful. According to Le Goff, the time of the
nobility was primarily a military time (determined by the part of the year
 2 TIME AND THE CIVILIZING PROCESS 17

suitable for campaigns) and the time of rural benefits (in which the harvest
period dominated). Medieval time, however, was primarily ecclesiastical
and priestly time [Le Goff 1991: 187–188].4
Until the beginning of the fourteenth century, time-measuring devices
were a rarity. The sundial showed only in nice weather; the water clock or
hourglass was more of a luxury object or curiosity. Time was, if necessary,
also determined by the burning down of torches, candles, or lamp oil. In
the church environment, the number of prayers, pages of sacred books
read or psalms sung was used for orientation. From the fourteenth cen-
tury, mechanical watches (invented in the late thirteenth century) began
to spread in Europe, but lacked the long minute hand.

2.3   A Brief Digression to the History

of the Time Measurement

Time measurement is important for the performance of many human

activities. The need to know the exact current time grew with the evolving
processes of a civilizational and modernizing nature. Today’s humanity
practically cannot do without monitoring and accurate timekeeping. Some
researchers believe that time was already observable in the pre-Neolithic
period. In calendars, we have seen how repeated natural phenomena came
to be used for this purpose. But now briefly we should note the tools used
in the past to measure even shorter periods of time (see also: [Whitrow
1999; Dohrn-van Rossum 1996; Sokol 1996]).
The water clock, called klepsydra (in Greek “water thief”), was a vat
(initially made of clay) with a small hole in the bottom, through which
water flowed out slowly. The marks on the container indicated elapsed
time. Originating in the ancient world, they were commonly referred to in
ancient Greek writings, being used, for example, to measure the time of
military patrols or the length of public speeches. Later versions were com-
plemented by other components (a second vat for inflowing water, a water
wheel, geared transmission, etc.), which made it possible to display
4
Considerable attention is dedicated to issues of methods of measurement and computa-
tion of time developed in ecclesiastical environment by German medievalist Arno Borst, the
author of the book Computus: Zeit und Geschichte der Zahl in Europas [1992]. Another
German author Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum [1996], in his book History of the Hour: Clocks
and Modern Temporal Orders [1992], examines how these processes, amplified in the urban
environment by the invention and expansion of mechanical clocks, were retransformed into
a form of modern time consciousness.
18 J. ŠUBRT

astronomical phenomena at the same time. In the Early Middle Ages, such
clocks became a sought-after gift in the highest aristocratic circles.
The hourglass was based on a similar principle, but used the movement
of sand caused by gravity through two glass bulbs vertically placed one
above the other and connected by a narrow neck. Once the measured
period of time had elapsed (depending on the amount of sand and the
throughput of the neck) and the upper bulb was empty, the clock had to
be turned so that another period of time could be measured, thus measur-
ing not the time of day, but time intervals.
The candle clock was based on the principle of gradual burning, princi-
pally directed at lighting, but also measuring time intervals. The length of
the night could be measured by the candles burned. From the beginning
of the thirteenth century, candles were often complemented with a time
scale, and metal nails or balls sometimes attached to the side of the candle
which fell off as the wax melted, giving an audible time signal on contact
with the metal bowl of the candlestick.
The oil clock was also based on the principle of gradual burning, similar
to the candle clock; the oil level indicated the time scale of a certain lim-
ited period of time. However, this oil clock did not come into use until
much later; it was known in the Middle Ages, but only widely used in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Such a clock could be set only by
means of a different type of clock (e.g. a mechanical clock). The glass oil
bulb was complemented with an open wick burner, meeting not only the
function of lighting, but household time measurement.
Water clocks, hourglasses, candle clocks, and oil clocks were suited only
to measuring time intervals, and therefore relied on the continuous moni-
toring of uniform time by other means, beginning with the sundial clock
and its gnomon predecessor.
Gnomon comes from the ancient Greek (noumon—a pointer, an indica-
tor) and usually means a sundial indicator (often a pole, but sometimes an
obelisk), perpendicular to the plane of the drawn dial, and thus determin-
ing the angular height of the Sun and the time according to the length and
the direction of the shadow it casts. With the gnomon showing the instan-
taneous position of the Sun by its cast shadow, so-called local time could
be determined, as long as the sun was shining (most sundials go from 6:00
to 18:00).
Sundials represent probably the oldest and at the same time the most
widespread type of clock, before the expansion of mechanical clocks.
Archaeological discoveries suggest that the first sundials were probably
 2 TIME AND THE CIVILIZING PROCESS 19

assembled 7000 years ago. Various findings show their use around the year
3500 BC in Egypt, Babylonia, India, and China. Later, even portable
clocks began to be constructed; a clock with a vertically positioned dial
and a horizontally fitted pointer appeared; a nodus (usually in the shape of
a ball) began to be placed on the top of the pointer bar, time being deter-
mined by its shadow; and the clock could have dials with scales for differ-
ent time periods.5 These improvements were mainly made in ancient
Greece and later by Arab scholars (in the Arab world, the placement of the
gnome was changed from perpendicular to the surface of its location to
the direction of the Pole Star). In the sixteenth century, portable pocket
sundials made of brass, ivory, or wood appeared in Europe, as well as the
horizontal tambour clock. The sundial (which measures the true solar
time of the local meridian), through the later introduction of zonal mean
solar time, was moved into status of decorative object.
This was due to the appearance of the mechanical clock in the thirteenth
century, which gradually evolved over centuries to ever greater perfection
and accuracy. For a long time driven by the movement of a descending
weight, it was later sprung, and in modern times electric powered. The
weight was hung on a chain wound on a drum. The drive wheel then
transmitted energy via several wheel gears (usually three up to five) to the
oscillator. Time was measured by mechanical clock in discrete steps, and so
the biggest design problem was keeping it running smoothly. This was
provided by an oscillator, which in the first mechanical clock was a rocker,
but later a pendulum. The most important principle for measuring time
was therefore the reading of regular oscillating movements.6 The clock
indicators became hands—raffia (until the beginning of the seventeenth
century only one hand) and a circular dial.
Clocks with rocker arm had to be wound after only a few hours.
Although the error in the operation of this clock could be many minutes
a day, it functioned as oscillator until the end of pre-modern times. In the
Middle Ages, such clocks appeared in a number of places, built into town
halls or cathedrals in the form of an astronomical clock complemented by
a mechanism displaying indicators of the position of celestial bodies.

5
The analemmatic clock (sundial) solved this problem by moving the pointer along the
scale inside the dial.
6
In the Middle Ages, at the time of the commencement of the mechanical clock, sundials
were still used to adjust it.
20 J. ŠUBRT

The balance wheel (in German Unruh) brought progress to the con-
struction of mechanical clocks in the seventeenth century, with a certain
component added to the rocker arm, which itself could act as a directional
force—most often a spring. This mechanism was adapted for the produc-
tion of the pocket watch, being mounted on bearings to minimize friction
losses. In the nineteenth century, accurate timekeeping became a general
need, which led to the mass production of such watches.
The nautical chronometer represented a specific and at the same time
important chapter in the history of time measurement, in the era of sailing
ships. Before this device, only latitude could be found relatively accurately
by means of the stars in conjunction with older devices such as the mari-
ner’s (sea) astrolabe. However, longitude could only be estimated, because
its determination was made by comparing time differences. An inaccuracy
of 10 minutes could mean an error in determining the position of the ship
by more than 200 kilometres. After many years of experimentation and
some setbacks, John Harrison (1693–1776) succeeded in solving this
problem by placing a mechanical clock in a special case that removed the
influence of gravity, keeping the clock mechanism in a horizontal position,
and protecting it from extreme temperatures. Nowadays, even for a lay-
man, the task of determining position is a much simpler matter thanks to
the Global Positioning System (GPS).
The pendulum clock, in the seventeenth century, was mainly thanks to
Christiaan Huygens,7 preceded by the use of a pendulum for measuring
short time intervals in the scientific experiments of Galileo Galilei. The pen-
dulum clock brought a significant increase in accuracy, instead of a rocker
using an anchor with a pendulum hung at the back of the device. When the
pendulum swings, one of the ends of the anchor is stuck between the teeth
of the gear and stops it for a moment; then, however, the constant pulling
of the weight forces the wheel to push the anchor away and the pendulum
swings to the opposite side; in this way the oscillating course proceeds. Its
accuracy allowed the pendulum clock to be complemented with a minute
and a second hand. The disadvantage of the pendulum was that it could not
be used with portable clocks, but it represented the peak of accuracy until
the twentieth century, when electric, electronic, and atomic clocks were built.

* * *

7
Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) was an outstanding Dutch physicist and watchmaker
who, among many other inventions, in the year 1657 invented the pendulum clock.
Independently of the Englishman Robert Hook, Huygens also invented the balance wheel.
 2 TIME AND THE CIVILIZING PROCESS 21

Back in the nineteenth century, before the introduction of time zones,

people oriented according to local (solar) time, determined by the actual
position of the sun in the sky, which therefore varied from place to place.
However, the introduction of express mail, and especially rail transport,
highlighted that even nearby places held to different times, causing confu-
sion in transport planning and coordination. The question of how this
could be resolved was raised widely, but it was Scottish-Canadian engineer
and inventor Stanford Fleming (1827–1915), who in 1879 proposed a
solution in the form of a worldwide system of time zones, combined with the
concept of a single standardized 24-hour day (the original concept was
1 day = 2 × 12 hours). This solution was adopted after struggles over
where the zero meridian would be, but thanks to it, time can be organized
and planned around the world, not only measured with incredible accu-
racy, but coordinated and synchronized, even over hundreds or thousands
of kilometres.
In most countries, the concept of time zones was adopted in 1929,
with UT (Universal Time), which became GMT (Greenwich Mean Time),
taking as a basis mean solar time at the zero meridian, through the English
Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
When constructing time zones, there was an effort to match the
24 hours rotation of the earth, so that the sun would be overhead at noon.
The world was therefore divided into 24 time zones, each occupying 15°
of longitude (360°: 24 hours = 15°), and therefore one hour of the path
of the sun. Thus, a time zone is part of the Earth (15° around the relevant
meridian) using the same, or standard, time.
It should be added that today’s system of universal time respects small
deviations from the “ideal” zone, so that states whose shape extends
beyond the zone do not have to have more time zones. For practical rea-
sons, therefore, time zone shapes have been established that adapt to the
borders of states or other territorial units. A notable exception is China,
entirely placed into one time zone. GMT was succeeded in 1972 by UTC
(Coordinated Universal Time), maintained by a system of atomic clocks.
Many countries currently use daylight saving time (DST) for the part of
the year around the summer, which advances time by one hour. The intro-
duction of “summer time” broke through during the First and then the
Second World Wars, due to expected energy savings.
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