Lewis y Weigert - The Structures and Meanings of Social Time

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Th e Structures and M eanings of Social Tim e

j. DAVID LEWIS University of N otre Dam eANDREW J. WEIGERT Universityof N otre D am e

ABSTRACT

T his paper pro poses a paradigm for the sociology of time. After explor-ing some defining characteristics of social time it presents a preliminary

typology of social times corresponding to different levels of social structure.

The linkages among levels of social structure and the temporal variables of

embeddedness synchronicity and stratification raise important questions

about the ways in which the forms of social time may be related. From the

typology concrete propositions are extracted which address these questions as

well as the question of how these relationships may affect organizations and

individuals. Finally the paper suggests possible ways to ground parts of

the theoretical presentation in operationalized hypotheses ready for empirical

testing.

In the years since Sorokin and Merton published their groundbreakingarticle on the sociology of time inviting us to probe its qualitative andmeaningful features, a numb er of insightful books and articles have dealtwith aspec ts of social time. M ost sociologists, however, treat time as inci-dental to other sociological problems rather than meriting investigation inits own right. 1 Con sequently, there is a dearth of theoretical work on thesociology of time that might lead to a general paradigm for integrating thedisparate em pirical studies in this developing su bfield.

M ore regrettably, many sociologists do not include time a s a crucialvariable in their studies, or else they introduce the tem poral dimensions o fsocial organization and interaction in an ad hoc fashion to assist explanationof social behavior. If social time received the a ttention it deserves in soc io-logical investigations, no study of human organization and interactionwo uld be considered reasonably complete unless it exam ined their tempo -

ral organization. 2 Sorokin stated, "H uman life is literally an incessant com-petition for time by various activities with their m otives and objectives"(209 ). Presum ably, sociologists experience this com petition w ith at least asmuch intensity as most others in modern societies; and yet, ironically, theyoften neglect its importante in the lives of those w hose actions they intendto explain (cf. Hendricks and Hendricks).

®1981 The University of North Carolina Press. 0037-7732181/020432-62$03.10

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S o c ia l T im e / 433

Typical tem poral dem arcations are the co ncepts of past , present,and future. Each of these times can be defined with physical or socialpoints of reference. Physical time so expands into the past and future

relative to the hum an contex t that we rarely refer to points in physical timemore than a few million years ago or a century in the future. Events inphysical tim e outside these limits concern astronom ers and theologiansbut few others. In contrast to reckoning time by a succession of ph ysicalevents such as the orbit of earth around the sun, time can be hum anized byestablishing tem poral references to social events. When we say, "I'11 meetyou after the game," we are using social time rather than physical ormechanical mathem atical time, as would be the case if we were to say " I'11mee t you when the sun is at its apex," or "at 12 o'clock noop." A s Sorokinand M erton observed, physically based time-reckoning inexorably m archeson in relatively hom ogeneous units, while social time unfolds w ith varyingrhythms; sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, and sometimes w ith breaks(e.g., sleep or ho lidays).

W e experience time both as physical passage and as a social proces-sion. This intermingling of physical and so cial time is clearly displayed bythe way we use the calendar. Significant social events such as the death ofChrist are taken as temporal m arkers from w hich astronomical time units

are defined. Similarly, when we refer to a child's mental age w e are simul-taneously taking soc ial, psycho logical, biological, and physical time intoaccount. Being reminded that an eve nt took place "shortly after W orldW ar II" com municates more social meaning than being told that it hap-pened in 1 947. W e tend to locate social events tem porally w ith respectto other social events or periodicities and to use wholly physical time-reckoning devices simply to "mark time" betw een social events of interest.

Social periodicities do not appea r when time is measured b y merelyphysical succession. Social phases and cycles are identifiable in social time

which may even app ear nonperiodic in physical time. Sorokin and Mertonexplain:

The search for social periodicities based upon the unquestioned adoption of astro-nomical criterions of time may have been largely unsuccessful precisely becausesocial phenomena involved 'symbolic' rather then 'empirical' equalities and in-equalities; social processes which at present seem to lack periodicities in terms ofastronomical measures may be found to be quite periodic in character in terms ofsocial time (626 ).

The unevenness of social time comp ared to physical time em erges in reflec-tion on the wea lth of social mean ings attached to events occurring in thedevelopment of the average American male between the ages of 12 and 1 8as com pared to, say, the ages of 3 2 and 38, or the impact of such colossalevents as the Great Depression (Elder) which hav e lasting effects on indi-vidual lives. These major points in social time enter the definition of hum an


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434 1 Social Forces Volum e 60:2 Decem ber 1981

genera tions and are more useful sociologically, than defining generationsin physical, biological time (see Mannheim; Ortega).

This discussion sugg ests not only that social time is quite distinctfrom physical tim e but also that it perm eates every region of social life.This pervasiveness can be elaborated theoretically by identifying the differ-ent types of social time op erating at different levels of social structure. Todo this, how ever, we n eed an a dequate theory of soc ial structure. Thereare various views am ong social theorists about aspects or levels of socialstructure: How many distinct levels or com ponents of social structure exist?H ow should they be described? Som e theorists propose such aspects orlevels of social structure as the individual, group, m orphological, systemic,

and cultural (e. g., Udy), while others find few er levels of social structure ordescribe them differently. M ost sociologists, both classical and m odern,would agree that social structure can, and, for analytical purposes, shouldbe conceived as embracing several more or less clearly definable parts orlevels of analysis—for ex am ple, individual, group, societal and culturallevels.

Con sequently, we treat the individual, group, and cultural level asthe most common divisions represented in existing theories of social struc-ture, and w e use this tripartite division as the point of depa rture for the

development of a typology of social times. That is, we show that each ofthese levels bas its own forms of social time : at the individual, "self time";at the group leve l, "interaction time" for inform al interactions and "institu-tional time" for bureaucracies and other forma l organizations; and at thebroad, societal-cultural level, "cyclic time" (the day, w eek, and seasons)which cuts across the entire society.

To simplify the presentation of this typology of social times, SectionI discusses self time and interactional time as rep resenting the micro levelof social organization, and this is followed, in S ection II, by an analysis of

institutional time and cyclic time wh ich constitute the m acro level of tem-poral social organization. The aim of these two sections, then, is to providea "pu rposive, planned selection, abstraction, com bination ... of a set ofcriteria" for bu ilding a "constructive typology" of social time to foster thedevelopment of sociological theory (McK inney, 25).

Although a coherent typology of soc ial times is vital to the advan ceof theory and research in the soc iology of time, a fully articulated theory o fsocial time requires that our descriptive classificatory. schem e by joinedwith a processual analysis of the dynam ic relations among the structuren of

social time given in the typology. Principles m ust be formulated to answersuch questions as: H ow is self time related to interaction time? H ow is anactor able to move from one temporal structure to another in everyday life?H ow do individuals and social institutions resolve tensions and incongrui-ties among conflicting time tables arising from the different levels of socialt ime ? Just as there is a need for society someh ow to integrate different


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levels of social structure into a unified p rocess, there is a correspon dingneed to organ ize and coordinate the structures of social time.

A useful starting point for the conceptualization of these processual

questions about social time is afforded by G erth and M ills, and Mills. Theirorientation to the study of soc ial organization preserve s the tension be-tween the individual, biographical level of the social world and the collec-tive, social structural level as they intersect historically (c f. W eigert). Theindividual's soc ial roles constitute these p oints of intersection, and it istherefore predictable that the proce ssual issues related to social time be-come manifest in role strain generated by the multiple levels of socialstructure and their corresponding temp oral structures converging to pro-duce conflicting tem poral demands.

In Section III, we m ove tow ard a substantive theory of social timewh ich yields a useful formu lation of the aforementioned processua l ques-tions and tenatively suggests the social processes by w hich they are pro-duced and may be partially resolved. The three key concepts we use-em beddedness, stratification, and synchronicity—are diversely present inthe extan t literature on the sociology of time, but they are not system ati-cally investigated individually, muc h less in relation to each other. O urpurpose in S ection III is thus to formulate an orderly set of propo sitions

around these three leading concepts which m ay serve as a b asis for futuretheoretical and empirical work. Finally, in Section IV , we offer exam ples ofhow a researcher might deduce testable hypotheses from the set of inter-related propositions we have developed.

I. Biographical and Interactional Structures of Social Time

SELF TIME

H eidegger stated flatly, "There is no tim e w ithout man" (1 6 ). This state-ment is patently absurd if taken as an assertion about physical time asprocess or pure duration. O f course, such was no t his intention; nor did heintend that the statement be interpreted as a reference to social time . As anexistentialist, Heidegg er was interested in time as it appears imm ediatelyin the experience of the solitary ego. W e m ight call this "self time." W hatH eidegg er w ished to point out is that without a sentient, rational beingthere is no past, present, or future, nor even a before or after. These

structures are imposed on the w orld by our m inds. They are not given inexistence; they are projected onto existence in the form of remem beredpasts, exp erienced presen ts, and imagined futures.

H eidegger claimed, moreover, that time is actually four dimensional.The relations between pa st, present, and future depend on a fourth tempo-ral structure that, following K ant, he called "nearing nearness" of "near-


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4 3 61 S o c ia l Fo rces Vo lu m e 60:2 Decem ber 1981

hood" Nahheit) 15). It is the temporal equivalent of our experience ofneam ess in the spatial sense. W hen, for instante, we are in a car speedingalong a road, we see objects in the distance slowly approaching us, quickly

passing, and then fading away again in the distance. In addition to theexperience o f objects, w e ex perience the process i tself of their betoming

near and distant. This is the experience of "nearing nearness" in the spatialsense. Similarly, temporal "nearing nearness" conn ects past and future tothe present in that experience of events in the past and future are orderedw ith respect to their nearne ss or remo teness to wha t is taken as present.H ence, Heidegger conceives of the present as reaching out in both direc-tions to embrace the past and future, not as an instantaneous raz or's edgeon w hich we are perched. fust as objects appear differently depending ontheir spatial nearness, events also appe ar differently w hen they are tem -porally near than when the "same " events are temporally distant. 3 Tempo-ral panic is a reaction to the nearing time w hich is approa ching faster thanthe person's ability to finish the present act requires (Lym an an d Sc ott).D uring eras of rapid social change, self temp oral panic become s cultural"future shock" (Toffier).

U nlike physical time, self tim e is not hom ogeneous. Eve nts in theindividual's life which are quite distant in physical time may be repre-

sented in consciousness as vividly as memories of what happened fiveminutes ago. Cottle refers to this as spatial time in that our mem ories canmanipulate events in time as if they w ere ordinary material objects that canbe m oved around at w ill. Spa tial time con trasts with the linear conceptionof time by w hich events occur in an inviolable temporal sequence. In spa-tial time, we can bring a past event into the present and make it into adifferent eve nt; histories and life stories are ne ver fixed . During totallyengrossing activities such as playing chess, perform ing surgery, or rockclimb ing, self experiences a form less sense of flow in which time seem s to

cease (C sikszentmilhayi). The types of experiences one has, their temporalnearness, and their spatial forms in memory assure that each person'ssense of "self time" is unique an d has significant effects upon interactionwith others.

INTERACTION TIME

W henever two or m ore peop le are interacting directly, self time is partiallyoverlaid with a different type of tim e fram e, name ly, "interaction time:'Since it is an intersubjective reality, interaction time is only partly w ithinthe exp erience and control of each self. The flow of interaction tim e de-pends on the (incompletely predictable) actions of the other as well as theprevailing rules which de fine appropriate "turns" in interaction. The rela-tive social statuses of the interactants entail norms that govern turn-takingand other tem poral intervals in interaction time (cf. Schegloff).


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Social Time 1437

In addition to generalized cultural norms of interaction time such asturn-taking, there are special interactional rules which develop among suchsocial dyads as friends, best friends, acquaintances, strangers, adversaries,

bitter enemies, or salesperson-customers. W hen one person appears to befollowing rules of interaction time which the other views as inappropriatefor their presumed relationship as he or she de fines it (e.g., m eeting afriend on the street and treating him with nothing more than a curt "he llo"normally reserved for acquaintances or even strangers), some type of ac-count or conversational repair work is immediately called for. Otherwise,their relationship is subject to redefinition (S cott and Lyman).

A critical structural feature of social time which influences the tem-poral organization of interaction is the fact that all social acts are temporallyfitted inside of larger social acts. We call this time embeddedness. For example,a person who stops during the rush hour to buy a newspaper on the way tothe bus stop k now s that the interaction time a vailable to chat w ith thenewsvendor is quite limited; conversely, the new svendor know s that heshould not attempt to engage customers in protracted exchanges. To do sowo uld profoundly disrupt the orderly flow of daily life for everyone in-volved and , indirectly, countless others. The dire consequences of evensmall deviations in the temporal progression of em bedded actions are pain-

fully illustrated by the reverberations which follow w hen an internationalairport is forced to shut down for only a few hours, or when a big job fallsthrough just as a big debt falls due Time embeddness is reflected in themultiple perspectives which make up social worlds and the multiple roleswhich make up self-awareness (Mead, a; Tillman).

Time embeddedness forcefully affects the definition and process ofinteraction in those instances where one or both persons have their tem -poral structures tightly embe dded (e.g., "I am sorry, but I mu st leavebecause I have another appointment"). Tightness of time embed dedness

varies by social class and age group, and it is closely correlated with one'simage of the future. Cottle and K lineberg note that hum ans spend rela-tively little time in the present com pared to other anim als; our thoughtsand actions are oriented toward the future and (to a lesser degree) the past.O ne of the most pleasant aspects of pure recreation is that it allows us tolive w holly in the present as the ex perience of passing time tem porarilyceases. Probab ly, small children are most present-oriented and older per-sons are m ost past-oriented. For this reason, elders tend to be less emo-tionally anxious in contemplating an uncertain future than are young adults

who not only have a much longer future-oriented temporal horizon but arealso far more preoccupied with attempts to control oncoming events asthey become both near and distant.

Persons d iffer in salient time focus according to whether their pri-mary concern is with short-term or long-term futures (Polak), and whetherthey take a fatalist or self-determinist view of their futures (Bell and M au;


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438 / Social Forces Volum e 6 0:2, December 1981

Coser a nd C oser). These variations in future-related temporal structureshave imp lications for the w ay in which people m anage interaction timeand the time embeddedness of their lives. One extreme implication is

demonstrated in the experience of two persons who grow old together(Sch utz). The past and futures of long-tim e friends or lovers are inter-subjectively experienced as so intermeshed that their interaction time takeson special qualities of shared expe rience not found in an y other interac-tional context. Mem bers of living groups, like fam ilies, mu st synchronizetheir variously em bedded times if they hope to attain tem poral coordina-tion among themselves as competent family members (K antor and Lehr).

II. Institution al and Cu ltural Structures of Soc ial Time

Not only are self time structures embedded within interactional time struc-tures, but both of these m icro-level temp oral structures are, in turn, em-bedded within the larger, macro-level temporal orders of social institutionsand of the cu lture. This embeddedness constitutes the temp oral integrationof the different levels of social structure and gives rise to the need fortempo ral "stratification" and "synchronicity"— two co ncepts w hich we

develop here and in Section III.The distinction within the macro-level structures of social time be-tween institutional and cultural structures is based on their differences inboth form and scope . W ithin the institutional realm, individual organiza-tions (schools, factories, etc.) wh ich ma ke up ea ch institutional sphereconstruct their own time schedules and rules. Although they may (andtypically do) take into acc ount time structures of other orga nizations withw hich they must conduct excha nges, the norms and sanctions governingthe use o f tim e in any p articular organ ization ex tend directly only to its

ow n m embers. O n the other hand, there are culturally based time struc-tures (day, week, seasons) which extend in some form or other to allfunctioning m embers of society.

In industrial societies, there is also a m arked d ifference in form be-tween insti tutional and cultural t im e structures. The m ost fundam entaldifference is that the cultural structures, such as the day, w eek, and seasons,recur in endless cycles or w hat we simply term cyclic time, whereas m ostorganizations operate on l inear t ime in w hich persons and objects passthrough temporal frameworks that are nonrepetitive or repetitive at irregu-

lar intervals. For these reasons, we separate the discussion of macro-temporal structures into the two headings cycles of time and institutionaltime.


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4401 Social Forces Volume 60:2 December 1981

(Goffman, a). With this tightness come greater stress, tensions, and time-induced anxiety. 6 Ironically, despite the stress-producing effects of reifiedclock time , we no t only expect rigorous temporal control of events but

positively value it, as is evident from the anger and frustration felt whenscheduled events are delayed, postponed, or cancelled. Perhaps in societiesless mechanized and bureaucratized, spontaneous disruptions of the rou-tine course of social life are more welcomed, or at least less threatening.

The W eek ly RoutineThe daily round occurs within another temporal structure—the weeklyroutine. The Beven-day week of the W estern calendar reflects an ancientreligious motif of six days of work followed by a day of religious activitiesand p hysical rest. The establishm ent of S unday as a da y for religiousobservance is an example of the traditional power of organized religion instructuring the calendar in such ways as to foster religious consciousnessthrough the creation of holydays. The attempt to secularize the calendar inthe French R epublican calendrical reform of 1 793 was met by stern resis-tance, and its failure demonstrates the deeply rooted institutionalization ofthe W estern temporal framework (see Z erubavel, a).

Nevertheless, the definition of Sunday and the activities legitmately

performed on that day have changed significantly in recent decades. Pro-fessional sports now fill the relatively em pty tem poral slot available onurban Sunday afternoons. The takeover of Sunday for spectator sports wascompleted with the com ing of television. Another example of the secular-ization of "the L ord's Day" w as the battle over retail and com m ercialestablishments doing business on S unday. W hile m any laws prohibitingSunday business ope rations have been repealed, the battle is still beingwaged for sale of over-the-counter alcohol. Finally, the secular shift isfurther manifested in declining attendance at Sunday church services and

the shift of church services to other days of the week. During the historicalperiod which included the secularization of Sunday , the labor movem entwas w inning a shorter work w eek (see ISR New sletter, 12). These twodevelopments help divide the week into two distinct periods: work daysand the weekend.

The importance of the weekend as the dominant temporal marker ofthe weekly routine has gained highly symbolic recognition. For example,the national sacred days, like birthdays of W ashington and Linco ln, arenow m oved to Monday regardless of the actual day of the week on w hich

the birthday falls, further strengthening the w eekend as a socioculturaltime out (Lyman and Scott). The meaning of the weekend as a period oftime free from m undane w ork is so firmly ingrained in our culture thateven patients in mental institutions appear to take time off from their crazybehavior on w eekends, provided that the hosp ital staff is properly atten-tive to their symptoms of craziness on weekdays (M elbin, a). Even needed


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Social Time 1441

professionals like doctors, dentists, and clergy now take off for all or partof the weekend. The borrowing of the English term, weeken d by Europeanlanguages indicates diffusion of this tempo ral meaning.

The daily round is itself modified depending on the day of thew eek. The folk definit ion of "blue M onday" receives em pirical supportfrom a study of Am erican boys' evaluation of the days of the week (O s-good). The days w ere ranked in the following order of positive to negativeevaluation: S aturday, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, W ednesday, Thursday, andlast, Monday. The negative meaning and effects of Monday are firmlysignified by the fact that, of men having no previous history of heartdisease who suffer a sudden-death heart attack while at work, fully 75percent die on M onday (R abkin). And, of those who died at home, 46 per-cent died on Monday. The weekly routine suggests that Am ericans live for

the weekends while merely living through the weekdays. The fact thatm ost special events and leisure activities are appropriately scheduled forweekend s is a significant occupational disadvantage for those who se occu-pational time is structured so that days off occur on weekdays rather thanon w eekends. Clearly the meaning of the weekly routine is an importantfeature of our e veryday lives, and a full understanding of ourselves, ourfam ily, our neighbors, our health, and our job requires that we grasp the

meanings of the phases in the weekly routine and how they merge w ithinstitutional deman ds.

The Y early S easons

Like the days of the week, the weeks of the year have special meanings.For suc h purpo ses as paying bills, weeks a re tempo rally organized intomonthly cycles, but mon ths are generally less significant in our lives thanare the seasons in which they are grouped (see M ichelson). Particularly inthe temperate zon e, the four seasons provide a p owerful natural sequence

wh ich humans hav e from the mo st ancient times transformed into sociàllym eaningful periodicities. The seasons elicit different affective respon sesfrom individuals depending o n their social class. For ex am ple, the juniorexecutive moves to the cool of a lake cottage and enjoys a leisurely seasonof w ork-plus-recreation during the hot m onths of summ er. The executivelives a sum m er season w ith a mea ning contradicted by that of the innercity ghetto janitor for whom the sum m er season brings stifling heat, hu-midity, smog , constant street life, thin tempers, and the threat of riot over along, hot summer. The meanings of the yearly seasons thus affect our

everyday lives relative to our positron in society (cf. O'R and and E llis).Two significant changes come w ith the seasonal cycles and add to

their distinctive social definition. First, our life-styles reflect changes inweather and temperature as w e adopt the food, clothing, work, and recre-ational activities appropriate for the season. Second, each season is charac-terized by dom inant holidays: Christmas— N ew Y ears, Easter, Fourth of


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July, and Halloween—Thanksgiving. The meaning and m ood of each seasonare set by its principal holiday, and this aura penetrates our lives fromseason to season probably far more than we realize consciously, whetherwe react with joy or depression.

An evaluation of the seasons and m onths of the yearly cycle is alsoincluded in the study of teen-age A m erican males (O sgood). W inter isevaluated lowest, mainly due to the lowest m onth of the year, February, aslightly better evaluation of January, and a som ewhat more positive evalua-tion for Decem ber. There is a sharp rise in positive evaluation for March ,and somew hat more for A pril and M ay, resulting in a com bined judgmentof Spring as the second m ost positive season. The positive judgment peaks

for June, the highest of all mo nths, follow ed by a slight drop for July, thesecond highest month, followed by a sharp decline for August, almost tothe level of March. A ltogether, Summ er is the highest ranking season. Thedecline in evaluation for August continues for S eptember, followed by aslight rise for O ctober and a slight decline for November, mak ing Fall thethird ranking season. In interpreting these findings, w e m ust recall thatthey refer to teenage m ales. Persons of othe r social status, or from differinggeographical regions, would likely offer different rankings.

This discussion of the yearly seasons finishes the tem poral cyclic

structures based rather directly on cosmological sequences and the biologi-cal necessity to alternate periods of activity and passivity. Since the sea-sonal sequences are objectively in nature, they are universally available fortemporal meanings. Through symbolic transformation, these sequencesenter our lives and b ecome part of the reason w hy w e think, feel, or decidein one way or another at this particular time. People committed to anastrological interpretation, for exam ple, fashion their lives differently fromdisbelievers. So too, a Christian structures the yearly seasons, weekly rou-tines, or daily rounds differently from a Jew ; or a 70-year-old farm er differ-

ently from a 26 -year-old apprentice carpenter.Cyclic and repetitive time is essential for the exp erience of stability

and sam eness, even as time passes. Day follows n ight and night succeedsday; weeks cycle recurrently; yearly seasons repeat them selves. The greattemporal order and perman ence of the cosm os is experienced through thecycles which provide the basis for repetitive time .

INSTITUTIONAL TIMETABLES AND INDIVIDUAL CAREERS

W e have two experiences of personal time. The first we share w ith all livingorganism s: life begins, we grow , age, and die. In everyday life, however,these physical stages are symbolically transformed into socially and psy-chologically defined stages an d person al identities (cf. Erikson). It is thissecond b iography, the social biography, w hich is of particular interest tosociologists. The tem poral structures of biological "living clocks" (W ard)


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Social Time 1 443

control our physical biograph ies. Ex treme life-styles can somew hat slowdown or speed up the aging process but, in any event, the living clockmarches onward.

A very different type of clock— social time— regulates our socialbiographies. Society tells us when it is time to v ote, drink alcohol, drive acar, go to w ar, go to schoo l, marry, run for political office, and retire fromw ork. In our society, we are phy sically mature before w e are defined associally adult. This lack of correspon dence betw een the two biographiesplaces teenagers and young adults in our society in an awkw ard and am -biguous position. In a w ay, herding large num bers of these persons intocolleges provides an appropriately am biguous environm ent where theyma y be conve niently stored during a psycho-social mora torium until, it ishoped, their two biographies are synchronized.

So ciety lays out a time track for persons, and, from the track, wederive appropriate timetables and schedules (Roth). The schedules forceeach individual to construct a biography by passing through statuses pa rtlydetermined by n ature but more imp ortantly by the conventional structuresof social life. This biographical time is marked by the individual's "statuspassage" (Glaser and S trauss) through the various positions and identitiesavailable in society. Clearly, the a vailability of these positions is strongly

influenced by chrono logical age, sex, race, and social class of origin. Suchfactors determ ine at wha t point in social time, if any, these positions andidentities become available to the individual. The timing of such access is associally consequential in many respec ts as is the simple Pact of access—afactor rarely appreciated in the usual types of research in social stratificationand m obility (see S anGiovanni).

The passage of the person through a number of statuses which areme aningfully related to each other in a recognized sequ ence m akes up acareer (Hughes; R oth). Instead of the com mon definition of career in the

occupational world, we use the term to refer to "the moving perspective inwhich the person sees his life as a whole and interprets the m eaning of hisvarious attributes, actions, and the things which happ en to him" (H ughes,13 7). In this sense, career refers to sequences of statuses which m ake up aunified time period, like the four yea rs in high school or a mo ther's child-bearing career. Ov er a period of social time, people deve lop a perspectivethrough wh ich their various careers are endow ed w ith certain valuationsand m eanings. And each career is subject to reassessment as the personpasses from one to another.

Careers establish a critical sense of social time . Like a clock, socialbiographica l time runs or ticks away as the individual passes not only fromstatus to status within an institution such as a high school, but also frominstitution to institution such as from high schoo l to the labor force to theretireme nt hom e.? This is w hy social time m oves rapidly from birth toadulthood and m uch m ore slowly thereafter, as the older individual typi-


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cally goes through few er (and socially less significant) status passages.H ow ever, the pace of status passages increases again in the later years aspeople often experience retirement, the death of a spouse, declining health,

changed living arrangements, and the like.Most statuses have their own socially prescribed durations. A career

has its timetable (R oth) w hich contains a schedule allocating the norm altime for each person to pass through the designated statuses. To passthrough at a faster or slower rate results in being identified as a social orage deviate, as having extraordinary personal traits produc ing the depar-ture from age -graded norm alcy (SanG iovanni). The prospect of being sin-gled out as abnorm al is often sufficiently disconcerting to compel individu-als either to under- or overach ieve in an effort to conform w ith the timetable—another exam ple of fitting social activities to the dictates of social, calen-dar, and clock time . W here the timetables are arranged in sequences, to beoff schedule on one timetable condem ns one to arrive early or late at thenext.

Consider a typical middle-class biography. The infant is born in ahospital, in a h ighly organized setting which sets the style for standardizedstatuses. Even before the ch ild enters kindergarten, he or she has probablyexperienced the bureaucratic timetables of a pre-school, day-care center, or

nursery schoo l. Each of these institutions ha s w ell-established criteria ofefficiency, standardization, and relatively clear ma rkers of progress. This isanticipatory socialization for the next twe lve to perhaps twen ty-five yearsduring w hich the person's educational career unfolds within the bureau-cratic organization of the schools.

When this person enters the occupational world, a different, butequally deman ding, timetable appears. A significant difference betwee nsuch free professionals as artists or writers and m ost other workers, espe-cially blue-collar workers, is their relative freedom from control by clock

time (see Sennett and Cobb): they are no t as constrained to a rigidly pre-scribed daily round (Z erubavel, b;c). Unlike the factory w orker, the freeprofessional can avo id the daily grind of rush-hour traffic, the long lines atthe grocery store from five to six o'clock in the even ing after work an d,most of all, the rigid hours put into w ork and their distribution on a da ily,weekly, and seasonal basis. From the standpo int of social stratification, thisis an intangible, though real, advantage. Indeed, som e peop le gladly ex-change mo re tangible benefits, including m oney, in order to have it.

There is, as we ll, a de finite stratification among the t imes w e have

described. Generally speaking, organizational tim e dem ands preceden ceover interaction time, and interaction tim e, in turn, dem ands precede nceover self time. Two employees, for example, would get into serious troublewith their supervisor if they habitually allowed their lunch-hou r conversa-tions (interaction time ) to extend beyond the time allotted for lunch (orga-nizational time). Similarly, one would risk being defined as quite rude


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Social Time 1445

were one to begin working on a grocery list (self time activity) in them iddle of a conversation (interaction time). There a re, of course, specialcircumstances in which this ordering of temporal stratification may require

reversals of the usual priorities, but such exceptions are relatively uncom -mon and dem and an appropriate account (Scott and Lym an). The creationand m aintenance of social order require temp oral stratification, and thereare strong san ctions to assure the stability of this system , since stratifiedtimes are also embedded w ithin each other.

The rigidity of bureaucratic timetables is a consequence of the future-oriented ch aracter of organizational time. O rganizations are mo re consis-tent, systematic, and rational (in the W eberian sense) in their temporalorientation toward the future than are most individuals. Bureaucraciescontinually estim ate the t ime required to com plete current projects andanticipate timetables of future projects. Once resources are allocated basedon these timetables, workers are under p ressure to com ply with the time-tables. Even though companies which have cost overrun provisions intheir governm ent contracts may n ot suffer econom ically if they deviatefrom the time table, they nevertheless endure political pressures from bo ththe government and the public. Although light temporal structures arem ore cha racteristic of b ureaucratic organizations than o f other types of

organizations, even v oluntary associations tend to ma ke esca lating de-mands on one's schedule and total time com mitment once one assum es acentral role in the organ ization (M oore, b). The basic social source of ri-gidity in organizational time is its high degree o f stratification and emb ed-dedness. In factories and many other types of organiza tions, produc tion isorganized according to a fixed sequence of p hases or stages. W hen onephase of the p rocess takes too long, it disrupts the timing of other phases.This has clear policy implications for anyone seek ing to instill greater tem-poral flexibility in an organization (e. g., ' 'flextime" ).

In summary, organizational time has the same basic dimensionsfound in other types of social time. The principal difference, how ever, isthat in organizational time these dimensions (future-orientation, "block-ing," stratification, em bedded ness, etc.) are far more structured and con-t n much less undefined or free time. This is one of the features of organi-zational time which makes it difficult to coordinate the simultaneous socialtimes which continuously impinge on one's everyday life. Self time, inter-action time, biographicallcareer time, organizational time, and other formsof social time w ould be difficult enough to manage alone, but we must face

the enormou sly m ore com plex task of som ehow coping with the cross-cutting tem poral dem ands they exert on us at single points in physicallastronomical time. Try as we m ay to keep these times segregated in physi-cal tim e, they all hav e the na sty, im perialistic feature of invad ing othertemporal realms.

A s a result of temp oral stratification, w hen c om petit ion b etween


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Social Time / 447

emergence of multiple roles in mode rn society, each of which com petes forone's t im e, makes t ime into a scarce resource. Insofar as there is neverenough time to distribute am ong these social roles, role strain invariably

results. From this perspective, we may speak of time as if it were m oney.We can save time, invest time, waste time, borrow and spend time, orcapitalize upon time (cf. Stephan).

M arks co ntend s that this scarcity theory of time is essentially anideology proposed by these authors as an exc use and rationalization forover-com mitmen t to their own o ccupational roles. The feit strain betweenone's occupational career time and family interaction time is, according toM arks, the product of the husband's over-comm itm ent to his wo rk roleand under-comm itment to the family role w hich forces the wom an to beover-com mitted to the fam ily role, leaving her und er-com m itted to thew ork role. For M arks, if each had a balanced co m m itm ent to his or herroles, the time sca rcity problem could be resolved; thus, social time is not

so inherently scarce in modern society— at least not in the way the relation-ship between fam ily and occup ation has been interpreted by m ainstreamsociologists. 10

The w eakness of M arks' argument is that he does not tell us how todefine a proper level of comm itment to a role, nor how to transcend the

lim its imp osed by p hysical tim e on social tim e. Presum ably, proper rolecom m itme nt is determinable only after the fact— that is, after the w ifethreatens to leave her husband who spends too m uch time at the o ffice, orthe husband complains that his working wife is neglecting the children. Aslong as no prob lem arises in one's various roles and relationships, who isto say what is over- or under-comm itment to any of them ?

Hence, what M arks ignores is that the expectations of others contrib-ute to the determ ination of optimal levels of comm itm ent and temp oralallocation am ong m ultiple roles. High fam ily dem ands and low work de-

mands form a com mitment pattern opposite that of low fam ily dem andsand high w ork dem ands. The strain arises, then, when bo th family andwork dem ands are high. Marks treats this combination as a consequence ofan improper comm itment structure on the part of the individual. It mightbe m ore profitably thought of as a result of a com mitment dem and put onthe individual from the outside, or as the inherent scarcity of time in thebroadest sense. The individual may, to som e ex tent, attemp t to renegotiatethese dem ands, but it is a serious mistake to regard them as alw ays inter-nally generated, or as resolvable in principle. A soc iology of time forces us

to recognize time, no m atter how defined, as a physically and phenom eno-logically grounded scarcity. Thus, like all scarce com modities, it acquiresm eaning re lative to one 's position in the stratification system and o ne'sresultant ability to con trol it.

To illustrate the lim ited nego tiability of role-based so cial tim e, ithelps to return to the notion of c areers. As a useful simplification of the


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problem, consider the dual labor market distinction (see Gordon). Theoccupational career of a worker in the secondary sector of the occupationalstructure is characterized by low earnings, low job secu rity, little oppor-

tunity for advancem ent, and the like. This sector is exem plified by m osttypes of unskilled labor. Conv ersely, the primary sector is marked b y highearning s, job security, opp ortunity for advanc em ent, high social status,etc. Professional occupa tions are the p rototype of the prima ry sector. Interms of social time differences, the total tem poral comm itment dema ndsof the secondary sector occup ations are far below those of the prim arysector. Indeed, for many types of secondary sector occupations, the tempo-ral dem ands are virtually fixed by clock tim e. There is no incentive, andeven littie possibility, to extend person al tempora l work com mitment be-yond clock time specifications. O n the other hand, m any types of profes-sional work make unspecified temporal demands. Success in the professionrequires that standards of professional competence and availability be dis-played, and the person is held responsible for investing how ever m uchtime is required to fulfill these conditions. Consequently, the idea of occu -pational comm itment, when understood as tim e comm itment, has differ-ent mea nings when a pplied to primary and secondary sector occupations.

Defining over-comm itment in primary sector occupations is far more

comp licated than M arks seems to allow. O ne can be over-comm itted interms of one type of social time but not ano ther. In organizational time, itcan be said that a professional is under-com m itted whose p erformanc edoes not m eet the minimal standard s of the em ployer or the profession,but it would have to be shown that inadequate performance w as the resultof an insufficient tim e com m itm ent rather than simply a lack of profe s-sional talent. In terms of organizational times, over-com mitment similarlyappears as performance beyond minimal professional standards. However,from the perspective of biographical tim e, extraordinary perform ance in

one's professional role may represent only the com mitm ent level requiredto keep one's career on sched ule; therefore, it constitutes over-commitmentonly in organizational t im e. Even then, the com mitment is "over-" in astatistical, not n ormative, sense .

Passing from organizational and biographical time to interactiontime, w e see another sense in which one may be temporally over-comm ittedto a role. If a person pursues occupational goals at the expense of the

temp oral dema nds of interactional roles, then he or she ca n be said to beover-com mitted to the work role from an interaction time perspective. Our

point is that over- and under-commitment to multiple roles cannot beadequately defined w ithout explicitly specifying w hich type of social timeis being used as the reference criterion, and w ithout explicitly facing thesychronization issue. W e may co mp licate analysis even further by consid-ering the meaning of over-comm itment to a role in self time. In self time,one is over-comm itted if one feels over-committed in terms of alternative


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Social Time 1449

uses of time, regardless of how well one may be meeting social time dis-tribution obligations in the judgment of others.

Se lf time, interaction time, organizational time, family time, bio-

graphical time, biological time, clock/ca lendar time, and physical time allmove along, like all processes, at their appointed pace and, like all struc-tures, resist change. W hen they collide—and their collision is a permanentfeature of the human condition and characteristic of modern society—w ebear the incongruities as best we can. One way is simply to wa it. W e waitfor people and things all our lives. Schwartz (a, b, c) has studied waitingextensively as a social phenomenon. He shows that waiting is a revealingindicator of power relationships in interactional settings, such as waiting inthe wa iting room to see a physician, lawyer, or politician. If the fluxes ofthe various times w e have d iscussed always coincided perfectly, nobodywould have to wa it unless disruptions from unpredicted natural causesoccur. When we som etimes grow weary of waiting, it might help to imaginehow frightfully dull life would be in such a world Yet, because the socialtimetables are not coordinated, someone must wait, and wait, and wait-and it is the person w ith relatively little power w hose time can be wastedby those with more power.

The analysis of decisions to wait is a useful approach in understand-

ing the process by w hich incongruities in social timetables are resolved ineveryday life. The young couple w aits to buy a house or to have the firstchild; the young mother w aits to reenter the labor force; the child waits forthe privileges of age; the junior executive waits for the opp ortunity tomove up in the corporation. Although deferred gratification may eventuallylead to nongratification, tolerance for waiting rem ains an essential elementin many aspects of modern socialization. In fact, in the fullest mean ing ofthe word, only humans w ait. Animals opt for imm ediate gratification ofbiological impulses whenever they can. Since humans only partially tran-

scend their genetic heritage, babies and young children must be taught towait. Those who do not learn the lesson well suffer the consequences asadults when their inability to w ait and their attempts to have all things atonce lead to ulcers, divorce, bankruptcy, and other possible symptoms ofserious dislocations in social timetables. 11

In traditionally institutionalized role passages, wa iting is p restruc-tured; for exam ple, four years or 120 c redits before graduation, or thirty-five years before retirement. In emergent role passage, however, like thetransition into secular society after ten or fifteen years in the religious life of

a convent, careful waiting for the appropriate moment to make each movebecom es a strategie task for constructing a m eaningful passage and suc-cessful transition to a new identity (SanGiovanni). For someone making anemergent role passage, such as ex-nuns, new hostesses, transsexuals, orex-prisoners, time takes on a clearly qua litative reality captured in thesense of waiting to make the m ove at the right time, lest all be lost. Fo r


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Social Time 1451

continuity of subjectivity and self but it is the only type of plausibilityavailable to m oderns (Berger, et al.; Toffier).

The second fea ture of social time is its stratification. Experientially,

as the phenome nologists emph asize, time and space extend out from thefeit and embo died present w ith self as the 0,0 coordinates. Sociologically,how ever, if w e study the organization of tim e in Durkhe imian terms, itsobjective and constraining facticity and the organizational pow er or inter-actional sanctions attached to co nformity or d eviations from that t ime ,then time devolves on individuals from the societal and cultural levels. Thestate tells individuals wh en they can vote, ma rry, enter contracts, possesscivil rights, or qualify for social security. Self time, in this paradigm, is likean experiential, imperfectly transparent amniotic sac w ithin w hich we liveand through w hich we experience the m yriad of objective and constrainingtimes structuring our exp erience.

A s a central structural feature of hum an life, the stratification ofsocial times w orks as a m echanism m aking the experience of self-controland social control plausible as a single reality. The objectivity of human lifederives in part from its locations in the stratification of social times, withinwhich the self acts now as a free individual, now as a follower of timetablesof the state, now as moving through the ca reer scheduling of an institution.

The ob jective predictability of individual action is insured by the objectivesocial times structuring eve ryone's life. Prope rly meeting the expec tationsof timing stratified into a society warrants a person's m oral character anddisplays his or her norm alcy. To fail to tim e one 's life accord ing to thestratification of social times elicits labels of laziness, shiftlessness, untrust-w orthiness, and clearly inferior selfhood— constant puritan reactions tothose wh o do not time their lives according to that of modern b ureaucraticsociety. Such negative responses have cause in spite of fau lty interpretation:it is not only that time is wasted, a form of one of the Seven D eadly Sins

(Lym an); but allo that the absence of a com mon stratification of social timemakes i t impossible to plan— a key modern organizational and psycho-logical feature.

As the third structural feature of human life, synchronicity is aderivative of tem poral emb eddedne ss and stratification and w orks as amechanism for mak ing the rationality of human action and planning plau-sible. Rationality involves the ordering of actions and expectations asmeans for the achievement o f future goals. Such ordering is an intersubjec-tive emergent: rationality is essentially a pub lic reality by which a nu mber

of individuals mak e the sam e sense of the future. Synchronizing one's lifeis a public achievem ent wh ich merge s the unbridgeable individuality ofpersona l existence constituted out of embedded time w ith the irreduciblecollectiveness of soc ial order con stituted by stratified social times. Thesynchron icity of an entire society continually recreated by the billions ofmu ltifarious actions of millions of citizens makes plausible the rationality


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4 5 21 S o c ia l Fo rces Vo lu me 60:2 Decem ber 1981

of that social order. Breakdowns, strikes, terrorist attacks, earthquakes,

and other societally unsynchronized events challenge the public rationality.

The formal organizations of modern society are marvels of syn-

chronicity, captured in the split millisecond timing of a moon landing orthe carefully calculated pace of an assembly line. These are also the most

rational of institutions—as long as they remain synchronized The com-

plexity of modern society is directly related to the increased synchroniza-

tion of stratified and embedded times. Thus do personal lives take on the

rationality of their historical period by synchronizing themselves with their

structured environment (Harre). In this way, the objective and constraining

structure of stratified times becomes the subjective and meaningful em-

beddedness of self times, and persons live synchronously, and thus plau-

sibly, with their historical times. The external structure of social times

become the taken-for-granted normal form of each person's existential

time (cf. Cicourel). They feel at home.

When our typology of social times is theoretically integrated with

the concepts of temporal embeddedness, stratification, and synchronicity,

we have some of the necessary building blocks for a formal theory of social

time. To illustrate this potential, we extract and relate key propositions and

corollaries which are implicit in our discussion thus far. Given its prelimi-

nary quality, it is offered as an outline to be refined by future theoreticaland empirical work.

PROPOSITION 1.

The greater the nu m ber of temporally em bedded events betw een tw o points inphysical time, the shorter is the perceived tem poral distance be tw een the points:

T, 2(temporal distance between T, and T2 appears relatively long)

_, 2

(temporal distance between T, and T2 appears relatively short)

Where / / = two temporally embedded acts and T, and T 2 wo

points in physical or clock time

Corollary:

1.1 Increasing the social integration of an individual by adding more social

roles causes himlher to preceive an increase in the pace of social time, thus

reducing perceived temporal distance between points in physical time.

1.2 Because older persons have Jonger temporal "horizons" or memories,


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Social Time 1453

a year appears as a tem porally shorter distance to someone 8 0 years oldthan to someone 8 years old.

A m ong a group of interactors, as the number of embed ded eventsw ithin the space o f a given span of physical time increases, the interde-pendence among the actors increases. For instance, people have to beavailable for interactions at precise and predictable points in time (appoint-men t schedules, etc.) in order for the exp anded set of em bedded ac ts to becom pleted within a fixed cycle of clock time . This coordination of embed-ded interaction times is possible only if there is an increase in the tem poralsynchron icity of the various social times involved. Therefore, analysis ofthe social consequ ences of tem poral emb edded ness leads directly to the

matter of synchronicity.As Durkheim observed, the most fundamental process of social

change ha s been the transformation from m echanical to organic solidarity.The functional interdependence o f diverse social roles which characterizesthe organic mod e of solidarity is mo st pronounced in contem porary indus-trial societies. Conc urrent w ith the ch anges in the social organization ofother institutional spheres there has been a sweeping reorganization ofsocial time (self, interactional, institutional—organizational). Generally,these changes may be described as a quantum leap in the temporal syn-

chronization within and amo ng the elements of every level of social struc-ture. The concep t of synchroniza tion refers to the process of fitting togetherdifferent time tables so that highly complex and intricately emb edded se-quences o f social action unfold on schedule according to all of the relevantsocial times involved in the process.

It is possible to trace the social consequen ces of this ever-grow ingsynchron icity not only for the organization of society at large but also forthe consciousness of its individual mem bers. These consequences are dis-played by the following set of interrelated prop ositions and corollaries:

PROPOSITION 2A.

The greater the interdependence of actors, the greater the necessity for temporal

synchronization.

PROPOSITION 2B.

T he degree of diff iculty in tem poral synchronization is a positiv e ex ponential fu nc-

tion of the nu m ber of timetables involv ed.

Corollaries:

2.1 A s synchronization pressures increase in a social system, the norm s ofinteraction time and organ izational time increase in number and spec ificity.


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This has feedback effects which further increase synchronization pressure.2.2 Synchroniza tion in one subunit of an organization creates synchroni-zation pressure in related units.

2.3 A s synchroniza tion adv ances, sma ller and sm aller units of physicaltime become socially meaningful.2.4 As sma ller durations of physical time becom e socially m eaningful, theperce ived "scarcity" of phys ical time increases (lutcovich, et al.).2.5 A s perceived scarcity of physical time increases, perceived control ofeven ts in one's life decrea ses. This sensed loss of control eventually leadsto anxiety, depression, feelings of role incompetence, and similar psycho-logical symptoms of temporal panic (Bull; Cottle; Lyman and Scott; O'Randand Ellis).

If, as we have suggested above, the continuing demand for temporalsynchronicity in m odern so cieties leads to an increase in the perceivedscarcity of time , one should be ab le to apply the same principles of socialstratification to social time as have b een applied to other scarce resources.As the scarcity of a resource increases, its value increases, thus intensifyingcom petition to a cquire it. This com petition for time assures that, given thebasically fixed quantity of clock time ava ilable, any reallocation of clocktime for one so cial time (self time, interaction time, organizational time)

necessarily requires, as argued in Sec tion II, adjustme nts of clock tim eallotted am ong othe r social times. The com petition among social times is,therefore, a nearly zero-sum gam e. Because of this increased dem and onclock time a nd its lim ited supply, the only solution to the issue has beenthe development of a stratification of social times. The relations of tem poralstratification to temp oral em beddedn ess and synchronicity, along w ithsom e of their social consequences, are given in the following propositionsand corollaries:

PROPOSITION 3.

S ocial tim es are stratified in the follow ing hierarchy (trom highest priority tolow est): cyclic time, institutional— organizational tim e, interaction time, self time.

Corollaries:

3.1 Tim e scarcity is generally passed down the hierarchy of social times.[For exam ple, perceived scarcity within organizational time is resolved by

methods which increase the scarcity of interaction time (e.g., workingovertime) which, by the same process, creates tempo ral pressures leadingto greater scarcity of self time.]3.2 The m ost effective way to c reate more self time is by fiat and escape,not by planning (Cohen and Tay lor).3.3 The g reater the impe rsonalization of occu pational roles, the less self


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Socia l Tim e 4 5 5

time is available in the work setting and the m ore rigid are the cycles whichdefine the temporal structure of the occupation (Z erubavel).3.4 [in con junction w ith P ropositions 2 a, 2b, and their corollaries]. In a

social system, as the extent of temp oral embedd edness and its attendantdisruptions of tempo ral synchronicity increase, the stratification of socialtimes become more formalized and rigid (Iutcovich, et al.).3.5 Like other social stratified systems, the stratification of social times issupported by an ideology and by sanc tions.

In the following section, we suggest possible fieldw ork strategies foremp irically testing o ur propo sitions an d corollaries regarding the theoreti-cal relations am ong tem poral em beddedn ess, synchronicity, and stratifica-

tion. This discussion indicates the em pirical impo rt of our mod el, and ,consequently, areas w here concrete research m ay contribute to furthertheoretical refinements of our typology and propositions 1 corollaries.

IV. Research Implications of the The ory

If, as our theory asserts, social times are em bedded w ithin each o ther inthe ordinary course of everyday life, the ideal research sites for the study of

social times are those social settings in w hich each of the types of socialtime is max imally distinct and observable in its operations. Form al organi-zations (e.g., schools, hospitals, military installations, etc.) offer such sites.It is not that organizational time constraints do no t enter into social interac-tions in m ore informal settings such as weekend gatherings among friends.They certainly do. But the methodological problems of studying the rela-tions among soc ial times are far more com plex in these informa l settings,because different individuals have different configurations of organiza-tional times shaping interaction time activities. In contrast, a single orga-

nizational tim e structure dom inates interactions in forma l organizationsand its features are relatively visible to the resea rcher. U ntil theory andresearch in the sociology of time advance beyond their presently modestlevel, w e should con centrate research efforts on the sim plest cases first.Z erubavel's (c) study of the tem poral organiza tion of hospital life illustratesthis advantage.

A second consideration in the selection of research sites for theempirical investigation of our propositions/corollaries would be the degree

of recent disruptions of tem poral synchron icity in the organiza tion, inas-much as some of our propositions and corollaries concern social timedynamics— processes governing changes in the organization of social timesduring periods of tempo ral strain or adjustment amon g different types ofsocial time. By studying o rganizations un dergoing significant chan gesin their temporal organization, we can better explore the processes by


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w hich em bedded ness, synchronicity, and stratification break dow n andare reco nstituted.

Let us illustrate one such possible research setting in which ele-

ments of our theory could be tested effectively. A researcher cou ld studyan industrial manufac turing firm for a period of time before and after it hasreorganized its factory. This w ould occur, for instance, if the com panywere diversifying its product line or revam ping its production technology.New work schedules would emerge, new status-roles would be added,others would be redefined, and the older patterns of social time w ould nolonger synchronize w ithin the new organization of the factory. A before-after research design w ould assist in the identification of those structuresof social tim e (of all types) of the o lder organization wh ich conflict withthose arising from the chang es instituted in the organ ization. R egardingthe measurem ent instruments of the study, some com bination of surveyquestionnaires, structured interviews, and direct observation could beemployed.

Shifting attention to the possible concrete tests of our propositionsand coro llaries in such a research setting and d esign, several testable hy-potheses may be deduced. From P roposition 1 and Corollary 1.1, we wouldhypothesize that emp loyees whose jobs have expa nded as a result of the

reorga nization of the factory (i.e., they hav e m ore official duties, m ustinteract with a larger numbe r of individuals in a given span o f clock time,etc.) will perceive a shorter distance between po ints of clock time than theydid prior to the chang es. The Jatter could be m easured by a L ikert scalecompo sed of such items as: "W hen I look at m y watch, it is often later thanI would have expe cted." W e wou ld also hypothesize sim ilar differencesbetween managers and assembly-line workers.

From Prop osition 2b, we hypo thesize that, for those subunits of thefactory wh ich are directly interdepen dent with a larger num ber of other

subunits, there w ill be a greater num ber of m odifications of organizationaltim etables extending ove r a longer period of ca lendar time, and this in-crease w ill be exponential rather than linear. The researcher would have toengage in on-site fieldw ork to determ ine the informal interdependenciesthat exist in addition to those officially recognize d in bu reaucratic hier-archies and rules. The num ber of m odifications of official schedules andthe total duration of timetable instability are m ore easily observable andquantifiable.

As synchronization pressures increase in the organization, the cor-

ollaries of Propositions 2a and 2b should become applicable. W e know thatsynchronization pressure is increasing on a timetable when it must becoordinated with a growing num ber of other timetables, and, from P ropo-sition 2b, we h ypothesize that the degrees of freedom available for sched-uling events which requ ire the coordination of multiple timetables shrinkdrastically as more and m ore timetables must be taken into account. Corol-


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Social Time 1457

lary 2.1 predicts that one way in which the organization adjusts to thispressure is by tightening the norm s regulating social times. For exam ple,the allowable coffee breaks or other time -outs may becom e fewer in num-

ber, shorter in duration, or subject to stricter scheduling. From Corollary2.2, we would predict that even the lower levels of the organization (secre-taries, plant workers, foremen , etc.) indirectly receive synchronization pres-sures as pressures grow at the upp er levels. Corollary 2.3 can be checkedby com paring individuals' daily appointment schedu les before and afterthe organizational changes. Finally, the psych ological correlates describedin Corollaries 2.4 and 2 .5 cou ld be investigated by interviews o r surveyquestionnaires.

From Pro position 3 and its corollaries, w e hypothesize that thesedisruptions of organizational time have derivative effects on interactiontim e (both inside and outside of the organization) as w ell as on the selftime of mem bers of the organization. According to C orollary 3.1, we wouldexpe ct definite changes in the form and substance o f comm unications inthe organization. As perce ived scarcity of organizational tim e increases(m easured by survey questions such as "It seem s I hardly have enoughtime to get m y work done every day" or "I seem to accom plish fewer of mydaily work goals than I used to do" ), individuals w ill engage in less inter-

action time activities w hile stil on the job. The trend w ill be tow ard short,organizationally instrumental conversations. This variable can be measuredby timing the length of telephone calls within the firm and by doing acontent analysis of conversations and inter-office m emo s. Many other ef-fects, ranging from m ore w orking lunches to less after-work drinking andsocializing, can be expe cted as a result of the intensification of tem poralstratification. At som e point, absenteeism will increase as a result of stress-induced illness (Corollary 2.5) or the dem ands of self time for escape (C or-ollary 3.2) . Last, but certainly not least, there w ill be an increased scarcity

of outside time, leading to strain within mem bers' families and alterationof friendship netw orks.From this suggestion of a possible strategy for em pirically testing

propositions derived from o ur theory, it is evident that, because the theoryincorporates m ultiple levels of social structure, it is pregnant w ith potentialem pirical interpretations. M oreover, these interpretations are open to in-vestigation through survey research, interviewing, content analysis, partici-pant observation and other standard sociological methodologies. Althoughw e have not developed a com pleted research design, further refinements

of this preliminary d esign should yield fruitful research o pportunities.


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458 1 Social Forces Volum e 60:2 Decem ber 1981

Conclusions

As the complexity of industrial societies grow s through increasing rational-ization of institutions, the temp oral emb eddedn ess of events in organiza-tional, interactional, and personal time structures becom es mo re com plex.Consequently, the synchronization of acts and actors within organizationaltimetables and individual biographies becom es far m ore problematic, andoften can be resolved only by robbing clock time from som e other form ofsocial tim e. As a result, the stratification of social tim es bec om es m orepronounced , leading to social time conflict with ramifications through outthe whole structure of society, profound ly affecting the quality of life of its

m em bers. Hence , it is no accident that the developme nt of a typology ofsocial time s and the specification of research im plications of our theoryreach into a wide range of specialities within sociology— a final rem inderof the critical importance of social time to sociology and to society.

Notes

1. Two significant exceptions to this generalization are Sorokin and Gurvitch.2. From a sociology of knowledge standpo int, it can be argued that ma ny sociologists haveviewed time in a reified frame as if clock time and calendar time represent the only, or at leastmost relevant, temporal contex ts. This limited conception of time is very mu ch an artifact of

living in an advanced industrial society wherein, indeed, mechanicallmathem atical timeframes predominate. It is only when w e cease taking this orientation for granted and treat it ashistorically and culturally relative that the salience of social time em erges. Thus, we do notrecognize the full importance of time as a sociological variable if, as is often the case in lon-gitudinal studies, we regard it exclusively in terms of calendar time instead of social time (seeHeirich).3. The concept of " nearing nearness" offers another criterion by w hich one can differentiatethe experiences of individuals. That is, not only do we all differ in the set of exp eriences wehave had; there are also differences among most of our com mon ex periences in terms of theirtemporal location to the present ("nearness"). S ociologists frequently collect data on lifeevents (mantal status, education, income, etc.) without regard for the temporal distante ofthese events in the self time of the individuals they are studying.4. Although what happ ens w hile one is asleep is important for other p sychological purposes,it does not occur w hile the person is, so to speak, in play in everyday life. Dream s, for ex-ample, are not structured according to the times we experience in the waking w orld. They re-quire their own type of analysis (see O 'Nell).5. Evans-Pritchard's study of the Neur society provides us a g limpse o f what life would bewithout the need to fit social activities to clock time. The Nuer have a twelve-month c alendar,but the m onths adjust themselves to the a nnual cycle of activities. In stark contrast to indus-trial society, this pastoral society Iets". . . activities regulate the calendar instead of the calen-dar regulating them" (201 ). The daily round for the Neur is temporally controlled by the ac-tivities themselves rather than by any kind of me chanical time-reckoning. "The da ily time-piece is the cattle-clock, the round of pastoral tasks and the time of day and the p assage of

time through a day are to a N uer primarily the succession of these tasks and their relation toone another .....(207).6. Me mbers of m odern society who are un able to regulate their daily lives according to theclock are judged to be unreliable, irresponsible, lazy, immoral, or simply inferior. This judg-ment has been made by puritan whites with reference to the time orientations of Latins,Blacks, and Indians (see Hall). Punctuality has becom e a mo dern virtue based on the impor-tance of knowing and observing precise points in time, like m eeting at "12:1 5 sharp."7. The taken-for-granted power of norm al rhythms of social time is manifest in situations in


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Socia l T im e 459

which individuals lose control over and know ledge of the timing of events. Examples are pris-ons, men tal institutions, concentration cam ps, and especially, torture. A standard, and quiteeffective, technique for extracting information from a prisoner is to schedule interrogations atunusual and random times so that the entire everyday rhythm and timing of the prisoner isdisrupted, thus forcing him or her into a condition of anomic time wherein all temporal struc-tures are broken. This procedure has been kn own to crack eve n the most hardened crim inalsinto unrestrained confessions.8. O ne might spec ulate that part of the identity crisis experienced by m any in our society isrelated to the (perceived) una vailability of self time. As such, the identity crisis may be seen asa reaction against the lack of m eaning in one's life fostered by the instrusion of other socialtimes into self time. It is during mom ents of self time that one's un itary identity is establishedand nurtured (Mead, b).9. The lack of op portunities for primary, noninstrumental conve rsation is most severe forhousewives. In a twelve-nation study, Robinson et al. observed, "The normal hou sewife inour samples spends almost twice as many of her w aking hours alone as her employed hus-

band; an d if one discounts ch ildren in order to speak of adult-level social contact, then the d if-ferential factor move s closer to three" (140-1 ). There is reason to suspect that the higher inci-dence of depression and other m ental disorders among housewives in comp arison to singlewom en and w orking married wom en (Bernard) may be related to their relative deprivation oftime for me aningful adult interaction. Workers, for exam ple, can build in time for con versa-tions as a source of satisfaction white still "on the job" (Schra nk).1 0 . Another possible way to reduce the perceived strain between family time and organiza-tional time is suggested by Me lbin's (b) conception of "night as frontier." The supply of socialtime is nota totally fixed pie to be divided am ong activities; rather, the shape of the pie m ay beexpanded by pushing back the frontiers of social time into the early morning hours. It is abiological fact that some people w ould be healthier if they took less sleep, but sleep time is so-cially, not biologically, determined (excep t at some limit which few ap proach). N evertheless, it

is known that people differ in the period of the 2 4-hour cycle in which they are at peak physi-cal and mental efficiency. For m arried couples who are a mismatch in their respective orienta-tions to "morningness" or "nightness," the incongruity of their circadian rhythms m ay haveimportant inplications for the satisfaction they derive from patterns of family interaction(Crom well et al.).1 1 . W ith the coming of the so-called now generation, we m ay be seeing something of a revo-lution in social time (cf. Gioscia). In earlier times, when the pace of social change was com-paratively slow, people were more willing and prepared to accept w aiting through social timewithout rebellion. Increasingly, moderns are say ing "now" instead of wa iting for "then." In-stant credit buying, for exam ple, eliminates the w ait for mo ney already earned. W hen chil-dren of junior high school age and younger are expe rimenting with drugs and sex in largenumbers and the "etemal time" (Eliade; Poulet) perspective of traditional Christianity is being

challenged by new creed s, one must ask wh ether the "now gene ration" is not ushering in thedawn of a new era of social time no less dramatic than the differente between the social timeof industrialized Am ericans and the pastoral Nuer.

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Lewis y Weigert - The Structures and Meanings of Social Time

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