An Ecology of Times: Modern Knowledge, Non-modern Temporalities

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Savransky, Martin. 2012. An Ecology of Times: Modern Knowledge, Non-modern Temporalities. In: Cecile Lawrence and Natalie Churn, eds. Movements in Time: Revolution, Social Justice and Times of Change. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 265-280. ISBN 978-1443840163 [Book Section]

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2011 was a tumultuous year in terms of social protest movements. The Occupy movement spread across the globe with unprecedented support of an enormity not seen since 1968, while revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria and Libya caught the attention of the global media and brought the word revolution back into public discussions on social justice and governance. For many people worldwide, it appears that it is time for social, political and economic change. And it is precisely time, in all its forms, which cannot be ignored in this context. As something that surrounds us and affects every aspect of our lives, time is at once a tool for control, for order, for emancipation, for understanding the future and the past, and measuring degrees of freedom and quality of life in the present. This book brings together essays from fields such as politics, cultural studies and philosophy in order to reinterpret and reorient current thinking on the possibilities for new understandings of concepts of time to bring about social change. History as the passing of time, clock time, the exchange value of time, qualitative time, and alternative or marginal notions of temporality are analysed through the lens of various theoretical thinkers and applied to a multitude of political and social case studies. Breaking away from traditional notions of time as linear, and against common socially-constructed understandings of time, these essays suggest that new conceptions of time can have a major influence on creating a more just, tolerant world.

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