TIMESPACE The social sciences and humanities have recently taken a ‘spatial turn’, with workers drawing upon a range of geographical concepts and metaphors to explore an increasingly complex and differentiated social world. Elsewhere, interest has grown in the role that differing conceptualisations of time play in shaping our understandings of the world. TimeSpace is the first book to bring these interests together. Rather than thinking in terms of either time or space, it argues that our accounts of the social world must draw instead upon the more complex notion of TimeSpace. With contributors drawn from a range of disciplines, including Geography, Sociology, Gender Studies, International Studies and English Literature, TimeSpace is wide-ranging in both substantive and theoretical scope. In the first part of the volume contributors explore the ‘Making’ and ‘Living’ of TimeSpace. Chapters examine past and present changes in time and time consciousness and the meaning of such changes for the people living through them; changing under- standings of Modernisation and Progress and the geographies that underpin them; and the role that understandings of TimeSpace play in projects of national and racial identity and the politics of Belonging. In the second part of the volume, ‘Living-Thinking TimeSpace’, attention is turned to the ways in which we might most usefully conceptualise TimeSpace itself – whether drawing on the per- spectives of a rejuvenated time-geography, some variation of Lefebvre’s rhythm analysis, phenomenology or Buddhism. At the heart of the volume lies a challenge to all those who have uncritically embraced the recent ‘spatial turn’ and to those working in the field of time studies to think in terms of neither only time or space but a multi-dimensional, partial and uneven TimeSpace. Jon May is Lecturer in Geography, at Queen Mary, University of London. Nigel Thrift is Professor of Geography at the University of Bristol. CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES Edited by Tracey Skelton, Lecturer in International Studies, Nottingham Trent University, and Gill Valentine, Professor of Geography, The University of Sheffield This series offers cutting-edge research organised into three themes of concepts, scale and transformations. It is aimed at upper-level undergraduates, research students and academics and will facilitate inter-disciplinary engagement between geography and other social sciences. It provides a forum for the innovative and vibrant debates which span the broad spectrum of this discipline. 1. MIND AND BODY SPACES Geographies of illness, impairment and disability Edited by Ruth Butler and Hester Parr 2. EMBODIED GEOGRAPHIES Spaces, bodies and rites of passage Edited by Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather 3. LEISURE/TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES Practices and geographical knowledge Edited by David Crouch 4. CLUBBING Dancing, ecstasy, vitality Ben Malbon 5. ENTANGLEMENTS OF POWER Geographies of domination/resistance Edited by Joanne Sharp, Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison 6. DE-CENTRING SEXUALITIES Politics and representations beyond the metropolis Edited by Richard Phillips, Diane Watt and David Shuttleton 7. GEOPOLITICAL TRADITIONS A century of geo-political thought Edited by Klaus Dodds and David Atkinson 8. CHILDREN’S GEOGRAPHIES Playing, living, learning Edited by Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine 9. THINKING SPACE Edited by Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift 10. ANIMAL SPACES, BEASTLY PLACES New geographies of human-animal relations Edited by Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert 11. BODIES Exploring fluid boundaries Robyn Longhurst 12. CLOSET SPACE Geographies of metaphor from the body to the globe Michael P. Brown 13. TIMESPACE Geographies of temporality Edited by Jon May and Nigel Thrift iii TIMESPACE Geographies of temporality Edited by Jon May and Nigel Thrift London and New York First published 2001 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2001 Selection and editorial material Jon May and Nigel Thrift; individual chapters the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data TimeSpace : geographies of temporality / [edited by] Jon May and Nigel Thrift. p. cm. – (Critical geographies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Time–Sociological aspects. I. May, Jon. II. Thrift, N.J. III. Series. HM656 .T558 2001 304.2'3–dc21 00-045742 ISBN 0-203-36067-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-37323-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–18083–X (hbk) ISBN 0–415–18084–8 (pbk) CONTENTS Notes on contributors ix Acknowledgements xii 1Introduction 1 JON MAY AND NIGEL THRIFT PART I Making-living TimeSpace 47 2 Moderns as ancients: time, space and the discourse of improvement 49 KEVIN HETHERINGTON 3 A politics of stolen time 73 JOHN FROW 4 From time immemorial: narratives of nationhood and the making of national space 89 NUALA C. JOHNSON 5 Reflections on time, time-space compression and technology in the nineteenth century 106 JEREMY STEIN vii CONTENTS 6 ‘Winning territory’: changing place to change pace 120 JENNY SHAW 7 Responsibility and daily life: reflections over timespace 133 KAREN DAVIES 8 New landscapes of urban poverty management 149 JENNIFER R. WOLCH AND GEOFFREY DEVERTEUIL PART II Living-thinking TimeSpace 169 9 Anxious proximities: the space-time of concepts 171 ELSPETH PROBYN 10 Rhythms of the city: temporalised space and motion 187 MIKE CRANG 11 Time-geography matters 208 MARTIN GREN 12 Belonging: experience in sacred time and space 226 ANN GAME 13 Half-opened being 240 ANDREW METCALFE AND LUCINDA FERGUSON 14 Saving time: a Buddhist perspective on the end 262 DAVID R. LOY Bibliography 281 Index 313 viii CONTRIBUTORS Mike Crang is Lecturer in Geography at the University of Durham. He is the co-editor of the journal Time and Society (Sage). Recent publications include Thinking Space (co-edited with Nigel Thrift, 2000), Virtual Geographies (co- edited with Phil Crang and Jon May, 1999) and Cultural Geography (Routledge, 1998). He has written widely on issues of historicity, social memory and practice. Karen Davies is Docent and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Lund University, Sweden. Previously Director at the Centre for Women’s Studies, Lund University she was one of the founders of Scandinavia’s first feminist journals; Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift. Her research moves around questions of gender and has focused upon issues of unemployment, labour markets, muncipal childcare and hospital work. Her analysis of time from a feminist perspective has been developed in Women, Time and the Weaving of the Strands of Everyday Life (Aldershot, 1990) as well as in numerous articles. She is a member of the international advisory board for Time and Society. Geoffrey DeVerteuil is a Doctoral candidate in Geography at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on public facility location theory, restructuring of the local welfare state and the impacts of welfare reform upon the interactions between service delivery institutions and service-dependent individuals in poor inner-city neighbourhoods. Lucinda Ferguson was born in-country New South Wales and lived during term times at a School Boarding House in Sydney. She was later employed at this Boarding House while studying sociology at the University of New South Wales. John Frow is Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the Department of English, University of Edinburgh. His most recent books are ix CONTRIBUTORS Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Clarendon Press, 1995), Time and Commodity Culture (Clarendon Press, 1997), and, with Tony Bennett and Mike Emmison, Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures (Cambridge University Press, 1999). Ann Game is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New South Wales. Her publications include Undoing the Social (Open University Press, 1991) and, with Andrew Metcalfe, Passionate Sociology (Sage, 1996) and the forthcoming Doing Nothing and Other Ways of Being. Martin Gren is Lecturer in Human Geography at the Department of Geography and Tourism, University of Karlstad, Sweden. He is the co-editor (with P.O. Hallin) of Svensk kulturgeografi: en exkursion inför 2000-talet (Studentlitteratur, 1998) and (with P.O. Hallin and Irene Molina) of Place for Culture/Spaces of Power (Brutus Östlings Förlag/Symposion, forthcoming). He is currently researching the historical geographies of the Swedish ‘mad business’. Kevin Hetherington is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Brunel University. His books include The Badlands of Modernity (Routledge, 1997), Expressions of Identity (Sage/TCS, 1998) and New Age Travellers (Cassell, 1999). His research is concerned with issues in spatial theory and he has recently co-edited a special issue of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (with John Law) on ‘After networks’. He writes on the historical sociology of both museums and factories and is currently researching the spatial and