Cultural phenomena can be temporally reconstructed but such redescriptions rarely accumulate into systematic theory

Evidence

The belief that all events, objects, and states of affairs in the social world are dynamic processes and that time is therefore a key category for any appropriate analysis of society has become a commonplace in the social sciences. But it looks as if even disciplines that realize this have not known how to make much of it. Over and over one finds the astonished realization that almost all social phenomena can be “temporally reconstructed,” that is, redescribed in terms of their temporal aspects, whether it be techniques of domination, class distinctions, intercultural problems, socioeconomic underdevelopment, gender relations, welfare regimes, or the experience of hospitals, prisons, and drugs. As a general rule, however, this observation fails to have any lasting effect. The redescription of the phenomena of the respective problem area in terms of time results in little cumulative gain for either sociological theory or practice and the findings of disparate investigations of this sort hardly seem capable of being brought together in a systematic sociology of time. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 73

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: why does temporal redescription keep failing to accumulate? This motivates Rosa’s whole theory-building project.