Institutional tempo and actors’ temporal orientations can diverge and desynchronize.

Evidence

If one tries to systematize these desynchronization diagnoses, it becomes apparent that they involve three analytically distinct developments. In the first place, as I have already made clear, it is always possible that systemically institutionalized or structurally induced temporal patterns and perspectives, on the one hand, and the temporal patterns and perspectives of actors, on the other, increasingly diverge, i.e., that these two structures of time fall apart (and thus desynchronize) as a consequence of migration or a rapid system change. As Simmel already lucidly observed, the institutionally and structurally induced tempo can be too high for acting subjects or, conversely, appear to the latter as having an excessive amount of rigidity and inertia. So both structural developments and cultural changes can be the (endogenous) cause of such a temporal bifurcation (Entzweiung). The resynchronization process can then run in favor of the one side or the other: either actors take on and internalize new temporal orientations, as in the process described by E. P. Thompson, or a systemic change occurs in whose course the overly inflexible and sluggish structures are replaced by faster and more mobile arrangements (or vice versa), as happened, for example, in the case of the former socialist states of eastern Europe. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 113

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Frames resentment/alienation from institutions as a temporal mismatch — a strong bridging concept between individual experience and systemic structure worth extended reflection.
• XREF: The Entzweiung (estrangement) concept echoes the broader alienation analysis in Rosa’s work and Marx’s Entfremdung lineage the reader engages. — connects to: When levels of temporal experience desynchronize, recovery requires cultural or structural revolution — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 150; Functional differentiation drives desynchronization between societal systems’ time structures. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 200; Temporal structures mediate between individual life-plans and systemic requirements. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 46 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Social change resists purely instrumental explanations because actors inhabit multiple temporalities #expands (0.85) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1064
• Multiple coexisting temporalities, not just homogeneous time, shape political responses. #expands (0.80)
• Social change does not follow a single instrumental motive because people inhabit multiple temporalities #expands (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1064
• Fundamental social change erupts when progress is blocked by anachronistic institutions #expands (0.75) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 251