Social structure determines whether a society experiences time cyclically or linearly

Evidence

This conception portrays segmental and archaic caste-differentiated societies as dominated by a cyclical time consciousness in which time is experienced as a circulation of continuously recurring processes and states of affairs. Therefore the primary form of experienced time differentiates between before and after. Nevertheless, past and future are structurally identical here: the memory of the past is equivalent to the prediction of the future; the space of experience and the horizon of expectation are congruent. … In contrast to this, in the more starkly differentiated societies of early modernity a linear time consciousness gradually prevails that replaces the circle of time with an irreversible line running from the past through the present into the future. Here, for the first time, the dominant experience of time is one oriented by the difference between past, present, and future, with the future in particular appearing as fixed or closed in the sense of a telos of history (for instance, in Christianity or Marxism). — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 84

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the cyclical vs. linear time-consciousness typology used throughout social theory.
• XREF: connects to: Buddhist time is cyclical individuation while the West makes generalized linear History — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 285; The temporal structures of a society shape our sense of being in the world — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 65; Social order is fundamentally about how systems bind time and space — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 44 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Social order is fundamentally about how systems bind time and space #expands (0.78) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 44
• Social change does not follow a single instrumental motive because people inhabit multiple temporalities #complicates (0.75) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1064