Time, Communication and Global Capitalism

Wayne Hope

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137443465
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Trade & Tariffs
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this book Wayne Hope analyzes the double relation between time and global capitalism. In order to do this, he cross-relates four epistemes of time - epochality, time reckoning, temporality and coevalness – with four materializations of time – hegemony, conflict, crisis and rupture. Using this framework allows Hope to argue that global capitalism is epochally distinctive, riven by time conflicts, prone to recurring crises, and vulnerable to collective opposition. These critical insights are not easily thematized in a mediated world of real-time reflexivity, detemporalized presentism, and denials of coevalness associated with structural exclusions of the poor. However, the worldwide repercussions of the 2008 financial collapse and the resulting confluence of occupation movements, riots, protests, strike activity, and anti-austerity activism raises the prospect of a rupture within and beyond global capitalism.

Part I

Time, Globality, Capitalism

1

Epistemes of Time in Global Context

Time should not be understood as a unitary phenomenon. Rather, as this chapter will explain, it is comprised of four epistemes or ways of knowing: epochality, time reckoning, temporality and coevalness. These epistemes are integrally related, both conceptually and in practice. Each of them contains multiple and conflicting standpoints of intellectual debate. Individually and in combination, they help us to understand events and processes within global history. From this perspective, I will show, in Chapter 2, how the different epistemes of time materially combine to produce particular configurations of hegemony, conflict, crisis and rupture. The resulting matrix will become the ground for developing a structural critique of contemporary global capitalism.

Epochality

According to one dictionary definition, an epoch is “the beginning of an era in science, history etc.” or “a period in history or life marked by special events” (Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, 1979). From a natural-scientific viewpoint, human beings are enmeshed within long-term patterns of galactic, ecological and bio-social evolution. Evolutionary eras are demarcated within established scientific disciplines, such as cosmology, astronomy, geology, climatology, biology and geography. Within each discipline (and sub-discipline), epochal markers and periodizations are contingent upon new scientific discoveries and new technologies of investigation and experimentation. Natural-scientific conceptions of evolutionary change can be distinguished from views of history associated with the idea that epochs are brought into being by manifestations of collective self-consciousness (Hunt, 2013, p. 213). Human beings in different cultural settings have the reflexive capacity to shape historical change and epochal understandings of historical time. For historians, this proposition immediately raises two vital questions: When do epochs begin and end? Is the unfolding of history expressive of continuity or discontinuity? Our answers will partly depend upon the field of inquiry. Economic, political, military and social historians address different categories of periodization and epochality. Great battles, dynastic takeovers and demographic shifts are each positioned within particular chronologies of history. For macro-historians who operate across disciplinary boundaries, the question of epochality is a fundamental source of dispute. Such historians, from within the same academic terrain, may have conflicting views about the nature of historical change. The comparative outlooks of Fernand Braudel and Georges Gurvitch within French intellectual culture illustrate the point. For Braudel, there were just two major breaks in human history: the Neolithic and Industrial Revolutions. All other manifestations of historical change occurred over extended time spans or longues durées. Deep, enduring patterns of cultural demography, economic production, trade and institutional authority were privileged over conventional periodizations and event-centred chronicles of history in the making. Braudel’s perspective, as exemplified in the Annales School of historical inquiry, was influenced by sociologists associated with Emile Durkheim. However, George Gurvitch, who held Durkheim’s chair of sociology at the Sorbonne, based his social theory upon the principle of discontinuity (Harris, 2004, p. 163). Historian Olivia Harris succinctly outlines this perspective: “the outer surface of social reality is manifested in institutions, infrastructures, and organizations, while the hidden depths are dynamic, effervescent, the source of creativity and revolution” (p. 164). Braudel regarded the intellectual preference for discontinuity as an arbitrary and artificial reconstruction of historical process. Conversely, Gurvitch argued that intellectual schemas of continuity should not be imposed upon the historical reality of breaks and contingencies. On this account, societies in history are constructed through the will of social actors. Major conflicts within society express opposing manifestations of collective agency. How such conflicts transpire will shape and reshape the periodizations of history. The opposite view holds that the will of social actors is borne by historical processes (p. 165). These countervailing perceptions of history and epochality are of global importance. Braudel regarded the longue durée as a formulation of world history. He drew from the locution of “world time” proposed by German sociologist and China historian, Wolfram Eberhard. With this concept, Eberhard was able to incorporate Chinese history into world history. For Braudel, world time supervened and flowed through regional, national and pan-regional histories (Brook, 2009, p. 381). The opposing perspective emphasizes the punctuations of world history in order to capture the multiplicity and interrelatedness of historical narratives. This is the standpoint of global historian Timothy Brook:

rather than bundle ever more local timelines into an unmanageably thick cable of interwoven historical narratives, I want to consider what happens when we cut across this cable in a way that touches all timelines but declines to reproduce any of them, by narrating global history in terms of moments.

(Brook, 2009, p. 381)

The determination of such moments, their significance and regularity, and the role of human agency are subjects of debate among historians. The epochalities of global history are thus essentially contested.

Historical awareness is not possible without a sense of epochal orientation. Equally, however, the naming and demarcation of epochs may serve to obfuscate understandings of historical change. In the European context, Kathleen Davis asks: “what does the regulatory principle of medieval/modern periodization hold in place, and what does it help to obscure?” Her argument is that Europe produced a narrative of secularization whereby a “feudal”, religious “Middle Ages” centred upon salvation presaged the evolution of Renaissance sensibilities, Enlightenment values and modern political ideologies. The associated emergence of mercantile and industrial capitalism reinforced the idea that the past could be re-periodized in hindsight. The secularization narrative was constructed, retrospectively, in different national settings, by historians of theology/philosophy, dynastic rule, law, science and medicine. For Davis, tacit acceptance of this narrative, and the periodizations therein, legitimizes a reductive, misleading account of European history. Within the so-called “Middle Ages”, for example, Augustine and the Venerable Bede proposed discrepant understandings of historical time that were as much political as theological (Davis, 2008, p. 5). Furthermore, Davis argues, the secularization narrative became the historiographical basis for writing global history. Pejorative assumptions about the “medieval” past validate the global application of narrowly defined political forms, such as secular government and modern democracy. More specifically, Davis states that “the sixteenth and seventeenth century writing of a ‘feudal’ past for Europe mediated the theorization of sovereignty and subjection at crucial moments of empire, slavery, and colonialism” (Davis, 2008, p. 7). On this reading, the construction of epochs serves the interests of institutionalized power. As I will later explain, this is never a final accomplishment; counter-constructions of epochality are always in prospect.

Epochality and the periodization of history are not just matters of external judgment. They are also invoked within locally lived experience. Matt Hodges’ study of Monadiéres within the Norbonne area of south coastal France revealed a unique epochal framework. Villagers contrasted a traditional, stable past with present uncertainties arising from the loss of the local language (Occita), reduced viticulture work, declining fishing stocks, outward migration and the incursions of tourism. This before/after construction of epochality was mythic, yet rooted within objective historical processes involving the village (Hodges, 2010). From a global-anthropological perspective, Hodges concludes that invocations of epoch vary across cultures and that periodizations of history are multiple and co-existent.

Time reckoning

This episteme refers to the numbering, measurement and standardization of time independently of intimate, socially lived time and of inbuilt natural processes within geology, biology, the biosphere and the solar system. Of course, the reckoning of time cannot be entirely divorced from natural or social settings. Calendars, for example, reflect the diurnal cycle, solar cycles, seasonal changes of climate, and the human passage of birth, life and death. Yet, associated public ceremonies, such as religious observances, marriages, funerals and feasts, may be dated within specified units of calendric time (years, months, weeks, days). In these circumstances, the calendar represents a standardization of time reckoning. By contrast, the earliest time-keeping devices, such as water clocks, sundials and sand glasses, depended upon natural elements and their vicissitudes. Water clocks and sundials required non-freezing temperatures and fine weather, respectively. Devices using sand could only measure non-calibrated durations of time (West-Pavlov, 2013, p. 14).

Advancing precision in the devices and measures of time reckoning increased the degree of abstraction from natural processes. The development of mechanical clocks and time pieces illustrates the process. In late 1200s Europe, the construction of escapement mechanisms made the mechanical clock possible. Initially, a horizontal bar with a weight at each end was pivoted to a vertical rod, on which were two pallets. These engaged with a toothed wheel which pushed the rod first one way and then the other. This caused the horizontal bar to oscillate and the wheel to advance, tooth by tooth. The rate of oscillation could be adjusted by altering the weights and their distance from the vertical rod (Whitrow, 1988, p. 103). These oscillations could be relayed to bells or to the movement of hands on a dial to give a measurement of time. Over the centuries, technical advancements, such as the pendulum and the anchor escapement, increased the accuracy and precision of time keeping. On clock faces, hands were supplemented by minute and second hands (West-Pavlov, 2013, p. 15).

The eighteenth-century marine chronometer enabled precise navigational time keeping and the global measurement of longitude. This increased the sophistication of clock making and expanded the standardization of time reckoning. Correspondingly, as time-keeping devices became smaller and more portable, numbered units of time reckoning pervaded everyday life. Public clocks were complemented by domestic clocks, personal time pieces and wristwatches (Landes, 2000, pp. 85–103). During the twentieth century, electrical, quartz and atomic clocks reinforced the fact that time keeping was a scientific exercise.

The precise time reckonings enabled by the calendric system and the mechanical clock became standardized within commercial enterprises, trading networks, oceanic navigation and the early-modern state. The growth of industrial capitalism after 1850 positioned clock time as the absolute indicator of productivity, costs and profit. Disciplined workers and their families were expected to internalize these principles of time use. Factory owners, bankers, accountants and retailers instinctively equated clock time and monetary value (Thompson, 1967). Meanwhile, modern transport and communication networks worked to universalize the standardization of clock time. Thus, nationwide railway systems needed a supervening grid of time zones to synchronize regional timetables amidst a plethora of local times (Zerubavel, 1982, pp. 5–9). Shipping companies, imperial navies and imperial powers required global time uniformity. Meeting this objective was a fractious and protracted exercise. The 25 delegates who attended the 1884 International Meridian Conference in Washington DC were not authorized to commit their countries to resolutions; other assemblies with the power to do so would be required (Bartky, 2007, pp. 94–9). Subsequent negotiations eventually established a world meridian grid, a prime meridian (Greenwich Mean Time) and an international dateline. Confirmation of these and related technical matters occurred at the 1912 and 1913 International Conferences on Time in Paris (pp. 146–8).

The growing standardization of clock time coincided with the arrivals of the telegraph, telephony and wireless telegraphy. These innovations presaged radio transmission, terrestrial television, satellite television, networked computers and the internet. As Barbara Adam explains, such developments represent a historically new kind of time reckoning.

The physical constraints of bodies in space are transcended. Movement across space is dematerialized. This means that space has not been merely rearranged but rendered irrelevant and time has been reconstituted: instantaneity and simultaneity have replaced sequence and duration.

(Adam, 2004, p. 120)

Within everyday life, this transition is less clear cut. Bodily movements through space are still set by physical ability, and the different kinds of time reckoning are, to some extent, integrated within daily routines. At a global-historical level, though, the evolving relationship between the time reckonings of sequence-duration and simultaneity-instantaneity is more apparent. Thus, early real-time technologies contributed to the standardization and universalization of clock time. The telegraphic transmission of news content gave public authority to the daily newspaper, and the radio transmission of time signals affirmed the taken-for-grantedness of meridian time zones. Subsequent advances in real-time communications technology challenged the ascendancy of clock time and the partitionings of world time. Live, 24/7 global television, for example, decentred the daily clock time schedules of national television broadcasting and the sequential ordering of time zones. The increasing availability of internet communication has, arguably, ensured the ascendancy of real-time over clock time. The nature and extent of this ascendancy require elaboration. As I will later argue, instantaneity and simultaneity have become the new precepts for time standardization. Real-time has, in many respects, superimposed itself upon the sequential measurement of time. Although calendars, clocks and time zones remain indispensable, they are no longer synonymous with time reckoning per se.

Standardizations of time reckoning are, necessarily, artificial and convenient approximations of natural processes. At the 1884 International Meridian Conference, delegates had to artificially impose meridian breaks upon the world-encircling continuum of solar times. Delegates initially proposed to set these breaks at 10-minute intervals from one another so that mean standard time, at any given point on earth, could be closely approximated with actual solar time. This would have created the unwanted inconvenience of 144 time zones. Delegates instead agreed that the world would be divided into 24 one-hour time zones (Zerubavel, 1982, pp. 14–15). Standardizing the day presented another difficulty. Civil days were then reckoned from one midnight to the next, whereas astronomers and navigators counted days from one noon to the next. The Conference conveniently resolved this discrepancy by establishing a “universal day” beginning at midnight. Delegates also had to fix an international dateline so that every point on earth could be positioned in chronological sequence. The dateline was not scientifically determined or drawn. As Eviatar Zerubavel notes, “for the sake of convenience it was fixed on the 180th meridian – both east and west of Greenwich – which happens to run across an almost entirely uninhabited area” (Zerubavel, 1982, p. 16). From north to south, the line was bent eastward and westward to avoid cutting across geographic territories. The cartographic details were periodically altered after the International Meridian Conference. Standardizations of real-time are also artificial and inherently imprecise. The speed at which electronic networks transmit information, sound and imagery cannot simply be measured by the time taken to cover geographic distance. Across networks, electronically driven speed is measured against the standard of instantaneity. Efficient transmission requires lengths or lags of time to be eliminated. In practice this is not possible. Within all electronic networks, there will always be tiny ineliminable lengths of time (Hassan, 2003, pp. 231–3). The standardization of real-time is thus an idealized process of becoming rather than an empirical accomplishment. Pure, networked instantaneity is not realizable, but the process of trying to reach this objective magnifies the instability and uncertainty of real-time-oriented formations. This tendency can, in principle, play out on a world scale as global interconnectivity increases. The very notion of full instantaneity means that the past cannot act upon the present. And, whenever attempted instantiations of real-time unfold, the future cannot be planned for. These evaluations bring us to an important realization: critical understandings of time reckoning draw upon other epistemes of time.

Temporality

This commonplace word, across the various subfields of time research, has no consistent pattern of usage. In philosophy, humanities and the social sciences, “temporality” can be seen either as a signifier for time in general or as a specific category of time-related understanding. In the former context, Russell West-Pavlov’s book Temporalities (2013) incorporates time keeping, philosophies of time, gender relations, history, hermeneutics, language and discourse, modernity and post-modernity, and colonialism and post-colonialism. By contrast, David Couzens Hoy’s The Time of Our Lives: A Critical History of Temporality (2009) focuses upon the evolving philosophies of time consciousness. For Hoy, “temporality” manifests itself in human existence, whereas “time”, broadly conceived, can refer to “universal time, clock time or objective time” (Hoy, 2009, p. xiii). Both authors provide incisive explications of time, but Hoy’s understanding of temporality is more clearly articulated. My own discussion further develops the idea of time consciousness without forgetting its connection to phenomenological traditions of philosophy.

Clearly, temporality is not about the dissecting, dividing, counting or measuring of time. Rather, it is the ground for thinking about the relationalities that connect past, present and future.¹ Temporality thus involves memory, expectation and attention to the present. These are manifestations of lived time that have no necessary connection to any supervening conception of time deriving from religion or science (Munn, 1992, pp. 94–5; Adam, 2004, pp. 53–60, 64–70). Temporality can be observed or experienced in the intersecting domains of self, intersubjectivity, social identification, bureaucratic institutions and society at large. Temporal orientations are also built into the operations of nation states, economies, polities, legal systems and transnational organizations. From these observations, more nuanced appreciations of past, present and future can be advanced. As one proceeds from the self to the transnational, temporal orientations become more complex, multitudinous and conflictual. They are also, simultaneously, intrinsic to the subjectivities of human experience, the objective structures of society, and those collective actions that may precipitate structural change. Lived temporality is integrally connected to the rhythms and cycles of biological nature, climate and the cosmos, including the moon, the sun and the solar system. This connection is mediated through our senses, emotions, bodies and intellect. Thus, the scent, sight, sound and physical awareness of seasonal change may, on given occasions, trigger memory, expectation and various associated emotions (loss, hope, fear, joy). Calling upon our senses to note our breathing, the circulation of blood, beatings of the heart, movement of limbs and delivery of speech invokes the present-ness of lived temporality (a disposition that is also intimately associated with the diurnal cycle). Sensory, emotional, physical and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Time, Globality, Capitalism
• Part II: Time, Hegemony and Global Capitalism
• Part III: Conflicts of Time within Global Capitalism
• Part IV: The Crisis of Global Capitalism
• Part V: Crisis, Collective Opposition and Ruptures of Time
• Notes
• References
• Index