Timespace and the Organization of Social Life
Ted Schatzki
Abstract
This chapter argues that timespace is central to the organization of social life. The timespace concerned is a phenomenon of human activity that is based in the teleological character of human life. The spatial dimension of timespace is familiar in the philosophy and geography literature, going under the names of ‘phenomenological’, ‘existential’ and ‘lived’ space. Social life amalgamates activity timespace and objective spacetime: it is a temporalspatial spatial-temporal phenomenon. Timespace, strictly speaking, is a feature of an individual human life. The timespaces of the people who participate in a practice derive from the practice because its organization circumscribes the teleologies – the end-project-action orderings – of these people’s activities. Participant timespaces are common when particular teleologies, motivations and place-path layouts are enjoined. The type of coordination that marks, say, an economic system rests significantly on common, shared and orchestrated timespaces.