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TIMES OF OUR LIVES

: second part / first part

BY: Professor M. C. K.
Department of Sociology & Anthropology
Trinity University
715 Stadium Drive
San Antonio, Texas 78212

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ABSTRACT

A sociological exploration on the subject of Time with the thesis that most of the times of our lives have a cyclical quality.This article takes the reader just about everywhere, from circadian rhythms to the implications of historical ignorance.

taken from "A Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace".,

(for the text with pictures and full names go to the source) .

 

Time is the element in which we exist. ... We are either borne along by it or drowned in it.

--J. C. O.s, "Marya"

 

INTRODUCTION

Much can be made of B. D.'s "the times, they are a changin'." According to W.I. T., we're now AT THE EDGE OF HISTORY, buffeted about by J. N.'s MEGATRENDS, and with millions suffering from A. T.'s FUTURE SHOCK. In the lifetime of one born in 1976, America's bicenntenial year, the population of the world has increased by over one and one-half billion individuals, hundreds of thousands have died in the name of nationalism or religion, trillions of dollars have been spent perfecting doomsday weaponry, and the revolutions in minority, gender, and old age relations have shaken the traditional foundations of social life. To make matters even more interesting, we are told that the pace of such change is accelerating. And with people living ever longer, the historical changes that used to be absorbed by several generations now must be coped within a single lifetime. Largely forgotten are the principles and values on which society's oldest members based their lives.

With the accelerating push forward generated by technological and scientific innovations, the future is supposedly coming closer. However, as a society, we seem unable to conceive of great enterprises--like the medieval construction of the great cathedrals of Europe--that can link generations together into a common project spanning several centuries. Simultaneously, the past--the wake in the water produced by the bow of the future and the hull of the present--is growing longer, thanks to technology replacing personal memories: on celluloid for instance, we can see and hear G. B. S.--a man born a decade before the outbreak of the American Civil War--talk to us about first hand experiences with the Victorian sexual mores. Ironically, the extent of our historical ignorance is considerable, and by all accounts growing.

This page is devoted to the study of time and the various timetables and rhythms that shape our behaviors and thoughts. Here we will consider such issues as:

 

- the different meanings we give to each day of the week and months of the year.

- the "quality time" that working parents worry about sharing enough of with their children.

- the pressure we feel to be "on time" in the face of dreaded deadlines.

- the various social clocks whose tickings seem to govern our lives, such as the ages at which we believe we should be married, have children, or be "peaking" in our careers.

- our cultural fears of growing old and the meanings we give to the various stages of the life cycle.

- the emergence of "flexitime" and four-day weeks in the world of work.

- the types of time that religions impose to fortify the moralities of their members, such as eternity in heavens or hells, purgatory time, or escaping the cycle of death and rebirth.

- our sense of connection with generations long dead and those yet to be born, including such topics as timecapsules, intergenerational contracts and legacies, ancestral worship, and futuristic themes in amusement parks and cinema.

- history, too, will be fair game--at least our interpretations of it. The past, after all, has passed, and its placement into the present is a social phenomenon that serves various social interests. Also of sociological relevance are individuals' perspectives of social change, for instance, whether they believe their countrymen to be happier or better off than they were twenty years earlier.

Time is the container of our social activities, especially in our monotonic culture where we have specific times for doing specific things (as opposed to more polychronic cultures, where many different things are done simultaneously). These time-specific activities flavor the meanings we associate with the various times of the day, week, and year. On the other hand, these time containers have a way of flavoring their activities as well. An evening college class, for instance, has an entirely different feeling than its daytime counterpart by virtue of the meanings and activities associated with night hours.

Even though these times of our lives seem to be as "natural" as as any physical object in our social universe, the fact is that most are totally man-made notions. Why do we have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour? Because the Babylonians had a counting system with a base of 60. Had the British invented time with their base-10 system, we Americans undoubtedly would have hours made up of 100 minutes and minutes divided into 100 seconds. For that breed of social scientists known as temporal determinists, the big story is how the natural rhythms historically shaping these social times are being replaced by artificial tempos. And just as the meaning of a funeral dirge is altered when put to a calypso beat, so these new tempos have fundamentally altered the entire socio-cultural order. As a result, many people now find themselves feeling somehow "out of sync": out of sync with their bodies (i.e., "jet lag"), with their families and friends (i.e., the senses of not having enough time and time conflicts), and with the broader society (i.e., suffering "future shock").

Perhaps of all our taken-for-granted reifications that reveal "false consciousness," time is the most ubiquitous and "real." Given our preoccupations with time, perhaps our species is better labelled chronos sapiens.

For a broadsweeping philosophical analysis of the history of time's inner meaning and logic see J. Z.'s "Time and its Discontents."

OUTLINE

WHAT TIME IS IT? : RESOURCES FOR HOROLOGISTS

THE NATURAL RHYTHMS OF LIFE

#THE NATURAL RHYTHMS

#THE DAY-NIGHT CYCLE

#THE LUNAR CYCLE

#THE SEASONAL CYCLE

#THE MACRO RHYTHMS OF NATURE

#PREDICTING SOLAR ECLIPSES

#DON'T FORGET

SOCIAL RHYTHMS ACROSS CULTURES AND TIME

#THE CULTURAL RHYTHMS OF LIFE

#DIMENSIONS OF CULTURAL TIMES

#MONOCHRONIC VS. POLYCHRONIC TIM

#CYCLICAL, LINEAR, AND UNORDERED

#ORIENTATIONS TOWARD PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

#SACRED AND PROFANE TIMES

#THE PACE OF CULTURAL LIFE

#TIME AND CULTURAL EVOLUTION

#PREINDUSTRIAL TIMES

#CULTURAL CONSEQUENCES OF RAPID SOCIAL CHANGE

#CROSS-CULTURAL CASE HISTORIES

#ZODIAC TIMES OF CHINA AND JAPAN

# PERSONAL TIMES

# LIFE-CYCLE TIMES

# GENERATIONAL TIMES

# BOOMERS-LINKS

# GENERATION X-LINKS

# TEMPORAL FACETS OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY

#THE TEMPORAL WORLDS OF SOCIAL CLASSES
#TIMES OF THE UPPER CLASS

#GENDER TIMES

#THE DOUBLE STANDARD OF AGING

#RACIAL TIMES

 

SECOND PART

 

#SOCIAL RHYTHMS, CYCLES, and CLOCKS

#STANDARD TIMES
#THE DAILY CYCLE

#NIGHT TIME

#DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME

#THE SEVEN-DAY WEEK

#THE MONTHS

#ANNUAL SOCIAL CYCLES

#INSTITUTIONAL RHYTHMS

#RHYTHMS OF THE "CONJUNCTURE"

#HOW SOCIAL TIME IMPINGES ON THE INDIVIDUAL

#SPECIAL CLOCKS--GAUGING THE SOCIAL ORDER

#CALENDARS

#NEW YEARS

#SPECIAL DAYS

#TEMPORALITIES OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

#FAMILY TIMES
#THE LIFE-CYCLE OF FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS

#SPOUSAL TIMES

#PARENT-CHILD TIMES

#SCHOOL TIMES

#THE LENGTH OF THE SCHOOL YEAR ND THE SHIFTING TIMES OF THE SCHOOLDAY

#THE LESSON OF SPEED

#THE SACRED TIMES OF RELIGION

#TIMES SACRED AND PROFANE

#WORK TIMES

#LEISURE TIME

#CONSUMPTION TIMES

#POLITICAL TIMES

#CYCLES OF LIBERALISM AND CONSERVATISM

#DAYLIGHT-SAVINGS TIME

#TEMPORAL PERSPECTIVES OF THE SCIENCE

#DEALINGS WITH THE PAST AND FUTURE

#COLLECTIVE REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
#USE OF HISTORY TO LEGITIMATE SELF

#USE OF HISTORY TO LEGITIMATE REGIME

#USE OF HISTORY BY CITIES & COMMUNITIES

#RECREATIONS OF THE PAST

#NOSTALGIA

#FUTUROLOGY

#UTOPIAN (AND DYSUTOPIAN) ENVISIONMENTS

TIME TO GET A LITTLE CRAZY

 

 

WHAT TIME IS IT? RESOURCES FOR HOROLOGISTS

 

National Institute of Standards & Technology-- A Walk Through Time: Evolution of Timekeeping

Horology - The Index (The Science of Timekeeping)

British Horological Institute Home Page

Directorate of Time

The Exact Time Please: Greenwich, "the centre of time"

The World Clock

VIBE's World Map

 

 

THE NATURAL RHYTHMS

"..it is possible that the absolutism of Egyptian dynasties was dependent on the ability of kings to determine the sidereal year in relation to the appearance of the star Sirius. Recognition of the first dynasty by the Egyptians implied a recognition of time as dating from it. ...The power of absolute kings over time and space was reflected in the pyramids which remain a standing monument to justify their confidence, in the development of mummification, a tribute to their control over eternity, and in the belief in immortality. The power of the absolute monarchy may have been weakened by the priesthood which discovered the more reliable solar year. Absolutism passed with control over time into the hands of the priesthood and checked expansion over space in the Egyptian Empire."

-H. I., The Bias of Communication, 1951:66

Although with modernization the activities of individuals have become increasingly divorced from the natural rhythms--e.g., the solar, lunar, and seasonal cycles--that controlled the behaviors of their ancestors, it is important to appreciate how human cultures have overlaid their own symbolic systems of meanings and timetables atop these times of nature. Such discoveries of time may well underlie the very foundation of civilization. Here we will investigate the ways early cultures sought to synchronize the timing of the cosmos with the timing of the nomos, between the rhythms of nature and of social life.

We will also consider how these natural rhythms still impact the individual, both biologically and psychologically. In The Clock of Ages J. M. likens the body to a clock store. Each cell, tissue, and organ has its own clock that determines its lifespan. These clocks, in turn, become entrained or captured within the rhythms of nature. Like some Chinese puzzle, there are clocks within clocks within clocks, which together shape our everyday experiences. Check out what they're up to at the Center for Biological Timing at the University of Virginia.

 

THE DAY-NIGHT CYCLE

The cycle of work and rest is evident throughout nature. M. T. and D. H. ("Our Rhythms Still Follow the African Sun," Psychology Today, Jan. 1984:50-54) argue that our afternoon lull in productivity is a legacy of our African origins, where the hot afternoon sun put most animals in slumber beneath the trees of the savanna. Generally, it is in the morning when we engage in our most important work of the day, performing those activities necessary for the group's subsistence. Midday meals are followed by an afternoon lull--a nearly universal break time in preindustrial societies. People resume their activities in the late afternoon but at a slower pace. The conclusion of the work day brings a social time, with some variant of the cocktail hour occuring in many cultures.

Circadian Rhythms

Corresponding to the cycles of light and darkness is the body's own daily timekeeper, the circadian (from the Latin "circa," meaning about, and "diem," meaning day) rhythm, which is linked to a host of physiological processes, including hormone secretions, jet lag, and even heart attacks. Out of a growing appreciation of such body rhythms, medical researchers increasingly apply chronotherapeutic strategies to enhance their treatment effects.

 

THE LUNAR CYCLE

"From far-northwest Greenland to the southernmost tip of Patagonia, people hail the new moon--a time for singing and praying, eating and drinking. Eskimos spread a feast, their sorcerers perform, they extinguish lamps and exchange women. African Bushmen chant a prayer: "Young Moon! ... Hail, hail, Young Moon!" In the light of the moon everyone wants to dance. And the moon has other virtues. The ancient Greek communities, Tacitus reported nearly two thousand years ago, held their meetings a new or full moon, "the seasons most auspicious for beginning business."

Everywhere we find relics of mythic, mystic, romantic meanings--in "moonstruck" and "lunatic" (Latin luna means moon), in "moonshine," and in the moonlight setting of lovers' meetings. The word "moon" in English and its cognate in other languages are rooted in the base me meaning measure (as in Greek metron, and in the English meter and measure)."

D. J. B., The Discoverers, 1983:4

Menstrual Cycle

Of all the coincidences of personal biological times with those of the cosmos, the parallel between the 29.5 day lunar cycle with the 29.5 +/-3 day average menstrual cycle of women is one of the more intriguing. This "lunar connection" with fertility has been a nearly universal theme of folklore and ritual. While the degree of such phase locking remains a matter of scientific debate, the synchronization is still appreciated. F. O.'s WombMoon Calendar recommends that it be taken advantage of as a time for self understanding and appreciation of women's connection with the natural order.

 

THE SEASONAL CYCLE

Since at least the time of Hippocrates, scholars have been intrigued by seasonal influences on human experiences. Researchers in biometeorology have noted, for instance:

- death rates in northern cultures peak during the winter;

- marriages peak in June and births in late summer;

- relatively high rates of winter depression;

romantic relationships between college students tend to breakup during May/June, September, December/January, according to research of Z. R., C. T. H. and L. P.;

suicide rates and mental hospital admissions rise during spring and early summer.

 

THE MACRO RHYTHMS OF NATURE

Beyond the rhythms of the day and year, other natural cycles affecting the course of human activity (and history) have been detected. For instance, there are cycles of glacial growth and decline, which have profoundly affected the migrations and innovative technologies of our species and its predecessors, which are perhaps caused by a wobble of our planet's axis. In the early 1980s, J. S. and D. R., two University of Chicago paleontologists, reported evidence of periodic mass extinctions which eradicated upwards of 75 percent of all species every 26 million years. One theory accounting for this regularity is the postulated existence of a dwarf binary sister of our sun. This death star, called Nemesis (after the Greek goddess who persecutes the excessively rich and powerful), is hypothesized to reach its perigee every 26 million years, when it shakes loose and hurls a hail of comets from the Oort cloud on the fringe of our solar system. Some of these collide with earth, filling its atmosphere with dust that blots out the sun for months, leading to global death.

Science has given us the ultimate of temporal perspectives: the birth and death of the entire universe. There are two rival theses about the ultimate fate of the universe, both originating from the Big Bang Theory. One thesis, derived from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, sees the universe as "open," expanding for eternity and slowly sinking into a thermal equilibrium that is "heat death." In other words, the death of the universe is predestined and inevitable, in 100 billion years the energy needed to sustain life anywhere in the universe would be so dispersed as to be unusable. Death is nothing more than entropic disorder and life nothing more than entropy reduction. Time is the loss of disequilibrium between processes (such as the dissipation of electrical energy or radioactive decay).

This cosmological conception of time is only the most recent of a long line of speculations. G. was the first to realize that the acceleration of falling bodies was a function of time, "that the same increment of velocity was added to their speed of fall every second." His predecessors "had tended to think either that the velocity of a falling object must be constant, or that velocity was proportional to distance traveled, not time" (R. M., Time's Arrows: Scientific Attitudes Toward Time, Touchstone/Simon and Schuster, 1985:12). Later, the Newtonian notion of time existing uniformly throughout the cosmos was to be overthrown by A. E.'s special theory of relativity. Here time became but an illusion as "it is perfectly possible for a distant event to take place in the 'past' of one observer and in the 'future' of another" (M., 1985:150). Currently E.'s conception of time is being superceded by developments in quantum mechanics. According to Nobel Laureate P., the discovery of the "irreversibility problem" has led to the new insight that time is best understood as a "selection principle" and that time and uncertainty are closely related. Adds one observer, "One bewildering outcome of quantum theory has led some scientists to speculate that the entire universe, including the time in which it exists, may have been created by a spontaneous quantum fluctuation--a twitch in the nothingness that preceded it. Could a twitch in the opposite direction convert the universe back into nonexistence" ("Reality: A Grand Illusion?" The New York Times, Feb. 26, 1980)?

 

PREDICTING SOLAR ECLIPSES

As can be gathered, power comes to those able to predict natural events. Undoubtedly one of the most impressive of predictions cross-culturally in the ancient world involved the timing of the solar eclipse. For the Mayans, the people must have thought that even the heavens were controlled by their omniscient rulers, whose predictions of lunar cycles are off by only a matter of a few seconds many hundreds of years later.

DON'T FORGET

March is National Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Month;
November is National Alzheimer's Disease Month (a designation first signed into law in 1983 by, ironically, victim R. R.).

 

THE CULTURAL RHYTHMS OF LIFE

 

In The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time (Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1983), anthropologist E. T. H. entitles his first chapter "Time as Culture" . An extreme stance perhaps, especially given the potency of nature's rhythms, but it is instructive of the extent to which experiences and conceptualizations of time and space are culturally determined. Unlike the rest of nature's animals, our environment is primarily man-made and symbolic in quality. As B. observed in The Ascent of Man, instead of being figures of the landscape, like antelopes upon the African savanna, we humans are the shapers of it. Geographical space and natural time are transformed into social space and social time, around whose definitions human beings orient their behaviors. For instance, instead of being governed by the natural rhythms of the sun and seasons, our behaviors are governed by such cultural temporalities as work schedules, age norms, and by the "open" hours of shopping malls.

Culture is a shared system of ideas about the nature of the world and how (and when) people should behave in it. Cultural theorists argue that culture creates minds, selves and emotions in a society as reliably as DNA creates the various tissues of a living body. Culture also creates the rhythms of a society that echo within the very biology of its members. Observes I. H. ("Temporal Orientation in Western Civilization and in a Pre-Literate Society, American Anthropologist 36, 1955), "It is impossible to assume that man is born with any innate `temporal sense.' His temporal concepts are always culturally constituted" (pp. 216-7). A 1974 study by W. C. and L. S. showed that within a few days, infants flex their limbs and move their heads in rhythms matching the human speech around them. By the time a child is three months old he has already been temporally enculturated, having internalized the external rhythms (called Zeitgeber, meaning "time giver" in German) of his culture. These rhythms underlie a people's language, music, religious ritual (the Buddhist mantra, for instance, is not only one's personal prayer but one's personal rhythm), beliefs about post-mortem fate, and their poetry and dance. These rhythms also serve as a basis of solidarity: humans are universally attracted to rhythm and to those who share their cadences of talk, movement, music, and sport.

Thus socio-cultural systems can be likened to massive musical scores: change the rhythm-- such as putting a funeral dirge to a calypso beat--and you change the meaning of the piece. Cultures differ temporally, for example, in the temporal precision with which they program everyday events (ask any American businessman trying to schedule a meeting in the Middle East) and in the ways various social rhythms are allowed to mesh.

 

DIMENSIONS OF CULTURAL TIMES

 

Temporal prosperity comes always accompanied by much anxiety.

--J.D., 1631

 

MONOCHRONIC VS. POLYCHRONIC TIMES

 

In developing the distinction between what he calls Monochronic and Polychronic cultural times, H. writes:

 

P-time stresses involvement of people and completion of transactions rather than adherence to preset schedules. ... For polychronic people, time is seldom experienced as "wasted," and is apt to be considered a point rather than a ribbon or a road, but that point is often sacred. ...Polychronic cultures are by their very nature oriented to people. Any human being who is naturally drawn to other human beings and who lives in a world dominated by human relationships will be either pushed or pulled toward the polychronic end of the time spectrum. If you value people, you must hear them out and cannot cut them off simply because of a schedule.

M-time, on the other hand, is oriented to tasks, schedules, and procedures. As anyone who has had experience with our bureaucracies knows, schedules and procedures take on a life all of their own without reference to either logic or human needs. ...M-time is also tangible; we speak of it as being saved, spent, wasted, lost, made up, crawling, killed, and running out (pp.43,50).

 

CYCLICAL, LINEAR, AND UNORDERED TIMES

 

Does social history unfold, like the sequence of seasons, in a cyclical way endlessly repeating itself, or is history linear and increasingly "progressive" or "degenerative"? With the former, time can be recuperative as cultural members can escape both their futures and pasts as they periodically are given new starts. With linear time, which characterizes contemporary Western cultures, cultural outlooks are either positive (e.g., time brings salvation, resurrection, or utopian social orders) or negative responses (e.g., time ultimately brings entropy, dissipation, and death for self, society, and cosmos).

 

ORIENTATIONS TOWARD PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

 

Cultures differ in their general orientation toward the future, present, or past. Central to this orientation is whether the "Golden Years" are collectively understood to exist either in the future (hence, time is seen as being progressive [N., 1979] and evolutionary), the present (now is the best of times), or in some golden past (such as Paradise Lost or the "noble savage" beliefs of Romanticism). This broad temporal distinction determines such beliefs as the role of the dead in everyday life and the extent to which the behaviors of the living are oriented toward their ancestors or heirs. Postmodernism may entail a focus only on the here-and-now, with little sense of connection to the past or future as the only certainty becomes change. R. D., former budget director in the B. administration, claimed in 1989 that America suffers from a cultural "now-now-ism"--a "short-hand label for our collective short-sightedness, our obsession with the here and now, our reluctance to address the future," evidenced by rising drug abuse (a sign that young people care too much about the next two hours and too little about the next two decades), the decline in education (reflecting a society lacking a commitment to future generations), and capitalism's logic that favors current consumption over long-term savings.

 

SACRED AND PROFANE TIMES 

Being special creatures, we tend to attribute cosmic significance to our activities and are prone to view supernatural forces at work in our affairs, particularly those which produce the unintended consequences of our actions. Traditional Chinese folklore, for instance, holds that natural calamity indicates the loss of the "mandate of heaven," portending the decline of dynasties. Knowing the potency of variable reinforcements in shaping our behaviors and beliefs -the "slot-machine effect," if you will- imagine the reinforcements to this ancient belief when, in 1976, a massive earthquake killed hundreds of thousands Chinese in Tangshan and then, shortly thereafter, Chairman M. t.-t. died. The realm of such external influences is the sacred cosmos. Juxtaposed against the "profane," commonplace world of everyday life, the "sacred" entails the experience of the mysterious, extraordinary, and uncontrollable forces that act against chaos and that underlie the affairs of nature and man (M.D., Purity and Danger, 1966). Sacred time involves the collapsing of the past, present, and future into an eternal now in order to, in part, allow heroics of the past be continuously part of the sacred present. Profane time is time as wear-and-tear, time as decay and death.

 

CULTURAL "GOOD" TIMES AND "BAD"

 

 

THE PACE OF CULTURAL LIFE

It has been said that in Mexico time walks while in the United States it either runs or flies.

ZEITGEIST TIME 

 

TIME AND CULTURAL EVOLUTION

 

It's curious how much technological energy and innovation cultures apply to their time pieces. Nowadays, supposedly at the tail end of a linear, progressive history, the modern individual can have a deserved smugness about the temporal precisions of his life. Science has produced time pieces capable of measuring subatomic events occurring within billionths of a second or of gauging from a piece of charcoal when some prehistoric fire had been lit. But the Olmec Calendar, recently found near Tres Zapotes, Mexico, uses symbols to count 1,125,698 days, thus indicating that it was used to mark off time continuously for over 3,111 years. Does modern life somehow engender a quest for immediacy, precision and speed that leads us to ignore much longer rhythms originally experienced by our ancestors? Only in the past do we find cultures generating projects, such as the construction of the great cathedrals of Europe or the Great Wall of China, spanning the lives of several generations. At Avebury on the Wiltshire downs of Britain, there is a circular ditch that covers 28-1/2 acres, encompassing even a small village. It was a massive undertaking, built with the most basic of tools as the trench was dug; the earth, basically hard chalk, was cut away with primitive spades and then transported on shoulders in wicker baskets, up the steep sides of the ditch, to be deposited on the surrounding mound until the bank was some thirty or forty feet above them. Some estimate that the enterprise must have taken some fifty generations to complete. Questions and observations such as these have fueled a rich research tradition in the rhythms shaping the life experiences of differing peoples of the world. S. and M. (1937) argue that the only real determinants of any social time scale are the needs of society. As these social needs evolved with the increasing complexities of the social order and with the higher-ordered needs of its social actors, new temporalities came into existence. This process of social evolution comes very slowly and new time frameworks are required to even appreciate the change.

 

PREINDUSTRIAL TIMES

 

In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to chew a quid of coca leaf; sometimes the destination is so many cigarettes away.

 

INDUSTRIAL TIMES

 

 

POST-INDUSTRIAL TIMES

 

 

CULTURAL CONSEQUENCES OF RAPID SOCIAL CHANGE

 

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

--M. K. G.

 

It has become a maxim that contemporary societies are experiencing an accelerating rate of social change. But what, in addition to technological innovation and the "knowledge explosion," are these changes and can they be measured? And are there limits to the amount of change that can be absorbed by social structure and individuals?

 

CROSS-CULTURAL CASE HISTORIES

 

 

ZODIAC TIMES OF CHINA AND JAPAN

 

It seems almost obligatory for Chinese restaurants to feature their zodiac on placemats to engage customers while awaiting their meal. So you're a rabbit--lucky you! And so what if the President is a dog?

RABBIT: 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999

Luckiest of all signs, you are also talented and articulate. Affectionate, yet shy, you seek peace throughout your life. Marry a Sheep or Boar. Your opposite is the Cock.

TIGER: 1926, 1938, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998

Tiger people are aggressive, courageous, candid and sensitive. Look to the Horse and Dog for happiness. Beware of the Monkey.

OX: 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997

Bright, patient and inspiring to others. You can be happy by yourself, yet make an outstanding parent. Marry a Snake or Cock. The Sheep will bring trouble.

RAT: 1924, 1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996

You are ambitious yet honest. Prone to spend freely. Seldom make lasting friendships. Most compatable with Dragons and Monkeys. Least compatible with Horses.

DRAGON: 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000

You are eccentric and your life complex. You have a very passionate nature and abundant health. Marry a Monkey or Rat late in life. Avoid the Dog.

SNAKE: 1929, 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989

Wise and intense with a tendancy towards physical beauty. Vain and high tempered. The Boar is your enemy. The Cock or Ox are your best signs.

HORSE: 1918, 1930, 1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990

Popular and attractive to the opposite sex. You are often ostentatious and impatient. You need people. Marry a Tiger or a Dog early, but never a Rat.

SHEEP: 1919, 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991

Elegant and creative, you are timid and prefer anonymity. You are most compatible with Boars and Rabbits but never the Ox.

MONKEY: 1920, 1932, 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992

You are very intelligent and are able to influence people. An enthusiastic achiever, you are easily discouraged and confused. Avoid Tigers. Seek a Dragon or a Rat.

COCK: 1921, 1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993

A pioneer in spirit, you are devoted to work and quest after knowledge. You are selfish and eccentric. Rabbits are trouble. Snakes and Oxen are fine.

DOG: 1922, 1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994

Loyal and honest you work well with others. Generous yet stubborn and often selfish. Look to the Horse or Tiger. Watch out for Dragons.

BOAR: 1923, 1935, 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995

Noble and chivalrous. Your friends will be lifelong, yet you are prone to marital strife. Avoid other Boars. Marry a Rabbit or a Sheep.

The Japanese follow the Chinese cycle but in addition each year is also named for one of five elements--wood, fire, earth, metal and water, yielding sixty possible combinations. Few birth years are worse than hinoe uma, when fire and horse fall upon each other. It is widely believed that women born in this year are destined to kill their husbands.

Since 1949, the Japanese have celebrated a national holiday called Coming of Age Day, honoring those who turned twenty during the previous year. In 1987, some 1.4 million young men and women, all born between Jan. 16, 1966 and Jan. 15, 1967, were the stars of the day. Their numbers, however, were 22 percent less than the prior and following year. Why? Could it be that that was a hinoe uma year?

 

MEXICAN MANANA TIME

 

PERSONAL TIMES

 

Numerous are the rhythms shaping our life-experiences. Perhaps the most basic are one of our biological clocks, our circadian rhythms, which determine such things as whether we are "morning people" or "night owls." In addition, there are other biological clocks shaping our senses of self:

 

* the timetables of physiological growth, maturation, and aging. These times can have their quirks. For instance, one's aging can be hyperaccelerated by Werner's Syndrome and progeria.

* the biological clock experienced by middle-aged women still desiring children and the menopausal deadline;

* of course, the biological clock whose ticking is increasingly loud is one's death clock. Even though we don't like to admit it in our death-denying culture, the normal timing of death is the master shaper of biography. Whereas for most of human history death came prematurely- -when "death in the midst of life" was literal and not figurative--nowadays death typically occurs upon the conclusion of full, completed lives (at least given the traditional biographical lifespan scripts).

 

In addition to these internal natural times shaping individuals' life experiences are the times of external nature: the rhythms of the day, month, and seasons. For most of human history these rhythms dominated human activity. For instance, humans are not immune to animals' cycles of work and rest. It has been argued that our afternoon lull in productivity is a legacy of our African origins, when the hot afternoon sun put most animals in slumber beneath the trees of the savanna. Generally, during the morning we engage in the most important work of the day, activities connected with the group's subsistence. The midday meal is followed by an afternoon lull--a break that is nearly universal in preindustrial societies. In the late afternoon, people resume their activities albeit at a slower pace. The work day is followed by a social time, with cross-cultural variations of the "cocktail hour."

On top of these natural times are built man-made times, whose rhythms increasingly shape our experiences of everyday life. Numerous "social clocks" determine our daily activities and social biographies: the timetables of our socialization (So you are 14 years of age and still in the 3rd grade? You are behind time. Loser!), courtships (We harbor doubts about those who become engaged 2 weeks after the first date and smirk at those engaged for 15 years), family life (with males' second families, retirement can precede their children's graduations from high school), and career.

Out of these various rhythms emerges a sense of life structure, featuring longer-tempoed rhythms of one's career and family schedules, memories and future plans. The life structure involves the mental maps individuals have of their life-cycle, their sense of an orderly progression of life course changes. As G. E. (1975, 1978) defines life course, it encompasses the `pathways' by which individuals fulfill different roles over their lives, sequentially or simultaneously. These pathways vary owing to "variations in the timing, duration, and order of events; and by the interlocking careers (in family, work) that vary in synchronization" (Elder 1985:2).

Some individuals choose to have other, more mystical times influence their life activities. These include biorhythms (don't venture too far into the real world during your "critical" days!) and astrology. Regarding the latter, a 1993 NORC random survey of American adults found some 10 percent saying "definitely true" and another 42 percent saying that it was "probably true" that astrology has some scientific truth. Click here to see Americans beliefs in astrology by age and education.

 

 

TIMES OF THE LIFE-CYCLE 

Have you ever studied the family photo album and compared yourself with your parents, your grandparents, or perhaps even your great-grandparents when they were your age? Maybe you noticed how much older a grandmother looked at age 50 than your mother did. Not only did the grandmother look more weathered by time, but she may have dressed like an older person, wearing black granny shoes and a baggy black dress instead of mom's Adidas and pastel jogging suit.

Our pathways through time are shaped by both the developmental agendas described by psychologists as well as by social and cultural factors. For instance, in Centuries of Childhood, P. A. develops how childhood was "invented" in the West as a distinctive stage of the life cycle. The appearance of children as shrunken adults wearing small adult clothing in Renaissance paintings, for instance, was not the fault of the artists but rather how children were perceived. There was no childhood as everyone had access to the same information (P. 1982). Until the 17th century there wasn't even a word for child in French, English or German: the term referred to kinship rather than age. A. found during Middle Ages that not only did every age group dress indiscriminantly, but that there was even the lack of distinctive sex-dress for little people (16th century boys often dressed as girls). As infant mortality rates declined, for the first time in human history parents could expect to raise their children to maturity. As a result, there appeared novel cultural conceptions of this neophyte stage of social life.

And as childhood emerged with the rise of industrialism, so now the old age stage of the life-cycle is being shaped by post-industrial, service-oriented economies.

Click here to see

Americans' perceptions of the best years of the life-cycle.

Yahoo - Society and Culture:Age:Teenagers

Kearl's Social Gerontology Page

 

GENERATIONAL TIMES

"It is demeaning to the nation that within the C. administration a corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered and never learned, should have the power to fund with your earnings their dubious and self-serving selves."

--Senator Bob Dole, Acceptance Speech to the 1996 Republican Convention

According to A. T. in Future Shock, time is replacing space as the major divider of people in modern societies. The intersections between biographical time and social-historical time in periods of rapid socio-cultural change are suspected of producing distinctive outlooks and values among differently-aged individuals. Such impacts of social history on identity structures underlies social science research on generations.

There are several senses of the generational concept. In Biblical times, generations were units to demarcate eras. We still use this sense when referring to some massive historical event (like the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights era, World War II, or the Depression) that collectively affects those age groups early in their life-cycles. While precisely where in the life-cycle individuals are most susceptible to such historical influences is a matter of debate--child psychologist J. K. argues that it's the 6-16 group most influenced by such sociological changes, while sociologist G. E. claims that the defining period is when a cohort is first entering the labor market--the assumption is nevertheless made that an historical thumbprint is permanently impressed.

A related notion involves generations as birth cohorts, as when referring to those born during the 1930s (which was a relatively small cohort owing to the grim economics at the time of their birth, and now that group entering old age) or the 1970s (the beginning of the so-called "baby-boom echo"). Consider the proposition that one must be 9 years of age or older before socio-historical events create lasting memories. If that be the case:

 

* 98.5% of Americans are too young to remember women voting for the first time;

* 86% don't remember the ending of World War II (in fact, 77% of Americans were born after 1945);

* 79% cannot recollect the 1954 Supreme Court ruleing that began to outlaw racial segregation;

* 73% of Americans are too young to recall Russia's launching of Sputnik, the first manmade satellite;

* 68% cannot recall the assassination of President Kennedy;

* 48% cannot remember the 1974 Arab oil embargo against the U.S.;

* and 45% are too young to recollect the nation's Bicentennial (in fact, slightly less than one-third of Americans were born since that anniversary).

 

Another sense of the generation concept refers to lineal generations, involving familial generations and the tensions over continuities and discontinuities of socialization. For example, consider the differences between first- and second-generation Americans. The second-generations may well speak English at school and with friends, but speak their parents' native tongue while at home. Generational conflict may well erupt over the second's enculturation into American society and their perceived disregard (or even disdain) for the culture and values of their parents' homeland. Enter the third-generation, whose members may not even be able to communicate with their grandparents.

The sense of "generation" that perhaps most intrigues Americans is the notion of generations as historically-conscious agents of social change. As developed by K. M. in 1920, with modernization there's an increase in historical watershed events (such as war, depression, or famine), that leads to different social realities experienced by different generations within different stages of life development. Each century may see three or four such generations, attracting adjacent cohorts as a magnet attracts magnetic filings. As M. H. observed in The Collective Memory (1950), these are the groups "that develop the reigning conceptions and mentality of a society during a certain period [and then] fade away in time, making room for others, who in turn command the sway of custom and fashion opinion from new models." Two such generations that have received considerable publicity are the postwar Baby Boomers and members of the so-called Generation X. So how truly different are they? When comparing these two generations several factors need to be taken into account: First, any comparison must control for their location in the life-cycle, requiring that we look at the Boomers in the 1970s and Xers in the 1990s. Second, we must take into account the general socio-cultural climate when our two snapshots in time are taken. For instance, if we were to compare the political leanings of these two generations when in their twenties, we must compensate for the fact that the times are more conservative in the 1990s than they were in the 1970s. Click here to see the basic trust in others held by Boomers and Xers Voice of the Shuttle's "Generation Wars" links

 

THE S. AND H. MODEL OF GENERATIONS

It was the end of the century. The world was in chaos. Nations worked furiously to subvert other nations. Men and women were confused about their place and purpose. The country was amidst the ravages of a deadly, sexually-transmitted epidemic. Myriad were the double agents, impostors, and traitors who reveled in the tumult. Even the faithful were corrupt, producing a moral backlash. Populism was making a return as the gap between the haves and have-nots was reaching an extreme.

Sound familiar? No, it is not a summary of our times but rather a description of the ending of the nineteenth century at the conclusion of the Guilded Age--a time in the West of great urban homelessness, of sexual revolutions and epidemics, and of upheaval in gender roles.

Given the thesis of these pages that most of the times of our lives have a cyclical quality, it should come as no surprise that parallels should arise in the life experiences of certain generations. The most notable elaboration of this argument in recent years is W. S. and N. H.'s Generations: The History of America's Future (W. M., 1991). The authors (two Boomer historians who initially wondered if another generation like theirs ever existed in American society) contend that four types of generations, each with its own salient character traits, have recurred throughout American history. Causing this four generation sequence are (a) regular 40-45-year cycles of secular and spiritual social movements, and (b) a supposed human tendency of human beings to correct for the perceived excesses of their elders by raising their progeny in a manner opposite the way they themselves were brought up. The secular crises arise when society focuses on ways to reorder its institutions and public behavior; the spiritual reawakenings are those periods when the social focus is on altering personal values and private behaviors. Nurturing styles shift from relaxed to rigid and then from underprotective to overprotective, with each style laying down a "peer personality" matrix for each new generation.

The result of such social cycles and socialization tendencies are two dominant generations sandwiched between two recessive generations. During social movements the dominant generations are entering rising adulthood and elderhood while the recessive generations are entering youth and the midlife years. So you were born in the mid-1970s? Your generational clones are the Cavalier (born 1615-1647), Liberty (1724-1741), Gilded (1822- 1842), and Lost (1883-1900) generations.

  The Millennial Files: Synthesizing technological history and generations

Wm. M.'s Time Page

 

GENERATION X

Yahoo - Society and Culture:Age:Generation X

GenXpage

Generation X

Gen-X

Welcome to EmPower X!

The Alternative Group

Conservative Generation X

 

BABY BOOM

 

Boomernet -- The Baby Boomers' Surfing Center

The Baby Boomers

Boomer Heaven

Bill's Baby Boomer Pages

 

 

TIME AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY

With the increasing commodification of time and given competitive capitalism's production of "winners" and "losers," it should come as no surprise that time as well as wealth has become thoroughly and invidiously stratified.

To occupy different positions in the social hierarchy is to have different temporal orientations to everyday life. This involves such matters as: 

* orientations to the past, present, and future. For instance, Harvard Professor J, M., director of the Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (quoted in the Boston Globe, June 22, 1994), observed "If you want an inner-city African-American kid in this country to use a condom, you have to give him a future."

* rates of social mobility. For structural reasons, one's control over mobility diminishes during the middle years of life and often one realizes that any further upward climb in an organizational hierarchy is no longer a function of personal effort but rather of job vacancies. The timing and awareness of mobility running out is a function of social class: the higher one's social standing the more likely one's role "peakings" are postponed (the later one graduates from school, the later the end of upward mobility, "job burnouts," retirement, etc.)

* waiting times. The lower one's social status the longer one waits, whether in unemployment lines or in physicians' offices.

* temporal flexibility. In a 1988 study of office workers commissioned by the International Council of Shopping Centers, 38 percent said they go shopping during the work day. Upper-level managers are the most likely to shop during non-lunch hours.

* and differences in life-expectancies.

 

 

THE TEMPORAL WORLDS OF SOCIAL CLASSES 

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

--A. R., Russian-born author (1905-1982)

When passing through one of the most affluent areas of my city while on my way to work I noticed a milk truck parked in front of one of the mansions. Upon seeing a milkman returning to his van with a load of empty milk bottles I was struck by childhood memories of when this now-rare morning ritual was routinely conducted in my own middle class neighborhood.

There's little question for why this disappearance of milk trucks from Levittowns. Inflation of fuel prices, the aging of the baby-boom (whose childhood made such rounds cost-efficient as nearly everyone in the 'burbs had children), the proliferation of supermarkets and the sprouting of convenience stores have all contributed to the obsolescence of the milkman. And yet, here he still is in the 1990s. Among the upper classes, individuals can still afford to maintain such traditional life-styles, including keeping mom at home. It is in the working class that individuals are most susceptible to the broad currents of social change. Here the dual-career and single-parent family roles were first trailblazed, long before it became fashionable for a yuppie couple to leave in their his and her BMWs to their separate professions. The ability to live in or own the past has, for the upper middle class and their highers, become an important dimension of conspicuous consumption.

 

Times of the Upper Class

Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.

--B. S.

When you think about, there are some intriguing temporal underpinnings to the status claims of the upper class. A universal tactic for convincing others that their place is at a lower rung of the stratification order than yourself and therefore owe special deference to oneself is to establish one's legitimacy through lineage. You have an ancestor who was a passenger on the Mayflower? who fought in the American Revolutionary War? who was one of the founding settlers in your state or your community? You are in luck-- especially if your family has maintained its presence and "good name," and if you are in a place where tradition and continuity are valued. Take the richest woman in the world, Queen Elizabeth: the entire British monarchy depends her being able to point to a 56- generation lineage.

Now, with your genealogy chart and supporting evidence in order, you are ready to lay claim to your rightful membership to some of society's most exclusive clubs and organizations. The community, of course, must be periodically reminded of your special status. You may, for instance, have publicized rites of passage for your brood, such as a debutante celebration. And it helps to be part of your community's historical preservation movement; your ancestor's deeds need to remain part of the public consciousness. A new street needs naming? Let's label it after great-great-great grandpa Throckmorton.

 

 

GENDER TIMES

The same passions in man and woman nonetheless differ in tempo; hence man and woman do not cease misunderstanding one another.

--F. N.

During one cold November week in 1795, M. B. of Hallowell, Maine, listed among her household chores: brewing beer, nursing a sick cow and scouring 35 skeins of wool in preparation for weaving. "A woman's work is never done, as the song says," she wrote in her diary that week. "And happy she whose strength holds out to the end of the days."

In addition to age-stratification, the only other cultural universal by which social roles are allocated is on the basis of gender. Numerous are the temporal strategies for keeping women in their place. The female role has, across cultures and history, been generally characterized by its greater temporal demands, greater age discriminations, and by having to perform a greater number of rituals of temporal deference (e.g., being typically being younger than one's spouse).

So how much has changed since M, B,'s time? According to a 1989 telephone survey (n=1,025 women and 472 men, cited in A.L. C., "Poll Finds Women's Gains Have Taken Personal Toll," The New York Times, Aug. 21, 1989:pp. 1,8; see also M. B. and G. M.'s "Changes in Gender Equity"), not much:

ALL WIVES

ALL HUSBANDS

WIVES WORKING
FULL-TIME
WITH CHILDREN
UNDER 18

HUSBANDS WITH
CHILDREN AND
WORKING WIVES

PERCENT OF
ADULTS WHO SAY
THE WIFE

does the most cooking

78%

69%

64%

56%

does the most housecleaning

74%

70%

66%

58%

does most food shopping

69%

61%

62%

53%

does the most childcare

68%

41%

56%

28%

does the most billpaying

57%

45%

61%

42%

does the most household repairs

17%

8%

22%

12%

PERCENT OF
ADULTS WHO SAY
THEIR SPOUSE

does MORE than his or her fair share of chores

11%

46%

16%

51%

does his or her fair share of chores

61%

48%

40%

47%

does LESS than his or her fair share of chores

27%

3%

42%

3%

PERCENT OF
ADULTS WHO SAY

they do not get enough time to themselves

47%

37%

84%

49%

the men are willing to let women get ahead, but only if women still do all the housework at home

57%

39%

60%

38%

the women's movement has made things harder for men at home

53%

55%

59%

65%

 

THE DOUBLE STANDARD OF AGING 

In the Fall of 1996, "The First Wives Club" was packing women into theaters across the country. The movie pushed a common button: aging males trading in their first wives for younger trophy brides.

Why are men allowed to age without penalty while women must look young and lie about their age or risk disqualification from the sexual and marriage markets? Throughout the animal kingdom, the female is the longer-lived sex and yet for years the U.S. Department of Labor labeled women as "old" at age 35 and males "old" at 45?

OK. In American society, strike one against you if you're old. Strike two if you are female. And what if you a a minority member as well? Enter the so-called "triple- jeopardy" model. Click here to see the percent of "very happy" Americans broken down by age, sex, and race.

Special times for women:

* Women's History Month. Out of the educational efforts of the California-based National Women's History Project, National Women's History Week was proclaimed in 1981 to coincide with International Women's Day, March 8. Six years later, Congress set aside the whole month to celebrate the remarkable stories and significant achievements of women.

* Take Our Daughters to Work Day

* October is Battered Women's Month.

* Mothers Day

 

 

RACIAL TIMES 

Over fifty years ago Swedish economist G. M. argued in An American Dilemma that the problem of race in the United States cut to the very core of our definition as a people. Though founded on the ideals of individual liberty and personal dignity, he saw that we could not, through law or social practice, treat the descendants of slaves as the equals of whites. But, in 1944, he could hardly have foreseen what would happen. Between 1889 and 1918, the NAACP reported that 3,224 black men and women had been lynched. Even three decades ago, Ronald Reagan opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

In the early 1960s there was, among African Americans, the sense of time running out for J. C. (much like the sense of time running out for apartheid in South Africa). In 1961, ABC television presented a documentary that presents the blacks' point of view. It tells of black impatience--not a popular topic in some quarters of the South. Some boycotted the show's sponsor, B. & H.. In Louisiana, schools were prohibited from buying its products. A few years later, NBC had to cancel the "N. K. C. Show" because sponsors would not pay for blacks on TV.

In 1976, Kentucky ratified the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery. Since 1980, we've seen the first black Miss America and the first black astronaut. In 1994 marked the 30th anniversary of LBJ's signing of the Civil Rights Act. This opened public accommodations to all, began school desegregation, institutionalized equal employment opportunities, and extended voting rights to all. The South of the early sixties is now as remote as the antebellum South.

Histories of the African American Experience

Certainly one acknowledgement of the history of a people is to have their memories affixed on a postage stamp. It was not until 1940, with the issuance of a B. T. W. stamp, that the United States first so honored an African American. Since that time, 56 black Americans have been so commemorated.

Yahoo! - Society and Culture:Cultures:African American:History

Selections from The African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture

Isis: African American Women in History Abolition Ex-Slave Narrative Collection 366th Infantry HomePage National Civil Rights Museum

Negro Leagues Baseball Online Archives

 

 

Other social groups claiming their own months for historical reflection include:

Native American History Month

Hispanic Heritage Month Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Gay and Lesbian History Month

 

SECOND PART

 

 

 

 

 

 

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