The Timespace of Human Activity
By T. Schatzki. 2010
416 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This book shows that a concept of activity timespace drawn from the work of Martin Heidegger provides new insights into the nature of activity, society, and history. Although the book is a work of theory, it has significant implications for the determination and course, not just of activity, but of sociohistorical change as well. Drawing on empirical examples, the book argues (1) that timespace is a key component of the overall space and time of social life, (2) that interwoven timespaces form an essential infrastructure of important social phenomena such as power, coordinated actions, social organizations, and social systems, and (3) that history encompasses constellations of indeterminate temporalspatial events. The latter conception of history in turn yields a propitious account of how the past exists in the present. In addition, because the concept of activity timespace highlights the teleological character of human action, the book contains an extensive defense of the teleological character of such allegedly ateleological forms of activity as emotional and ceremonial actions. Since, finally, the book's ideas about timespace and activity as an indeterminate event derive from an interpretation of Heidegger, the work furthers understanding of the relevance of his thought for social and historical theory.
Subfields: Sociology and Political Science, Urban Studies
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/819365c3022ed0f0abc2e06ba534ba4aa64c634c
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In Sociology and Political Science
In Urban Studies
Citations in the corpus
- Timeflow: How Consumption Practices Shape Consumers' Temporal Experiences (2015, background): “It is also always on the horizon of our experience as a part of the background of activities (Merleau-Ponty 1962; Schatzki 2010), against which notable experiences like great service, deep satisfaction, or unnerving waiting stand out.”
- Theories of practice and public health: understanding (un)healthy practices (2016, neutral): “In this brief discussion, we have focused on a small number of concepts extracted from the literature on practice theory (Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 2010; Shove et al., 2012), and applied them to the case of smoking.”