The social life of time: power, discrimination and transformation
The 1st Temporal Belongings International Conference
Supported by the Wellcome Trust
5th - 7th June 2018, Edinburgh, Scotland
The 1st Temporal Belongings International Conference
Supported by the Wellcome Trust
5th - 7th June 2018, Edinburgh, Scotland
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Update following the Conference
Our 1st international conference was a great success. We had around 180 attendees over the three days with 41 panel sessions and our four fantastic keynotes. Participants offered us some great feedback:
A special issue of Time & Society was published in 2020, containing selected papers from the conference.
Our 1st international conference was a great success. We had around 180 attendees over the three days with 41 panel sessions and our four fantastic keynotes. Participants offered us some great feedback:
- "Created a warm and welcoming intellectual environment"
- "Great selection of papers and panels that challenge the traditional conference format"
- "I really enjoyed the inclusive atmosphere and the collaborative ethos of the conference"
- "One of the most interdisciplinary conferences I've ever attended. Perfect size, great location, wonderful keynotes".
- "Set the tone so nicely, attracted great keynotes and excellent papers, provided a very comfortable environment and good lunches!"
A special issue of Time & Society was published in 2020, containing selected papers from the conference.
Since 2011 the Temporal Belongings network has brought together scholars from across the arts, humanities and social sciences to investigate the role that time plays in communities. Our first meeting in Manchester set our initial agenda and since then we have explored a range of issues including community futures, the role of power and agency, time in community development and methods for studying social time. We’ve expanded understandings of community to explore time in more-than-human worlds and have also rethought the material infrastructures communities use to keep time in our Temporal Design events. Throughout we have argued for deeper understandings of the ‘social life’ of time (Appadurai 1988, Law 2009, Law & Ruppert 2013) and asked questions not only about the rhythm, pace and directionality of time, but also how particular constructions of time challenge or enact particular forms of relationality. Who belongs in particular accounts of time, and who is excluded? What are the effects and affects of various social understandings of temporality? What are the politics of time? How are power and legitimacy operationalised through temporal frameworks? What might it mean to transform dominant conceptions of time?
Research on the role of time in social life has rejected the notion of time as an inert container in favour of a more complex and contested field of interactive relations (e.g. Sharma 2017, Birth 2014, Huebener 2016). Here time arises from relationships between actors, both human and non-human. Indeed some theorists such as Bruno Latour go as far as to claim that “time is not in itself a primary phenomenon. Time passes or not depending on the alignment of other entities” (2005, 178). The Temporal Belongings network has sought to build on this framework by paying attention to how time is made through relations, but also, and most importantly, to the ways that relations themselves happen through the organisation, conceptualisation and experience of time.
We are now keen to gather up the work we have done so far and launch a larger, international platform for exploring these issues. Thus, in collaboration with the Waiting Times project, led by Lisa Baraitser and Laura Salisbury and funded by the Wellcome Trust, which is investigating the relationship between time and healthcare, we are pleased to announce this call for papers for our first international conference.
The aim of this conference is to share current research on the social nature of time and to collaboratively reflect on key issues, problems and methodological approaches. In keeping with previous Temporal Belongings events, we will include a mixture of presentation styles, and plenty of time for discussion. We are particularly interested in playing with the traditional time of the academic conference and will include collaborative, participant-driven sessions where themes emerging from the presentations can be synthesised and explored in greater depth. Our call for proposals is now closed.
Keynote speakers for the conference are:
Please send any queries to [email protected]
Michelle Bastian
Lisa Baraitser
Andrew Hom
Laura Salisbury
Conference Committee
Research on the role of time in social life has rejected the notion of time as an inert container in favour of a more complex and contested field of interactive relations (e.g. Sharma 2017, Birth 2014, Huebener 2016). Here time arises from relationships between actors, both human and non-human. Indeed some theorists such as Bruno Latour go as far as to claim that “time is not in itself a primary phenomenon. Time passes or not depending on the alignment of other entities” (2005, 178). The Temporal Belongings network has sought to build on this framework by paying attention to how time is made through relations, but also, and most importantly, to the ways that relations themselves happen through the organisation, conceptualisation and experience of time.
We are now keen to gather up the work we have done so far and launch a larger, international platform for exploring these issues. Thus, in collaboration with the Waiting Times project, led by Lisa Baraitser and Laura Salisbury and funded by the Wellcome Trust, which is investigating the relationship between time and healthcare, we are pleased to announce this call for papers for our first international conference.
The aim of this conference is to share current research on the social nature of time and to collaboratively reflect on key issues, problems and methodological approaches. In keeping with previous Temporal Belongings events, we will include a mixture of presentation styles, and plenty of time for discussion. We are particularly interested in playing with the traditional time of the academic conference and will include collaborative, participant-driven sessions where themes emerging from the presentations can be synthesised and explored in greater depth. Our call for proposals is now closed.
Keynote speakers for the conference are:
- Charles W. Mills (Philosophy - CUNY)
- Jackie Sumell (Artist and activist)
- Judy Wajcman (Sociology - LSE)
- Paul Huebener (English - Athabasca)
Please send any queries to [email protected]
Michelle Bastian
Lisa Baraitser
Andrew Hom
Laura Salisbury
Conference Committee
Supported by the Wellcome Trust
