From “absolute” time to “acquiring control over time”: theoretical aspects of social time in publications of the 1920s – 1930s

Abstract

This article examines the publications of the Russian scholars on sociological aspects of social time, which are poorly studied in the Russian and foreign literature. The author believes that they are the pioneers in the field of the sociology of time. Analysis is conducted in such concepts as past, present, and future time; their content and correlation; time as the transformation process; use of time and control over time»; time of an individual and time of the social system; biological time as a step towards social time. The beginning of the XX century indicated the organic correlation of the development of natural science and general science and social practice, activity. Most vividly such correlation manifested in the area of the perception of time, relation the time of publications presented in the article, which are ideologically connected with the social practice of the studies on time, and the origins of the theory of social time.  It is noted that the first sociological study on the budgets of time was conducted in Petrograd in the 1821 – 1922 by P. Sorokin. The authors tried to remain within the field of sociology, understanding sociology as a science about functionality and transformation of social systems, presented by the “submerged” into cultural-institutional environment subsystems of the subjects, their activity and relationships. The article focuses attention on the statements of scholars, which had conceptual significance for the science, as well as for solution of the real time-budget problems.