Temporal Dimensions of Social Change in Sustainable Communities

Abstract

This article offers a macrohistory perspective on sociocultural change to reveal a wide spectrum of diverse approaches to time across cultures and history. The Causal Layered Analysis explores three distinct concepts of time: the cyclic, linear, and eternal views of time. The cyclic concept of time was dominant in tribal groups of primitive communism in the Palaeolithic period, and linear time is intrinsic to the goal-oriented late capitalist era. As a reaction to the accelerating pace of life in the twentieth century, a slow living movement develops in various models of sustainable communities. Thus, a changed worldview and a different approach to time can be observed in emerging alternative cultures. The case study of Damanhur, a sustainable community promoting time travel as a tool of cultural transformation, provides an example of a transmodern culture embracing eternal time. The path of evolution of the concept of time across history was established through literature, as well as by empirical evidence of select examples. Thus, the hypothesis that social change can be traced by observing culture-dependent approaches to time through history has been confirmed. The analysis of the changing concept of time across historic dimensions revealed sociocultural implications of the current linear concept, as well as indicated emerging changes of consciousness reflected in novel ways of regarding time and space, as a function of alternative futures.