Time‐Space

Abstract

All social life is ordered over time and through space. However, when sociologists attend to the “situated” character of social life, they do not treat time‐space as simply the temporal and spatial environment of the phenomena they study. They see social life as not just being “in” time‐space, they see time‐space as central to all social interaction. The “situatedness” of social life involves time‐space as a constitutive feature in the construction and reconstruction of what people do and in the way they do things together. The ordering of social life comes about because social practices are routinely made to come together across time‐space as shared experiences. This binding of time‐space is expressed in the ways in which societies, institutions, and individuals organize time‐space.