Temporal Lens Research Articles

Out of sync: temporal governance and agency in refugee families with temporary protection status in Denmark

Abstract Over the past decade, a series of legal changes have intensified Denmark’s temporal governance of refugees. This development reflects a more widespread turn towards temporary protection and return across the Global North. Drawing on eleven months of fieldwork and interviews with thirty refugees in Denmark, the article applies a temporal lens to analyse how this development is experienced and navigated by refugee families subjected to conditions of prolonged uncertainty, with a focus on how it affects their intergenerational relationships. We find that temporal governance spurs three ‘temporal modalities’ that we call acceleration, entrapment, and rupture, the consequences of which refugees engage with through different tactics related to generational status and social situation. Furthering a conceptualization of displacement as ‘temporal dispossession’, the analysis shows how the temporal governance of refugee families in Denmark permeates the intimate domestic space, bringing family members out of sync, and raising well-founded fears of family separation.

Time Will Tell: A Temporal Analysis of Victim-Survivor’s Formal Support-Seeking for Co-occurring Family Violence and Sexual Harm

Abstract Drawing on qualitative interviews with both victim-survivors (n = 11) and specialist service providers (n = 11) in Victoria (Australia), this article analyses formal support-seeking for co-occurring family violence and sexual harm through a temporal lens. Our findings focus on two main themes: (i) victim-survivor readiness and trauma-informed support; and (ii) service readiness, time constraints and delays in providing support. The analysis sheds light on the disconnection between crisis intervention for family violence and long-term therapeutic support for sexual harm. In response, we emphasize the unique contribution of a trauma-informed temporal lens to criminological knowledge and discuss implications for policy and practice.

Atypical presentation and treatment of congenital cataract and temporal iridolenticular coloboma in a 43-year-old male

Ocular coloboma occurs due to incomplete closure of the embryonic fissure in the 5th or 6th week of intrauterine life. Iris coloboma is characterised by a keyhole-shaped defect in the iris, typically located in the inferonasal quadrant. Temporal iris coloboma is a rare occurrence. Temporal iridolenticular coloboma is an uncommon structural anomaly within the iris that is sometimes linked to other ocular disorders, such as congenital cataracts. We describe a case study of a 43-year-old male patient who had a congenital cataract with temporal iridolenticular coloboma, which is not a common presentation. The aim is to report favourable outcomes of cataract surgery in patients with congenital cataracts associated with temporal iris coloboma with temporal lens coloboma. Phacoemulsification with intraocular lens implantation was done without any complications. Significant improvements in subjective visual function and visual acuity were seen in the post-operative follow-up.

Memory, Forgetfulness, and Multidimensional Acts of Resistance

In this dialogic intervention, we discuss the multiple dimensions of forgetting in Italian history and historiography through both temporal and geographical lenses. To do so, we begin by exploring issues of memory and "strategic” forgetfulness (Del Boca 2002; Favero 2010), arguing that forgetting is not merely a neutral and passive act, but rather a generative process embedded within dynamics of race, gender, class, and space. Starting with the temporal dimension, we discuss Charles Mills’s concept of “white ignorance” (2007), which underlines the ways “collective memory” has been used and manipulated to forge racialized national identities and to selectively forget the colonial past and (by extension) the war crimes committed by Europeans during the colonial invasion of Africa. Within this framework, ignorance, rather than representing absence, serves an ideological function and is used to create oblivion through selective forms of cultural remembrance. In the case of Italy, certain stories of Italian colonial and racial violence (as well as anticolonial and antiracist resistance) have been excluded from the domain of mainstream knowledge production, resulting in the perpetuation and transmission of dominant master narratives based on white, Eurocentric, and colonial ideas of “knowledge.” We also analyze memory and forgetting from a geographical perspective, considering the ways memory and forgetting become embedded in physical places such as monuments, street names, and spatial arrangements. Additionally, the production of historical amnesia functions through the active forgetting of the deep and layered connections that link Italy to the broader global circuits of colonial racial capitalism, as well as transnational resistance. This conversation encourages the exploration of alternative ways of knowing within an epistemological framework of resistance and will promote the use of memories and “subjugated knowledges” (Foucault, 1980) as powerful multidimensional counternarratives for challenging crystallized and selective notions of hegemonic historical memory.

Temporal insights into mega-events and waterfront industrial heritage transformation: a case study of Shanghai’s Huangpu River industrial zone

This research examines the evolution and renewal of Shanghai’s Huangpu River industrial zone after the 2010 Shanghai Expo, with a temporal focus on the profound changes and development philosophies driven by this mega-event. By investigating emblematic case studies along the Huangpu River, such as the transformative 80,000-ton silo, the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Long Museum, this research articulates how mega-events serve as pivotal moments for reimagining and repurposing industrial heritage. In the wake of the 2010 Shanghai Expo, these industrial relics emerged as focal points of urban regeneration, embodying the tensions and synergies between historical preservation and contemporary urban development. This study explores the temporal layers—from the event’s catalytic role to enduring legacies—and reveals how time influences the trajectory of urban spaces and the community’s connection to them. Through this temporal lens, the paper analyses the redevelopment process, assessing how these initiatives have reconfigured the industrial waterfront into a dynamic cultural landscape. The findings offer a dynamic perspective on the temporal dimensions that underpin the redevelopment of industrial heritage sites, providing insights into how such spaces can be continuously activated and symbiotically integrated into the fabric of the city. This paper aims to contribute to a broader understanding of the complexities involved in harnessing industrial heritage for mega-events, with implications for future urban planning and heritage conservation strategies.

It’s About Time! Understanding the Dynamic Team Process-Performance Relationship Using Micro- and Macroscale Time Lenses

Although team processes are conceptualized as temporal phenomena, our theoretical understanding of their unfolding over time is underdeveloped, particularly when “zooming in and out” into their dynamics using different temporal lenses. Team processes might unfold differently over extended project cycles (i.e., macroscale time lens) versus over brief events (microscale time lens). Our goal was to better understand temporal changes of three critical higher-order team processes (i.e., transition, action, and interpersonal processes) over both extended periods (i.e., longer project cycles) and brief time spans (i.e., recurring stand-up meetings). Focusing on two agile software teams, we indexed team processes across these two time spans using computer-aided text analysis (CATA) of meeting transcripts. Macroscale time span processes were captured across 10 sprints (30-week project cycle). Microscale time spans were captured with data from brief stand-up meetings (i.e., using 10 equidistant time intervals from 40 meetings). From a macroscale time lens (i.e., project cycle), an increase in action processes in the early project phase was associated with increases in performance. From a microscale time lens, changes in transition and interpersonal processes around mid-meeting phases were associated with differences in performance. Qualitative analyses of meeting midpoints revealed key differences in proactive planning and interpersonal processes. We discuss how our results provide novel insights for team process dynamics in relation to micro- and macroscale time spans.

The role of the European Union and international legislation in the government of the migration crisis

This paper focuses on the over researched migrant and refugee emergency of 2015-2016, adopting a broader temporal and spatial lens. The 2015 refugee crisis shook Europe and its security and brought immigration and asylum policy to new political dynamics that are developing at a pace and with difficulty in coordination. This particular 'crisis' of 2015 gave a stronger political impetus to the migration and asylum agenda of the EU's destination and transit states. concerns about the limitations of the liberal state, including external border policy, the framing of migrants, European identity and the phenomenon of return migration security, which mainly affected Central and Eastern Europe. Through the analysis of a broad set of materials emerging from the research project, we identified several interacting features of governance in times of crisis, including a multilevel but complex actor landscape, complicated and fragmented legal systems and policy provisions that can change at the temporal level as well as at the territorial level and the current characteristics of a 'crisis governance mode'. Can we identify the specific features that form this state of crisis?

Shared sensemaking during a strategic change process: a non-managerial perspective

PurposeThis study offers insight into how individuals in non-managerial positions make sense of a strategic change as it unfolds. We explore the dynamic aspects of how these individuals perceive and engage with the evolving process, and how shared strategic understanding is created. The study aimed to bridge the gap between structure and action by highlighting the agency of faculty staff members, during strategic change, in a business school context.Design/methodology/approachThe study utilized a longitudinal, real-time, inductive approach based on a single explanatory case study to describe how phenomena change over time in context, focusing on faculty staff members in non-managerial positions. Qualitative data was collected in three phases involving real-time reflective diaries and observations, interviews, and documentation. A combinatory process-practice ontology, was adopted, complemented by a “temporal lens” to capture the strategic change process as it unfolded.FindingsThe authors present a temporal process model of strategic change and identify four enabling factors through which shared sensemaking was achieved during the change process. Additionally, the study explores the role of tensions and dissonance in fostering reflection and progress within the context of organizational change.Originality/valueFindings contribute to the concept of shared sensemaking, and we illustrate how a change process is enabled through the interplay of dynamic (less visible) practices and static (prescriptive) elements of a change process. We contribute towards theory development through a more comprehensive understanding of contextual dynamics and how change processes unfold and interweave, by considering process, structure, and context.

Strategic flood risk management over time. Applying a temporal lens to see how flood risk management measures are (or are not) implemented

ABSTRACT Strategic flood risk management of river catchments involves significant increases in the complexity both of the contents (e.g. the aims and measures) of a given strategy and also its social, spatial, and temporal scales. Conceptually, flood risk management research to date has underestimated the importance of time and temporality. This paper, which is based on ‘historical Institutionalism,’ introduces a temporal lens to focus on strategic flood risk management; it highlights issues of duration and timing as well as tempo and change in tempo with respect to the implementation of measures to reduce flood risk at catchment level. The application of a temporal lens is illustrated through empirical research into strategic flood risk management for the medium-sized Aist river catchment in Austria. The paper uses a longitudinal qualitative research design to analyze the changes in strategic flood risk management in the catchment. The analysis shows that strategy efforts in reaction to an extreme flood event in the catchment in August 2002 can be differentiated into three phases. Phase 1 is characterized by the design of ambitious catchment-wide management; Phase 2 by struggles to implement the strategy due to institutional conditions and protests by citizens; and Phase 3 by redesign of the initial strategic plan to make it less ambitious and by changes to the actor constellation supporting the plan. The present paper offers a process-oriented institutional explanation for this pattern of phases, and it highlights issues of timing and tempo. It concludes with general suggestions for enhancing the temporal dimension in flood risk management.

Epilogue: ‘Claiming Time’ Special Issue

This paper offers an epilogue to a special edition of articles employing a temporal lens to examine the politics of European asylum and reception systems. From camps to courts to casework, the papers explore a range of temporal matters arising in relation to attempts to manage human mobility. In this epilogue, I identify three temporal themes that arise across the different papers and that are dominant in contemporary Euro-American migration governance. These are: 1) the tempos (the strategic, often contradictory, employment of fast and slow speeds); 2) synchronicity (the multiplicity of times in European migration systems, and the alienation caused by disharmony); and 3) the tenses (from thwarted and inaccessible individual futures, to political representations of the past and future, and the enduring reverberations of past events). The prologue goes on to argue the importance of avoiding allochronism and identifies ways the authors avoid temporally ‘othering’ people, including by recognising people’s autonomy in acts of timing and in reclaiming and recalibrating their own timelines and rhythms. The paper ends with a call for the migration sector to ‘widen our gaze’ and to draw out the underlying colonial and capitalist temporalities so as to situate migration governance in broader temporal bordering and dispossession. After all, themes of limbo, impermanence, insecurity, temporal poverty, negated futures, temporal dissonance, and other temporal governance mechanisms that hierarchise, marginalise and discipline us, are increasingly evident across the globe, whether or not we cross a border.

Feeling The Distance: Exploring Novice Student Designers' Perceptions of the Psychological Distance and Empathic Response Towards Variations of a Sustainable Design Problem

Abstract Research suggests novice designers find it challenging to integrate social context into engineering design. This challenge could be pronounced in sustainable design because the effects of climate change are perceived to be psychologically distant, which inhibits active engagement in sustainable behavior. However, prior work assesses psychological distance as an aggregate of its various subcomponents (e.g., temporal, social, spatial, and hypothetical). Limited research has explored how these components vary based on the socio-spatial context of the problem. Additionally, empathy development could be an effective mechanism to bridge psychological distance. However, little is known about the impact of empathy-focused problem formulation on student perceptions. We studied students' perceptions of problem formulations in a 2×2 factorial between-subjects experiment. The problems varied in (1) their socio-spatial context and (2) their empathy-focus. We measured the students' perceptions of the problem formulations using: (1) perceived psychological distance and (2) perceived empathic response. We find that participants reported the problem contextualized in India to be a more immediate threat compared to the one in the USA. Moreover, we find no significant differences in the other components of psychological distance or empathic response between the problem variants. This finding suggests that participants perceive environmental issues as currently affecting people in other parts of the world, and not themselves, but only from a temporal lens. These findings call for educators to carefully consider temporal framing when using socio-spatially far sustainable design problems as a lack of consideration could create faulty perceptions.

Exploring sensemaking of trust through the lens of time: Finnish welfare professionals’ perspectives on institutional encounters with forced migrants in the neoliberal welfare state

While attention has recently been given to the time sensitivity of trust, current research seems to fall short of examining welfare professionals’ experiences of the relation between trust and time. Therefore, this article employs an analytical lens of time and temporality to explore how welfare professionals make sense of trust and distrust in encounters with forced migrant service users in a changing neoliberal welfare state. Empirically, the analysis draws on semi-structured individual interviews with welfare professionals in employment and social service institutions in Finland. Theoretically, I apply a dual framework that leans on the interplay between trust and time. Recognising trust as relational yet fragile, contextual and dynamic, and viewing time as increasingly commodified and accelerated, I show how time impacts and shapes trust in institutional encounters. My analyses uncover four ways in which welfare professionals’ sensemaking of trust was linked to time. First, I show how the welfare professionals perceived the foundations of the trusting relationship in relation to time. Second, time and trust were interconnected in the efficient institutional tempo of encounters. Third, when the welfare professionals were replaced, trust was shaped negatively through disruptions to service user relationships in the series of institutional encounters. Fourth, I show how flows of institutional encounters shaped trust both positively and negatively. Thus, this article contributes to the literature on the intersections of trust, time and migration research, particularly in the transformation of the neoliberal Nordic welfare state context.

Material precarity, performative imperative, and burnout from resilience: surfacing the dark side of resilience laboring in women’s entrepreneurial stories

ABSTRACT Drawing from U.S. women entrepreneurs’ narratives of how they enacted resilience, the current study focuses on the dark side of resilience laboring – when individual resilience efforts and expectations become exploitative, unsustainable, and complicit to maintaining inequitable power structures. Women entrepreneurs’ narratives revealed that their resilience laboring, while contributing to the survival of their businesses, also led to continued struggles in precarious work conditions, well-being crises, and burnout from prolonged resilience practices. To challenge the patriarchal neoliberal values that contribute to the dark side of resilience and advocate for alternative framings and collective praxes, we propose three interconnected lenses to study resilience: a material lens to acknowledge accesses and resources requisite of resilience laboring; a tensional lens that exposes the constant negotiations of unrealistic and paradoxical resilience scripts anchored to identities; and a temporal lens to call out the hegemonic temporal norms prescribed to the ‘successful’ performance of resilience.

Understanding sentiment toward racial unrest through temporal and geographic lenses: a multilevel-analysis across metropolitan areas in the United States

Racial unrest has long been a salient social issue in the United States. Time and space provide essential contexts for the emergence and evolution of racial unrest. However, the relationships between these contextual factors and public responses to racial unrest remain insufficiently explored. This study seeks to fill that gap, blending geocoded, time-stamped racial unrest tweet data with census information. It aims to explore how temporal elements and geographical characteristics of metropolitan areas contribute to the emergence of negative sentiment reactions to racial unrest on social media platforms. The racially charged unrest that transpired in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 serves as our case study. We select 33 metropolitan regions across the U.S. for our analysis. Our findings indicate that temporal processes, encompassing circadian rhythms, weekday-weekend variations, and temporal decay, correlate with expressions of anxiety and anger, albeit not sadness. Furthermore, our analysis reveals geographical characteristics—notably income inequality and segregation, combined with the number of Black victims—to be associated with manifestations of anxiety.

Isolated Unilateral Temporal Coloboma of the Lens

Lens coloboma is a rare congenital anomaly that occurs due to failure of the foetal fissure to close completely causing an incomplete formation of the lens, so usually inferonasal. Temporal lens coloboma is extremely rare; reported cases were associated with ocular or systemic anomalies. We report a rare case of unilateral atypical temporal lens coloboma without any iris abnormality and posterior segment coloboma or any other ocular or systemic anomaly.
 An 18-year-old female presented with a gradually progressive painless diminution of vision in her left eye for two years. There was no history of trauma, and family history was non-contributory. The systemic examination was normal. Ocular examination revealed a vision of 6/6 in the right eye and 6/60 in the left eye improving to 6/24 with pinhole and unilateral atypical temporal coloboma of the crystalline lens in the left eye after dilatation. The rest of the anterior segment and fundus examination was normal. No abnormality was detected in the right eye. The best corrected visual acuity of 6/6 OD and 6/9 OS was achieved with spectacle correction at 6 months of follow-up. This case is a rare presentation of unilateral atypical coloboma located temporally without any iris abnormality and posterior segment coloboma or any other ocular or systemic anomaly. Early correction of refractive error and astigmatism results in good prognosis.

The Paradox of Permanence

This article considers sculpture parks through the lens of temporality, focusing on select outdoor artist projects of the 1970s and 1980s: a permanent installation by Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas; and ephemeral works by Alice Aycock, Mary Miss, Jody Pinto, and Michelle Stuart at Artpark, in Lewiston, New York, and Manhattan’s Battery Park City landfill. While Judd intended to ensure permanence for his works, Aycock, Miss, Pinto, and Stuart created important early works that lasted for shorter periods of time and endure only through documentation, or “ephemera.” These examples, I argue, illuminate permanence’s inherent paradox: sculpture parks and the art in them must change to stay the same under fluctuating environmental, institutional, and social conditions. Placed in sculpture parks distinguished by varying relationships to matters of duration, each artwork discussed in this article also engages forms of enclosure—especially walls, natural or manmade—and openness to heighten a viewer’s situated sense of space and time. Crystallized in artworks consisting of crumbling walls, punctured fences, and dissolving paper, the paradox of permanence requires critical rubrics that can bring permanent and ephemeral work together on a spectrum of impermanence, enabling scholars to generate a fuller and more inclusive history of sculpture, “parked.”

Looking forward or backward: A temporal lens to disentangle adaptive and maladaptive reactions to daily goal-performance discrepancy.

The fast-changing work environment has created growing hindrances to employee daily goal pursuits and rendered it not uncommon for employees to leave work with unachieved daily work goals. The significant ramifications of unachieved goals on employee well-being and performance thus call for more research efforts to understand how employees respond to unsatisfactory goal progress (e.g., goal-performance discrepancy [GPD]). Interestingly, two paradoxical theoretical perspectives exist on this matter, with the self-regulation perspective suggesting an adaptive feedback loop (i.e., GPD on a given day eventually reduces next-day GPD), whereas the self-focused cognition perspective suggesting a maladaptive feedback loop (i.e., GPD on a given day eventually exacerbates next-day GPD). Taking a temporal lens to integrate these two perspectives, we conducted a daily diary study to map out the self-regulatory cognition mechanisms (i.e., anticipatory thinking) and self-focused cognition mechanisms (i.e., rumination) underlying the feedback loops, and identify employee temporal focus (future and past focuses) as critical cross-level boundary conditions to explain why some react to daily GPD adaptively, whereas others maladaptively. Based on 485 daily reports from 100 work professionals, we revealed that daily GPD at work resulted in reduced next-day GPD via increased after-work anticipatory thinking. Meanwhile, daily GPD also resulted in aggravated next-day GPD via increased after-work rumination. Moreover, employee future focus mitigated the maladaptive cycle, whereas employee past focus hindered the adaptive cycle. Our study thus provides important theoretical and empirical insights into employee goal-pursuit process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Settling into uncertainty and risk amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine

ABSTRACT This study explores the process of navigating instability arising from sudden, co-occurring crises in the 2020s. We focus on the combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine on growing material and relational uncertainty and risk among Polish citizens, accumulating in the loss of ontological security. To showcase the practical and narrative presence of risk at the micro-level, we operationalize the broad theorization of risk society using the categorization of material, relational and subjective dimensions within the ‘unsettling events’ model proposed by Kilkey and Ryan. We reconceptualize the third pillar, positioning subjectivity as a meta-category. Moreover, we extend the application of the framework of unsettling events, treating the Polish situation as a case study for examining societies facing compounding catastrophes.The analyzed qualitative longitudinal data comprised 70 in-depth interviews about the pandemic and conducted with Polish young adults (ages 18–35) and their parents in 2021; and asynchronous responses from 43 study participants collected shortly after the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022. Considering intergenerational and temporal lens, we identify the dominant patterns of meaning that interviewees attributed to the pandemic and war, thereby revealing materialities of unsettlement, relational gains and losses, and the erosion of ontological security. .

Time as a Research Lens: A Conceptual Review and Research Agenda

Time is gaining recognition as an important research perspective, yet the assumptions, concepts, and boundaries of this perspective vary greatly across different fields. This diversity suggests that time offers both significant depth and relevance as a lens for research. However, the diversity of approaches also harbors ambiguity and a lack of coherence, hindering scholars’ ability to integrate insights and harness the full potential of time as a research lens. To address this issue, we review the diverse time-based assumptions, domains, and concepts in extant research. Our review reveals three dominant manifestations of the temporal lens: time as resource, time as structure, and time as process. We analyze and synthesize insights of the three lenses to offer an integrative framework to support future research. The framework informs and reveals opportunities for time-based research by foregrounding connections and contrasts among the lenses. Building on this framework, we discuss two principal pathways for future research: connecting the three lenses through the study of tensions at their interfaces, and enhancing the three lenses through the study of more complex conceptions of time.

Time matters: Investigating the asymmetric reflection of online reviews on customer satisfaction and recommendation across temporal lenses

Online platforms’ growth further facilitates the increasing popularity and business value of online reviews. This study investigates the key elements of online reviews and their relationships to customer satisfaction and online recommendation. Our findings from Skytrax suggest that the review textual comments of each product attribute have a positive direct effect on customer rating of the corresponding attribute and a positive spillover effect on other attribute ratings. Additionally, comments and attribute ratings have different magnitudes in reflecting customer overall satisfaction and online recommendation. Such asymmetric reflection varies across three-level hierarchical temporal lenses, including the COVID-19 pandemic (macro-institutional level), customer waiting time resulted from service failures (meso-organizational level), and the temporal contiguity between the customer consumption time and review posting time (micro-individual level). The three-level hierarchical temporal lenses negatively moderate the reflection of attribute-level ratings and comments on customer overall satisfaction but positively moderate the reflection of attribute-level ratings and comments on customer recommendation. Our findings offer valuable insights for managers, helping them comprehend the significance of temporal lenses in shaping customer online review behavior and the asymmetric reflection of consumer perceptions and behaviors stemming from online reviews. Managers should take into account these temporal lenses when designing and implementing online review platforms and when delivering products and services in order to enhance the advantages of positive electronic word-of-mouth effects.