literature review - a geography of time
OVERVIEW
The book A Geography of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist, or How Every Culture Keeps Time Just a Little Bit Differently is a book by social psychologist Robert Levine who takes us through a different dimension of the perception of time. Traveling to a different country or city leads to some amount of cultural adjustments whether it's the food, the language, the people, or even the climate. The author talks about how he planned his career to tune it with the temporal lifestyles it offered as opposed to career advancements and allowed us to get a glimpse of this through his experiences in Brazil, where to be three hours late is perfectly acceptable and Japan which has the sense of the long-term which is a foreign concept to the West. The author introduces the idea of tempos being the speed of life and that ‘intercultural struggles over tempo are found all over the world.’ (pg. 7) He goes on to further describe various characteristics that affect tempos being economic well-being, the degree of industrialisation, population size, climate, and cultural values. Levine also goes back to discussing the brief history of time and the use of sundials and early clocks as well.
In the second part of the book, he talks about fast, slow, and the quality of life. He takes the reader through a comparative exploration of the pace of life across 31 countries looking at walking speeds, postal times, and clock accuracy, as seen below.
The pace of life in 31 countries; screenshots are taken from Robert Levine's A Geography of Time
AUTHOR
Robert Levine, Ph.D. was an American psychologist. Levine was a Professor of Psychology at California State University, Fresno, a social psychology writer, speaker, and consultant. He was also the former Associate Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at Fresno.
LIVING BY WHAT TIME?
Living on clock time, the hourly way to schedule the beginning and end of activities, which is most commonly known is not the tempo of all situations and activities. Event time which can be seen as activities that are allowed to transpire according to their own spontaneous schedule is a way of life that is commonly followed throughout the world. Nature time on the other end is the passage of time-based on the sun's position which works closely to the body’s biological clock, the circadian rhythms. Reading about these different structures of time made us interested in knowing if people switched between clock, event, and nature time depending on the kind of activities and situations they are in. We also started questioning how we use our time? If we are being ruled by the clock? And what that does to our relationships? Our body and psyches?
EXPLORING CULTURAL TEMPOS
This book was an interesting read, and got us to look at another aspect of time being cultural tempos and the pace of life. The author uses personal examples throughout the book, making this complex idea relatable.
Reading about the relationship time has with economic well being, the degree of industrialisation, population size, climate, values, and peoples attitudes and how that differs from one place to another got us interested in this idea of cultural tempos and we started thinking about the idea of syncing your tempo with that of another city’s or country’s.
Including personal stories and people was an important element for the idea of cultural tempos and time and started brainstorming on ways to include that for our primary research as well.
Our readings and research led to a shift in our interests, curiosity, and focus from monotony to the notion of cultural time and tempos. Although monotony is multi-faceted and intriguing, it is a very personal and internal process making it difficult to design for a bigger group of people with an overview of ideas. Through our extended readings regarding time and different perceptions of time; cultural tempos were very relatable for Ana and me and we decided to extend our research and design process towards that direction instead.