Abstract
This article advances the concept of “time–space intensification” as an alternative to existing notions of time–space distanciation, compression and embedding that attempt to capture the restructuring of time and space in contemporary advanced capitalism. This concept suggests time and space are intensified in the contemporary period – the social experience of time and space becomes more explicit and more crucial to socio-economic actors’ lives, time and space are mobilized more explicitly in individual and corporate action, and the institutionalization of time and space becomes more politicized. Drawing on Polanyi’s concepts of fictitious commodities and the double movement, and developing them through an analysis of work organization and economic development in the Irish software industry, the article argues that the concept of time–space intensification can add significantly to our understanding of key features of the restructuring of the temporal and spatial basis of economic development and work organization.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Fred Block, Neil Brenner, Chris Chase-Dunn, Brian Conway, Mary Corcoran, Michel Peillon, Andrew Schrank, Eamonn Slater, and the Theory and Society Editors for comments and suggestions. Many thanks also to Michael Burawoy and Steve Lopez for discussions on earlier versions of this article.
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Ó Riain, S. Time–space intensification: Karl Polanyi, the double movement, and global informational capitalism. Theor Soc 35, 507–528 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-006-9016-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-006-9016-7