This structure can be formulated in more familiar terms: the future dimension of activity is acting for an end, whereas its past dimension is acting because of something. The future is teleology and the past motivation. The present is acting itself. The temporality of activity is, thus, motivatedly acting teleologically.<sup>3</sup>
The spatiality of activity is also a teleological phenomenon. Which places and paths compose a setting (i.e. are anchored in a given arrangement of objects) rests both on the activities that people perform in (or in relation to) that setting and on the ends they pursue in so acting. That, for example, a railing is a place to watch a horse race and a passageway is a path to the refreshment kiosks rests on (1) the practices of watching horse races in grandstands and of imbibing while at the races and (2) the ends that people pursue in carrying out these practices (seeing who wins, being seen at the races, satisfying hunger, etc.). The determination of places and paths also rests on motivation; the passageway, for example, can be a path to the washroom or a path to the refreshment kiosk depending on what leads someone to head down it. The teleological foundation of spatiality is reflected in the fact that people set up settings and locales with an eye to the activities that will be performed there and the ends people will pursue in performing these actions. In the end, teleology underlies spatiality because spatiality is the pertinence that objects around have for human activity, and the pertinence of the world around for activity ultimately rests on the matters for the sake of which people act.<sup>4</sup>
Both the temporality and the spatiality of human activity are teleological phenomena. The teleological structure of human activity is the future of activity and underlies place-path arrays. Human activity thus institutes and bears a timespace whose temporal and spatial dimensions are connected inherently – and not contingently as with objective space-times. Indeed, the two dimensions are coordinately instituted together. This timespace, I claim, is key to the organization of social life.
I stress that timespace is not a substitute for, nor is it an alternative or competitor to, objective space-time, in particular, the conceptions of objective social space-time mentioned above. Social life amalgamates activity timespace and objective spacetime: it is a temporalspatial spatial-temporal phenomenon. Myriad relations exist, moreover, between timespace and space-time. For instance, a transformation of what Erving Goffman (1959) called a back region into what he called a front region, or vice versa, can be understood as an objective temporal transformation of timespace: a coordinated nexus of ends, projects and places pursued amid or anchored at particular objects changes into a different nexus pursued amid or anchored at these objects. Similarly, a reorganization of the betting facilities at the race track designed, say, to increase efficiency can be described as an alteration of material arrangements and the spatialities anchored in them that is designed to change what people do when betting or to speed up those betting actions that survive the change.<sup>5</sup> In ways such as these, social changes can be understood as alterations in commixtures of timespace and space-time.
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• Ted Schatzki