Thus, over a period of years, this essay gradually took shape. It is sustained by the wish to come up with a fairly sound social scientific diagnosis of the current changes in the concept of time, but also in the experience of time and the conflicts about time, a diagnosis which is intended to open up knowledge to current everyday life. The subjective awareness of individuals about what is happening in them and with them timewise can be communicated to others only in fragmentary form. What the social sciences are able to contribute is the establishment of those fine links which reveal ‘society’ in the experience of every individual. Like a test liquid which flows through the body to detect particular substances and their courses, 'society' and social time run through a life, however individually distinctive and equipped it is. For time, this symbolic product of human coordination and ascription of significance, collectively shaped and moulded at a deep level, retains its relation to others even at moments of distinctive individual feeling. Even the time of the lonely is merely a lack of jointly spent, of shared time. And the lack of time, in turn, is proportionate to the wealth of socially moulded expectations and the standards of one's own behaviour.
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Introduction