Temporal Regimes

"This is a major piece of theoretical, conceptual and analytical work which yields substantive and highly relevant insights across the humanities and the social sciences. Torres impressively succeeds in formulating a new approach to conceptualize social time through the notion of 'temporal regime' in a way that avoids diagnostic reductionism: as he rightly points out, approaches which insist that there is only standardisation, unification and homogenisation in modern temporality overlook the differences, divergencies and multiplicity of social time, while those which insist on the latter tend to miss the strong 'meta-trends' such as time-compression or acceleration. Torres' notion of temporal regimes avoids both pitfalls but allows for the integration of both trends into one concept. On its basis, he also succeeds at presenting a convincing account of late modern social temporality. It will stand as an innovative and original contribution to the notoriously difficult conceptualisation of social time. It is well written, plausibly structured and clearly argued and as such obviously deserves the highest consideration."

Hartmut Rosa, Friedrich-Schiller-Universitaet Jena, Germany. Author of Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity

"Fluid, highly readable and profound. This very important book brings together classical and contemporary scholarship in the social studies of time in inventive and synergistic fashion. The notion of time regimes will undoubtedly become indispensable for exploratory and explanatory inquiries across the social sciences that strive to tackle emerging socio-technical phenomena and the process of 21st century capitalist modernity. A must read for sociologists, cultural and social theorists, historians, STS scholars and other researchers interested in how time structures complex dynamics of the present era."

Filip Vostal, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czechia. Author of Accelerating Academia: The Changing Structure of Academic Time

"'Time has time' is a phrase that will stay with you long after you have read Temporal Regimes Materiality, Politics, Technology. This book locates an ongoing and seemingly incommensurable tension within the burgeoning field of Temporal Studies: how to reconcile singular generalized narratives of time against the reality that time is multiple and differentially experienced. Torres urges the reader to consider equally the material dimensions of both approaches and reveals how to marry them. We learn that both belong to the other as time's other time! What emerges is an offering to the field of Temporal Studies: a time that is "simultaneous but non-synchronous". It will delight the temporal theorist that the main characters in this book are in fact other theories of time. Temporal theories emerge as lively characters - vivid and robust. It turns out that time theories are a rather motley crew of hot takes, long-views, ethnographies, and philosophies. The Temporal Regime becomes a way to bring them together in order to account for the complexity of contemporary social time."

Sarah Sharma, Associate Professor of Media Theory at the University of Toronto and Director of the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology, Canada. Author of In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics