Time-Space Relations

Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, described time as an a priori notion that, together with other a priori notions such as space, allows us to comprehend sense experience. For Kant, space and time are elements of a systematic framework used to structure our experience. Spatial measures quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measures are used to compare quantitatively the interval between (or duration of) events. Thus, time and space are two fundamental coordinates of the way we relate to the world, although the ways in which we make this representation are not fundamental but are socially constructed. All time-reckoning systems, whether based on externally “objective” clock time or phenomenologically “subjective” but culturally defined systems, such as Donald Roy's famous 1960 case of “banana time,” routinely involve plural contingent temporal markers, sequences, durations, and combinations of the past/present/future. These are all socially constructed. Similarly with space, as Michael Brocklehurst has argued in Clegg and Kornberger's 2006 edited volume, the imposition of the grid on the land and cityscapes of the United States was a form of rationalization of the spatial world that had enormous implications for the everyday life of U.S citizens and organizations. Just as the spread of clock time is a relatively recent phenomenon, so is the standardization of spatial measurement on a metric measure in most parts of the world. Archaic measures still persist in the midst of modernity: Americans and Britons reckon distance in miles while most other people calculate using kilometers; British sports, such as cricket, take place on a pitch defined by yards and feet, which, when translated into metric measures, are rendered as rather unusual standards, while Americans are amongst the few remaining people in the world who would calculate the temperature of an office or other organization in terms of Fahrenheit rather than Celsius. None of these measures is fundamental; all are social constructions.