High-Speed Society
Social Acceleration, Power, and Modernity
280 pages | 6 x 9 | 2008
ISBN 978-0-271-03416-4 | cloth: $55.00 sh
Paperback edition is not available
Everywhere life seems to be speeding up: we talk of "fast food" and "speed dating." But what does the phenomenon of social acceleration really entail, and how new is it? While much has been written about our high-speed society in the popular media, serious academic analysis has lagged behind, and what literature there is comes more from Europe than America. This collection of essays is a first step at exposing readers on this side of the Atlantic to the importance of this phenomenon and at developing some preliminary conceptual categories for better understanding it.
Among the major questions the volume addresses are these: Is acceleration occurring across all sectors of society and all dimensions of life, or is it affecting some more than others? Where is life not speeding up, and what results from this disparity? What are the fundamental causes of acceleration, as well as its consequences for everyday experience? How does it affect our political and legal institutions? How much speed can we tolerate?
The volume tackles these questions in three sections. Part I offers a selection of astute early analyses of acceleration as experienced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Part II samples recent attempts at analyzing social acceleration, including translations of the work of leading European thinkers. Part III explores its political implications.
Hartmut Rosa is Professor of Sociology at the University of Jena and Affiliated Professor of Sociology at the New School University.
William E. Scheuerman is Professor of Political Science and Western European Studies at Indiana University.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
By Hartmut Rosa and William E. Scheuerman
Part 1. Classical Perspectives on Social Acceleration
1 A Law of Acceleration
By Henry Adams
2 The Pace of Life and the Money Economy
By Georg Simmel
3 The New Religion-Morality of Speed
By Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
4 The Mania for Motion and Speed
By John Dewey
5 The Motorized Legislator
By Carl Schmitt
Part 2. High-Speed Society: Theoretical Foundations
6 Social Acceleration: Ethical and Political Consequences of a Desychronized High-Speed Society
By Hartmut Rosa
7 Is There an Acceleration of History?
By Reinhart Koselleck
8 The Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Globalizing Capital and Their Impact on State Power and Democracy
By Bob Jessop
9 The Contraction of the Present
By Hermann Lübbe
10 Speeding Up and Slowing Down
By John Urry
Part 3. High-Speed Society: Political Consequences?
11 The State of Emergency
By Paul Virilio
12 The Nihilism of Speed: On the Work of Paul Virilio
By Stefan Breuer
13 Temporal Rhythms and Military Force: Acceleration, Deceleration, and War
By Herfried Münkler
14 Speed, Concentric Circles, and Cosmopolitanism
By William E. Connolly
15 Citizenship and Speed
By William E. Scheuerman
List of Contributors
Index