A Geography of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist

Perhaps I should be kinder to this book. There are interesting things in here. And yet, when someone uses honor killings as his illustration for cultural relativity... no. Just no. When I want to illustrate that other cultures are different and our way is not the only/natural way? I go to food for examples. There's cultural relativity, and then there's moral relativity.

I had hoped to learn from this book why there is such a big difference in time perception between different cultures. I didn't get a real answer to that, but still enough elements to form an image myself. In any case, Robert Levine shows how great the differences are in sense of time: for example, the time of appointments in the US, Brazil or Japan are interpreted in very different ways at each of those places; his book is peppered with numerous amusing misunderstandings on this.
For an explanation, Levine refers to the "silent language" of the cultures, and that is certainly valid, but that is actually merely making a determination: cultures are very different because they are different, and it is important to adapt to each other. That show more smells a bit like cultural relativism and in that context there are some rather unfortunate passages in this book (among other things an explanation why a man in Pakistan feels obliged to uphold family honor by killing his adulterous sister).
A small part of the book is about empirical research into different life rates, and there the conclusion is that there is a direct connection with modernism (although Levine does not use that word): “People are prone to move faster in places with vital economies, a high degree of industrialization, larger populations, cooler climates, and a cultural orientation toward individualism.” In short, it means that appointments in the Western world are very much oriented towards the clock, while elsewhere it is 'event-time' that determines the pace of life, and that is much less strictly defined. In a brief historical overview, Levine zooms in on the introduction of that all-dominating clock time at the end of the 19th century in the West, as a deliberate strategy, in function of industrialization. In other words, Levine follows a somewhat historical materialistic way of thinking.
In our globalized world, of course, it all turns out to be a bit more complicated, and Levine has to conclude that there can be big differences within every region or culture. For example, the sense of time within the African American community, the Native American community or that of the New York yuppies is very different; and even the citizens of California run at a different pace.
For me, the distinction that Levine makes between living according to clock time or event time is particularly relevant. But the book would have had more persuasive power if it were more stuffed with empirical research than with funny anecdotes. show less

This book is a composite of lots of different time-topics, and a couple of them are really worth your time: his idea of event time vs clock time, his chapter detailing a time ethnography of Japan, and one on how time zones were standardized in the US. Totally cool. This book is low-maintenance and you can feel free to skip chapters at will.

I loved this book, and while I am completely western in my view of it, it was good to see the other views.

This really should have been cooler than it was.

A textbook for Introduction to Liberal Studies. The concept of time and how different cultures perceive it.

NF