Hartmut Rosa Open Lecture at Södertörn University
Tuesday, 5 May 10:00-12:00
MB503, Södertörn University, Campus Flemingsberg
Arranged by: Media and Communication Studies at the School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University
Hartmut Rosa will talk about social acceleration, speed, modernity and identity (see review by Hans Ruin in SvD).
The publisher Columbia University Press writes about Rosa’s book Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity:
Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual’s free time.
According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the “shrinking of the present,” a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match the future. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on “slipping slopes,” a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.
Hartmut Rosa is a professor of sociology and political science at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena and a visiting professor of sociology at the New School. He has also taught at Harvard University. He is the author of Alienation and Acceleration: Towards a Critical Theory of Late-Modern Temporality and coeditor, with William E. Scheuerman, of High-Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power, and Modernity.