Time

Question 1

What is time?

Answer 1

• ways of situating events/places in relation to one another.
• primary focus/central concept in geography until the 20th century.
• however, Augustine says that some of these concepts are so familiar that it can become quite hard to unpick. Because we speak about them so frequently we tend not to question them.
• how can we unpack something like time when it is so central to our existence/being.

Question 2

Immanuel Kant and time>

Answer 2

• 1720-1804
• proposed a time/space binary - they should both be approached separately.
• neither are of more importance, they are two very separate realms of thought.
• influences subsequent work - including that of Hartshorne.

Question 3

Standardised time:

Answer 3

• time really matters to politicians, industry and government as the ways it locates things are integral to the functioning of these systems.
• key things that changed the way we thought of time include the invention/development of the railway and international travel.
• beginning of 19th century - time was measured locally - there wasn’t really a need for anything more universal. Farmers used sunrise.
• development of travel emant that a universal time had to be established.
• every degree moves from east to west, time is changed by 4 mins.
• Railway Clearing House selected GMT as the railway standard in 1847. This was due to it being used by astronomers from 1765.
• 1880 - it was recognised as national time. International agreed from 1884-1972 where UCT took over as the basis for global time zones.

Question 4

Time zones:

Answer 4

• essentially time zones are a way of subdividing space according to experiences of time,
• there are countries that sit alongside the international dateline, e.g., 1994/1995 New Years the Kiribati island nation was split across two days as it spanned the date line.
• time zones have been the source of political issues, countries such as China and Russia span a large number of time zones.
• Russia spans 11 different time zones - may cause issues.

Question 5

Bristol time zone?

Answer 5

• Bristol’s Corn Exchange has a clock with two minute hands.
• one is set to Bristol local time - 11 mins behind London. Reminder of the past local relationship.
• at the time, alarms and routines were very crude - time didn’t need to be precise - this is one of the key changes that is evident as we move through history.

Question 6

Time and space:

Answer 6

• reconcilation of time and space in 1970/1980.
• recongition that time and space interrelate and concepts/ theories/ powers, operate across both.

Question 7

Nigel thrift on space and time:

Answer 7

• distinction between space and time is a familiar and unhelpful dualism.
• by treating them separately sets us back and stops us being able to approach things the way we should have.

Question 8

Time geography:

Answer 8

• proposed by Hagerstrand
• as people we have trajectories or paths that move through time and it’s possible to map those and understand various processes through them.

Question 9

Why is time geography controversial?

Answer 9

• too mechanistic but Nigel Thrift counters this.

Question 10

Time diagrams:

Question 11

Critiques of time diagrams:

Answer 11

• doesn’t allow for a social understanding of time and space.
• comes from feminist theorists - very masculinist perspective of free movement. It seems everyone has the same capacity to move, same ability to move, but doesn’t think about consequences that may be encountered throughout the movement.

Question 12

Types of space convergence and divergence?

Answer 12

• time-space convergence and divergence
• time-space distanciation
• time-space compression

Question 13

Thrift’s comeback?

Answer 13

• value of the approach is thinking about things as objects moving through path, time, etc.
• he uses the example of a car accident - considerations as to why it took place could includee planning legislation, diesgn of cars. etc but ultimately it’s a series of people and objects coninciding at the same point in soace and time.

Question 14

Time-space convergence and divergence:

Answer 14

• refers to the increasing ease and speed of travel - sometimes referred to as decreasing friction.
• idea that we can move between places/space much faster now than previously.
• ‘shrinking world’ - places are getting closer, e.g., Boston and NY. 1800-2000 - cities got 22 mins closer.
  distance between London and Edinburgh closing by 29 mins per year from 1766-1966.
• many places have got closer temporally rather than spatially.

Question 15

Time space distanciation:

Answer 15

• occurred due to critiques on convergence/ divergence for being too simplistic.
• refers to the ability to act across time and space, the stretching of social systems.
• a low time space distanciation society wouldn’t be able to respond to issues like climate change very well.

Question 16

Time-space compression:

Answer 16

• proposed by Harvey.
• more developed and experiential approach than time-space convergence.
• more than just an empirical phenomenon but there’s a more general speeding up of life.
• more about experiential dimensions - life moves faster, innovation comes faster, things seem older faster.
• however, still critiqued by Massey.

Question 17

Time case studies

Answer 17

• Everyday lives
• Heritage and memory

Question 18

Geographies of the everyday:

Answer 18

• talking about things that we may consider to be mundane and therefore potentially not worthy of study.
• time as a scale of study.
• due to routine nature, not many think about our everyday lives very much at all.

Question 19

Examples of why do we need to consider the everyday?

Answer 19

1) everyday life is too often overlooked by human geographers.
2) understanding the everyday workings of social/cultural geographies
3) everyday spaces as exclusionary/problematic
4) the everyday is vulnerable and susceptible to change.

Question 20

Everyday life is too often overlooked by human geographers:

Answer 20

• geographers have been accused of being drawn to the exceptional, the new, the exotic but we don’t know when a seemingly mundane event might grow into something significant. How do we know what the start of something is.

Question 21

Understanding the everyday workings of social/cultural geographies:

Answer 21

• identity isn’t something that comes fully formed, it’s developed over time through small incremental events. - There will be significant moments that have shaped who you are but a lot of who you are is just about the day-to-day things that you do that accumulate over time.

Question 22

Everyday spaces as exclusionary/problematic

Answer 22

• it’s important to not just assume that everyone encounters everyday life equally.
  Sometimes we think things are mundane as we think that this is something that everyone does.
• If this is approached in an unquestioning way one may not realise that certain people can’t access things and your experience is going to be distinct in a way that needs considering.

Question 23

everyday is vulnerable and susceptible to change:

Answer 23

• we go through these routines in a fairly unthinking way - opens the possibility for them to be quite significantly impacted in a capacity that we don’t anticipate.
• E.g., during Covid things that were really simple, e.g., going to the supermarket were no longer plausible.
• It is through the attention of everyday that we can start to think about how something as significant and global as a pandemic can have very peculiar but distinct impacts on our lives as individuals.

Question 24

What do everyday geographies look like?

Answer 24

• mundane, repeated actions, e.g. commuting, and how they have cumulative impacts.
• politics of daily practice.
• how big events touch down in everyday life - e.g., COVID, Russian invasion of Ukraine, etc.

Question 25

Geographies of heritage and memory:

Answer 25

• time is integral to our understanding of heritage and memory in particular.
• engages with subjects kike monuments, artefacts, and histories - bringing the past into the present and how this shapes the future?

Question 26

Why is heritage important to geographers?

Answer 26

• Taxonomy, colonial history, and heritage as a geographical collection – how are things stored and presented in somewhere like a museum?
• Heritage and memory as forming identity (including political identity) – moving boundaries, and borders of countries, and leaving populations. How can we use history to understand political events and current geopolitics by recognising that identities aren’t something that just formed in the here and now but are cumulative through time.
• Heritage and tourism – tourist gaze: the way in which we look at the world as tourists and how certain sites and locations which have essentially cultural significance become tourisified – e.g., the pyramids won’t be like they have been commercialised in films.
• Heritage and experience - links to atmospheres (space) and imaginary geographies (power) – what is it like being at a heritage site? How do you connect to something that may have historical cultural significance to you?

Question 27

where does heritage come from and can it be decommissioned?

Answer 27

• how do we decide whether something is ‘worth’ keeping? (age, financial value, sentimentality?). Cannot be as straightforward as old therefore important to keep. Where do we draw the line?
• who does heritage belong to?
• sometimes we may not want to preserve history - e.g., removal of Edward Colston (Bristol) or Nazi statues.
• Stonehenge may lose its UNESCO world heritage site if a road is built around it. Question of which is more important - Stonehenge or transport links?
• some things in the British museum from colonial rile have been asked to be returned to country of origin - sometimes the UK has agreed whilst other times they’ve refused.