Filip Vostal

The Czech Academy of Sciences | AVCR · Institute of Philosophy

Sostengo que algunos argumentos asociados al “debate sobre la aceleración”, consolidados por la obra de Hartmut Rosa, son “inflacionarios”, pero no necesariamente incorrectos. A continuación, explico qué significa esa dramatización conceptual y en qué consiste el enfoque “deflacionario”. Después esbozo cinco comentarios polémicos sobre la modernida...

Professor Thomas Osborne (SPAIS, University of Bristol, author of Aspects of Enlightenment: Social Theory and The Ethics of Truth (1998) and The Structure of Modern Cultural Theory (2008) visited Prague in mid-2018 and presented a paper On Montesquieu, Markets and the Liberalism of Fear. The interview was conducted online by Dr. Filip Vostal (CSTSS...

In this article, we examine and discuss observations on projectification from organizational and management studies and contextualize them with recent insights from the discourse around social acceleration. Against the backdrop of these debates, we ethnographically inquire into project work strategies in fusion research. First, we briefly survey ex...

Proliferating literature claims that academia is in a critical condition, generating armies of anxious, neurotic and time-hungry individuals which are governed by the speed imperatives integral to a modernist and capitalist rationality. This book puts the temporal ordering of academic life under the microscope, and showcases the means of yielding a...

Paper money was first used in China as early as the sixth century AD. Since that time, counterfeits have circulated in parallel with authentic paper money. After WWII the interest of art collectors in historical emergency paper money surged and counterfeiting became a complex phenomenon. In fact, the use of scientific investigation for determining...

This essay considers Judy Wajcman’s book Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism and an edited volume by her and Nigel Dodd entitled Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational and Social Temporalities. The essay claims that the two books challenge the one-dimensional and somewhat deterministic notion of a blanket, all-enco...

There are two kinds of often intertwined arguments accounting for innovative appraisals of the current developments in scientific landscape. The first maintains that science is not in any way different from other social realms and can be characterized by unprecedented dynamization (or acceleration) observable on various levels and in different dime...

The connection between modernization and social acceleration is now a prominent theme in critical social analysis. Taking a cue from these debates, I explore attempts that aim to ‘slow down modernity’ by resisting the dynamic tempo of various social processes and experiences. The issue of slowdown now accounts for a largely unquestioned measure, ex...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to link up and think through two bodies of literature, namely the critique of predatory publishing practices and the critique of political economy of established publishers, while introducing a reflection on the dynamic asymmetries of geopolitics and economics of globalizing knowledge production. Design/method...

The connection between modernization and social acceleration is now a prominent theme in critical social analysis. Taking a cue from these debates, I explore attempts that aim to ‘slow down modernity’ by resisting the dynamic tempo of various social processes and experiences. The issue of slowdown now accounts for a largely unquestioned measure, ex...

Is acceleration an unprecedented and defining feature of modernity? Or only of late modernity? Is it a sole effect of modern capitalism? Do we live in an ever-accelerating world? If so, what are the social, cultural, psychological, political and ethical implications? In the last two decades a lively debate has emerged around social acceleration as...

A number of authors have recently criticized the transformation of academic institutions under neoliberal hegemony (e.g. Martins 2004; Lock and Lorenz 2007; De Angelis and Harvie 2009; Molesworth et al. [eds] 2010; Bailey and Freedman [eds] 2011; Vincent 2011; Docherty 2011; Holmwood [ed.] 2011c; Collini 2012; Lorenz 2012; McGettigan 2013). However...

Critical literature inquiring into the transformation of academia increasingly features reflections and observations indicating how diverse academic operations, processes, experiences and activities intensify. Diagnosing the state of contemporary British academia,2 which this book is largely preoccupied with, Thomas Docherty warns that ‘structural...

When diagnosing the social experience of acceleration, Rosa and Scheuerman (2009: 5) imply that increasing pressure to accelerate is gradually dismantling the subjective life-world. As we saw earlier, this may have detrimental consequences for the temporal autonomy of both individuals and institutions. However, one of the questions I will explore i...

This chapter develops a political economy of acceleration (see also Glezos 2012) whilst highlighting both structural and cultural aspects of capitalism. It seeks to re-examine the ways in which acceleration is not only a key constituent of capitalism, but also cultural leverage that challenges ‘slower’, differently paced, societal fields. The analy...

Whereas the previous chapter analysed the internal logic of and the rhetoric associated with ‘fast’ university sites, this chapter looks at a ‘slow’ university site: the traditional university discipline of sociology. Here we mean a site that is not channelled directly into the new university mission, but that nevertheless may be subject to some of...

The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate a largely new and unexplored feature of the sociology of higher education: the emergence of ‘fast’ sites within academia. This chapter looks at knowledge mediators (see Osborne 2004; Meyer 2010), whose task it is to speed up the process of translating research, ideas and knowledge into tradable, possibly...

Considering analytical threads developed throughout the book, calls for the ‘blanket’ slowing down of academia and the need to establish an ‘ethic of slowness’ might seem somewhat attractive and even desirable — especially if they are associated with the critique of neoliberal assumptions that fuel the speeding-up and dynamization of academia. More...

Academic institutions today are often run as market-driven businesses and expected to be core drivers of economic growth (for critical appraisals of this trend see e.g. De Angelis and Harvie 2009; Holmwood 2011c; Halffman and Radder 2015). Additionally policy focus on higher education and state intervention in the modes of academic governance has i...

The era of a 'slow-paced' academia characterized by leisurely tempos of research and pedagogy has gone. Academia is now an intensely social site, and the boundaries between capitalist dynamics and academic life have become blurred. Academic workloads are increasing as academics have to deal with an ever-growing number of tasks, information, obligat...

Intensification, speed of change and faster pace of life have recently emerged as significant issues in studies analysing the current academic climate. This article takes up the ‘social acceleration thesis’ as a conceptual resource for capturing the relationship between the individual experience of time and the changing structure and operations of...

The English translation of Hartmut Rosa’s book Beschleunigung: Die Veranderung de Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne (2005a) accounts for a long-awaited investigation of the causes, manifestations and consequences of acceleration: a frequently pronounced attribute of modernity; often, however, approached in a popular and impressionistic—rather than scho...

It is relatively uncontroversial to say that increasing workload, speed of change and the feeling that life is getting faster negatively impact on the academic profession. Drawing from primary data and secondary analyses, this article, nonetheless, highlights the specific ambivalence that emerges from investigations of time experience in contempora...

This article makes the case that speed has become significant, indeed central, as a social scientific category and focus of attention today. In particular, it engages with two contemporary theoretical currents that conceptualize the causes, consequences and manifestations of social speed as a fundamental feature of modernity. One key contribution i...

From the temporal perspective, this article examines shifts in the production of sociological knowledge. It identifies two kinds of rhythms of sociology: 1) that of sociological standpoints and techniques of investigation and 2) that of contemporary academic life and culture. The article begins by discussing some of the existing research strategies...

Engaging with the work of Hartmut Rosa, this article offers an account of the politics of time in the contemporary corporatizing and enterprising university. It examines the emerging "third mission" for the university, and the ways in which this has enabled an array of new actors and their projects and practices to operate in, and on, university sp...