Michael G. Flaherty

• Ph.D.
• Professor at Eckerd College and the University of South Florida

We can conceive of sociology as something akin to a vast conversation among scholars dispersed across time and space. Using this analogy, I examine the present situation and future prospects of peer review at sociological journals. First, I summarize the model of scientific discourse as an ideal type and distinguish its advantages relative to the c...

ABSTRACT Based on fieldwork in Danish families living with ADHD, we expand on Nielsen’s insight that ADHD is experienced as a state of desynchronization by showing how family members’ rhythms mutually affect each other. We argue that ADHD is not only a biological and psychiatric condition, but also a temporal and socially responsive phenomenon. The...

Time work has served as part of the conceptual framework for research that explores the connection between agency and temporal experience. We advance this line of inquiry by asking how temporal agency is refracted through the lens of gender when people use the Tinder dating app. Our analysis is based on 44 semistructured interviews with Tinder user...

The anti-vaccination movement, vaccine hesitancy, and wavering vaccination confidence have increasingly become matters of public interest, in parallel with an increasing normalization of representations of vaccination as risky. In this study, we used data on vaccination beliefs and behaviors from two Eurobarometer surveys to classify attitudes towa...

Objectives We estimate patterns of covariation between COVID-19 and measles vaccination rates and a set of widely used indicators of human, social, and economic capital across 146 countries. Study Design We conduct exploratory analyses of social patterns that uphold vaccination success for COVID-19 and measles. Methods We use publicly available d...

We estimate patterns of covariation between COVID-19 vaccination rates and a set of widely used indicators of human, social, and economic capital across 146 countries in July 2021 and February 2022. About 70% of the variability in COVID-19 vaccination rates worldwide can be explained by differences in the Human Development Index (HDI) and, specific...

This article proposes a conceptual framework to study the social bifurcation of reality in polarized science-trusting and science-distrusting lay worldviews, by analyzing and integrating five concepts: science work, number work, emotion work, time work, and boundary work. Despite the epistemological asymmetry between accounts relying on mainstream...

Prisons operate according to the clockwork logic of our criminal justice system: we punish people by making them “serve” time. The Cage of Days combines the perspectives of K. C. Carceral, a formerly incarcerated convict criminologist, and Michael G. Flaherty, a sociologist who studies temporal experience. Drawing from Carceral’s field notes, his i...

time.

In this article, the authors highlight their findings on online memes to see what they reveal about self and time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their analysis shows that the self and time are related aspects of social interaction. The self is akin to a theatrical performance and our perception of time is altered by problematic circumstances.

Social interaction is the medium by which temporal norms are established, circumvented, resisted, or overthrown. In this chapter, I examine these dynamics at the analytical layers of world, culture, organization, encounter, and self.

We examine how self and time have been depicted during the pandemic in online memes. Full text: https://contexts.org/articles/what-do-memes-tell-us-about-self-and-time-during-the-pandemic/

Table of Contents

In Romania, as elsewhere, there is persistent controversy surrounding home-opathy wherein various parties try to draw the boundaries of legitimate medical practice. The literature on complementary and alternative medicine features little discussion on the temporal dimensions of controversies surrounding these therapies, focusing mainly on the tempo...

Time Work: Studies of Temporal Agency Examining how people alter or customize various dimensions of their temporal experience, this volume reveals how we resist external sources of temporal constraint or structure. Is the theory of time work applicable to people across different societies and cultural arrangements? This book is an edited collection...

Time work is defined as intrapersonal or interpersonal efforts to provoke or prevent various types of temporal experience. As such, time work is temporal agency. Is the theory of time work applicable to people across different societies and cultural arrangements? This book is an edited collection of ethnographic studies by anthropologists and socio...

Examining how people alter or customize various dimensions of their temporal experience, this volume discovers how we resist external sources of temporal constraint or structure. These ethnographic studies are international in scope and look at many different countries and continents. They come to the overall conclusion that people construct their...

Variation in the passage of time is perceived against the backdrop of standard temporal units. Under certain conditions, we perceive time to be passing slowly. In other settings, our subjective temporal experience is roughly synchronized with the objective time of clocks or calendars. And given different circumstances, we perceive time to have pass...

Research in anthropology and sociology has focused on the social organization of time and time reckoning. There is, consequently, an emphasis on cross-cultural differences in the meaning of time. This line of inquiry neglects variation in the perceived passage of time as well as temporal agency. Following a review of extant research in anthropology...

This study examines the temporal structure of projected futures. The sociology of time is an established line of inquiry, but the existing literature lacks empirically grounded description of the cultural and cognitive dimensions of projected futures. When individuals imagine their futures, what is the qualitative nature and temporal structure of t...

Here is a link to the article: http://theconversation.com/why-time-seems-to-fly-or-trickle-by-70515

Time is of utmost importance in the writings of George Herbert Mead, the American pragmatist philosopher and social psychologist. Yet, despite Mead's prominence as the primary source of the symbolic interactionist approach to sociology, most social scientists are unfamiliar with his perspective on temporality. We describe his analysis of the presen...

As we experience and manipulate time--be it as boredom or impatience--it becomes an object: something materialized and social, something that affects perception, or something that may motivate reconsideration and change. Ethnographies of Youth and Temporality provides a diverse collection of ethnographic studies and theoretical explorations of yout...

Scholars have observed growing variability in life course transitions, such as entry into a full-time job. Life course theorists use the concept of agency to account for increasing diversity and unpredictability in developmental trajectories. In so doing, they presume that agency can only be a source of heterogeneity. Drawing from in-depth intervie...

The origin of poignancy is our awareness of eventual loss due to the ephemerality of existence. Socialization produces a self that is simultaneously subject and object, knower and known. Self-consciousness is an awareness that one exists, one matters, and strong feelings are attached to one's continued existence. To be self-conscious, however, is t...

This book examines intrapersonal and interpersonal effort directed toward provoking or preventing various dimensions of temporal experience. My concept, "time work," refers to temporal agency in social interaction--that is, the agentive micromanagement of time in everyday life.

A summary of the origins and development of phenomenology as a conceptual framework within sociological theory.

This paper presents a theoretical model that identifies and accounts for the full range of variation in the experience of duration. The model has been generated through inductive theory construction, using empirical materials drawn from the triangulation of qualitative methods. Its central proposition is that variation in the perceived passage of t...

Flaherty's cross-cultural theory purports to account for variation in the perceived passage of time. Recent events in Argentina provide an opportunity to assess the applicability of this theory to a Latin American nation. We conducted interviews with 198 persons who participated in various kinds of political activism. The respondents who felt that...

We formulate a comprehensive theory that accounts for variation in the perception of time. According to our theory, lived time is perceived to pass slowly (protracted duration) when conscious information processing is high; lived time is perceived to be synchronized with clock time (synchronicity) when conscious information processing is moderate;...

This article appraises two images of the social situation: Blumer's symbolic interactionism and Goffman's microstructuralism. Blumer stresses the improvisational and consequently unpredictable character of social interaction, while Goffman emphasizes situational determinism along with mutual predictability through self-abnegation. The evaluation of...

This study examines sociotemporal rhythms in the volume of e-mail. E-mail is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but we hypothesize that there are non-random patterns in the temporal flow of e-mail. We counted the total number of e-mail messages received per hour by any address at our college for more than eight months. Non-random patterns...

The literature on agency neglects temporality; the literature on temporality neglects agency. This paper integrates these largely separate lines of research with the concept "time work," which is defined as individual or interpersonal efforts to create or suppress particular kinds of temporal experience. Semistructured, open-ended interviews were c...

In this note, I conceptualize four models of causal processes that govern various dimensions of temporal experience. The first is classic determinism, while the other three are variations on the theme of self-determination. Efforts at self-determination are defined as forms of agency that I call time work. These agentic practices involve attempts t...

Se aborda la percepción del tiempo y los fenómenos que ocurren en el ser humano como es la dualidad entre el tiempo cronológico y la percepción subjetiva en cada individuo.

Time is of utmost importance in the writings of George Herbert Mead, the American pragmatist philosopher and social psychologist. Yet, despite Mead's prominence as the primary source of the symbolic interactionist approach to sociology, most social scientists are unfamiliar with his perspective on temporality. We describe his analysis of the presen...

The author has spent much of the last 10 years investigating variation in the perceived passage of time. In this article, the author reflects on the conduct of that research and discusses 5 principles that are pertinent to issues of validity, truth, and method in the study of temporal experience: intellectual curiosity, systematic empiricism, analy...

This paper concerns the relationship between objective and subjective time. Ordinarily one's perception of time is synchronized roughly with the time of clocks and calendars (synchronicity), but under certain conditions it seems that time is passing very slowly (protracted duration). We used two different methods to obtain personal narratives conce...

This article documents an exploration of the following question: How does transition from one to another subuniverse of social reality shape the individual's sense of duration? That question is addressed through a phenomenological analysis of time-consciousness. The data consist of personal testimony in the form of anecdotes that summarize incident...

Variation in the passage of time is perceived against the backdrop of standard temporal units. Under certain conditions, we perceive time to be passing slowly. In other settings, our subjective temporal experience is roughly synchronized with the objective time of clocks or calendars. And given different circumstances, we perceive time to have pass...

Federal policy currently permits children to be placed in adult jails if they are kept separate from adult prisoners. However, past research suggests that facility and staff limitations at jails often result in juveniles being held in isolation without supervision. Based upon a national probability sample, the following hypotheses are tested: the s...