Time–space compression (also known as space–time compression and time–space distanciation) is an idea referring to the altering of the qualities of space–time and the relationship between space and time that is a consequence of the expansion of

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used f ...

. It is rooted in

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

's theory of the "annihilation of space by time" originally elaborated in the ''

Grundrisse The ''Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie'' (''Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy'') is an unfinished manuscript by the German philosopher Karl Marx. The series of seven notebooks was rough-drafted by Marx, chiefly for ...

'', and was later articulated by Marxist geographer

David Harvey David W. Harvey (born 31 October 1935) is a British-born Marxist economic geographer, podcaster and Distinguished Professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He received his P ...

in his book ''The Condition of Postmodernity''. A similar idea was proposed by

Elmar Altvater Elmar Altvater (Kamen, Province of Westphalia, 24 August 1938 – 1 May 2018) was Professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institut of the Free University of Berlin, before retiring on 30 September 2004. He continued to work at the institut ...

in an article in ''PROKLA'' in 1987, translated into English as "Ecological and Economic Modalities of Time and Space" and published in '' Capitalism Nature Socialism'' in 1990. Time–space compression occurs as a result of technological innovations driven by the global expansion of capital that condense or elide spatial and temporal distances, including technologies of communication (

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

fax machine Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

) and

travel Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel c ...

(rail, cars, trains, jets), driven by the need to overcome spatial barriers, open up new markets, speed up production cycles, and reduce the turnover time of capital. According to

Paul Virilio Paul Virilio (; 4 January 1932 – 10 September 2018) was a French cultural theorist, urbanist, architect and aesthetic philosopher. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with divers ...

, time-space compression is an essential facet of capitalist life, saying that "we are entering a space which is speed-space ... This new other time is that of electronic transmission, of high-tech machines, and therefore, man is present in this sort of time, not via his physical presence, but via programming" (qtd. in ''Decron'' 71). In ''Speed and Politics'', Virilio coined the term dromology to describe the study of "speed-space". Virilio describes velocity as the hidden factor in wealth and power, where historical eras and political events are effectively speed-ratios. In his view, acceleration destroys space and compresses time in ways of perceiving reality. Theorists generally identify two historical periods in which time–space compression occurred; the period from the mid-19th century to the beginnings of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, and the end of the 20th century. In both of these time periods, according to Jon May and Nigel Thrift, "there occurred a radical restructuring in the nature and experience of both time and space ... both periods saw a significant acceleration in the pace of life concomitant with a dissolution or collapse of traditional spatial co-ordinates".

Criticism

Doreen Massey critiqued the idea of time-space compression in her discussion of globalization and its effect on our society. She insisted that any ideas that our world is "speeding up" and "spreading out" should be placed within local social contexts. "Time-space compression", she argues, "needs differentiating socially": "the ways in which people are placed within 'time-space compression' are complicated and extremely varied". In effect, Massey is critical of the notion of "time-space compression" as it represents capital's attempts to erase the sense of the local and masks the dynamic social ways through which places remain "meeting places". For

Moishe Postone Moishe Postone (April 17, 1942 – March 19, 2018) was a Canadian historian and social theorist. He was a professor of history at the University of Chicago, where he was part of the Committee on Jewish Studies. Life and career Postone was bor ...

Postone, Moishe Moishe Postone (April 17, 1942 – March 19, 2018) was a Canadian historian and social theorist. He was a professor of history at the University of Chicago, where he was part of the Committee on Jewish Studies. Life and career Postone was bor ...

. "Theorizing the Contemporary World: Robert Brenner, Giovanni Arrighi, David Harvey" in ''Political Economy of the Present and Possible Global Future(s)'', Anthem Press, 2007. Harvey's treatment of space-time compression and postmodern diversity are merely reactions to

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...

. Hence Harvey's analysis remains "extrinsic to the

social form Formal sociology is a scientific approach to sociology developed by Georg Simmel and Leopold von Wiese Leopold Max Walther von Wiese und Kaiserswaldau (2 December 1876, Glatz, German Empire – 11 January 1969, Cologne, West Germany) was a Ge ...

s expressed" by the deep structure concepts of capital, value and the

commodity In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a comm ...

. For Postone, the postmodern moment is not necessarily just a one-sided effect of the contemporary form of capitalism but can also be seen as having an emancipatory side if it happened to be part of a post-capitalism. And because postmodernism usually neglects its own context of embeddedness it can legitimate capitalism as postmodern, whereas at the level of deep structure it may in fact be more concentrated, with large capitals that, accumulate rather than diverge, and with an expansion of commodification niches with fewer buyers. Postone asserts that one cannot step outside capitalism and declare it a pure evil or as a one-dimensional badness, since the emancipatory content of such things as equal distribution or diversity are potentials of capitalism itself in its abundant and diverse productive powers. This initial perspective misfires however, when forms of society such as modernity and subsequently postmodernism take itself as the true whole of life for being oppositional to capitalism, when in fact they are grounded in the reproduction of the same capitalist relations that created them.

Criticism

See also

References

Further reading