Reflexive Modernization
Temporalized
Barbara Adam
I
N THIS article I explore to what extent reflexive modernization makes
sense from the vantage point of time-literate social theory and in what
way the synergy of the two theories (i.e. temporalized reflexive moderniz-
ation and time theory with the reflexive elements made explicit) could facili-
tate improved knowledge for deliberative change.1 Towards this end I draw
out those aspects of the theory of reflexive modernization that best allow me
to show the connections and mutual benefits, leaving unattended those
elements that would sidetrack from this endeavour. Of particular interest to
this exploration are the relation between continuity and discontinuity, the
idea of irresponsibility as a structural, endemic feature of industrial society
and the theory of reflexive modernization's emphasis on (a) naturalization
and taken-for-granted assumptions and (b) the separation of culture from
nature.
To demonstrate the affinity between the two theories, I discuss indus-
trial modernity with reference to its social relations, structures and insti-
tutions of time. I make explicit its temporal underpinnings with respect to
five Cs: the creation of time to human design (C1), the commodification of
time (C2), the compression of time (C3), the control of time (C4) and the
colonization of time (C5). While today the five Cs are mutually implicating
and supporting, historically, I want to suggest, they stand in a particular
relation to each other. I propose the creation of time to human design to be
the base upon which the other temporal developments are built. By identi-
fying the stresses and strains of the cumulative logic of industrial time, and
by considering some of the implications of a logic that has reached its limits,
I show reflexive modernization in action. The issue of responsibility is of
concern throughout the article.
Theory, Culture & Society 2003 (SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),
Vol. 20(2): 59­78
[0263-2764(200304)20:2;59­78;032620]
Dis/continuity
Reflexive modernisation means self-confrontation with the effects of risk
society that cannot be dealt with and assimilated in the system of industrial
society. (Beck, 1994: 6)
Ulrich Beck's theory of reflexive modernization suggests that what cannot
be absorbed by the relentless pursuit of the logic of the industrial way of
life creates tensions and contradictions that fold back to haunt the system
as unintended consequences. Reflexive modernization recognizes that the
continuity and intensification of the logic of modernity undermine their own
base: discontinuity arises from continuity. This structural reflexivity means
that the quest for neat distinctions between modernity and postmodernity
would be a futile exercise. Through an explicit focus on the social relations
and politics of time we can see reflexive modernization at work. Dis/conti-
nuity becomes palpable. We can appreciate what the theory postulates: not
a new logic but the logic intensified to a point of potential self-destruction.
In addition to the continuity­discontinuity relation, Beck et al. (this
issue) raise the issue of `naturalization' and suggest that it has been a precon-
dition for the success and effectiveness of the institutions of industrial
modernity. By naturalization they mean that the structures and institutions
of modernity are understood as given and unalterable. `Simple modernization
becomes reflexive modernization', they propose (p. 3 this issue), `to the extent
that it disenchants and then dissolves its own taken-for-granted premises'.
Beck et al. argue further that taken-for-granted assumptions become the
object of reflection and analysis at precisely the point when tried and trusted
principles and structures fail, when the logic of an established system begins
to implode. Reflection ensures dis/continuity.
The social time of modernization tends to be naturalized. In just the
way naturalization processes are postulated in the theory of reflexive
modernization, social time forms an integral part of the deep structure of
taken-for-granted, unquestioned assumptions. As such it shapes not only
everyday understanding but also the theories that social scientists develop
to explain their world. Up until the 1990s, the explication of social time was
considered to be a fringe activity of Western social science. Today this is
no longer so. The interest in naturalized clock time as social time is
burgeoning and a significant number of key social theorists have made it a
central feature of their current work.2 This rise in social science attention
on a previously taken-for-granted, naturalized element of social life can thus
be viewed as both an integral feature and confirmation of reflexive moderniz-
ation. That is to say, social scientists ceased to treat time as a taken-for-
granted parameter of their discipline and methodology at the very moment
that the logic of clock time began to become dysfunctional for the socio-
economic system of its creation.
The separation of culture from nature is, according to the theory of
reflexive modernization, a third key feature of simple modernization. The
60 Theory, Culture & Society 20(2)
creation of a purely cultural time to human design, as I show below, played
a key role in this process. And yet, despite this temporal separation of
culture from nature through the creation of clock time, there is no before-
and-after, no either­or condition. Rather, embodied time is lived and experi-
enced alongside, despite of, and in conflict with the culturally constituted
social relations of time. Our lives continue to be bounded by birth and death,
growth and decay, night and day. In our daily lives we weave in and out of
these different kinds of time without giving much thought to the matter. The
entanglement and mutual implication of the times of nature and culture are
taken for granted and disattended until, that is, the strains and stresses of
the industrial temporal logic begin to produce anomalies that can no longer
be contained within the boundaries of its logic. Not a choice between conti-
nuity and discontinuity but dis/continuity thus characterizes the changes in
temporal relations.
Time is our window on the world. With time we create, order and shape the
kind of world we live in. . . . Every culture has its unique set of temporal
fingerprints. To know a people is to know the time values they live by. (Rifkin,
1987: 1)
If reflexive modernization was a new form of cultural expression then we
ought to be able to trace it in the current social relations and politics of
time. To ascertain dis/continuities, we would need to understand the distinc-
tiveness of industrial time in the wider cultural context of time-transcend-
ing activities that have been a mark of cultural history.
The culturally constituted temporal relations, which did not evaporate
with industrialization but were altered in their expression and continue to
be transformed through the reflexive processes of modernization, are rooted
in the engagement with the times of the body, nature and the cosmos.
Throughout history, as individuals and cultures, people have established a
relationship to death and finitude, to seasonality and to the cycles of night
and day, change and decay. Art and writing, ritual and religion, science and
exchange based on money have all served as cultural means to transcend
the temporal boundaries and limits imposed by nature. Standing stones,
burial chambers and temples gave material expression to the quest to extend
the mortal self beyond its physical boundaries, to posit a life beyond death.
While the body reminds us of the inescapability of death and the earthly
dimension of being, cultural activities facilitate the belief in human distinc-
tiveness and a distancing from all things natural.3 Products of technology
are particularly pertinent expressions of the cultural effort to extend the
`natural' powers of the body by artificial means and to increase control over
the temporality of the earthly condition. In the light of this history, it is not
surprising that the genesis of the industrial way of life has been accom-
panied by an effort to put on ever firmer footings the difference between
human culture and nature, mental activity and the physicality of being,
artefactual time and the rhythmicity of the cosmos. As we shall see below,
Adam ­ Reflexive Modernization Temporalized 61
industrial being is a continuation of the cultural relations of time by new
means, which in turn have brought about some marked discontinuities.
Rendering those relations explicit further alters those continued temporal
relations.
The Enlightenment Project from a Temporal Perspective
C1 ­ Clock Time: The Creation of Time to Human Design
It is the control over embedded time, common to humanity, which needs to
be differentiated from the control over time afforded by the creation of clock
time during the early Middle Ages. The first mechanical clocks were devel-
oped in the 14th century. Large cumbersome structures, they were initially
located in towers so as to be audible by the community for whom they tolled
the collective daily rhythm. This time created to human design, however,
had/has a number of features that are fundamentally different from the
temporal processes of nature: where nature's rhythmic cycles are marked by
variance, the hourly cycle of the clock is invariable and precise. Where
each rhythmic return in and of nature is simultaneously a context-depen-
dent renewal, the return of the same hour of clock time is independent from
context and content. Where animals and plants have time encoded in their
being/becoming, the time expressed by the clock is external to the processes
it measures. This means that the kind of time that is encoded in the clock
is very different from the cosmic and terrestrial times upon which it is based.
Unlike the variable rhythms of nature, the invariant, precise measurement
is a human invention and, in our society, it is this time created to human
design that has become dominant to the extent that it is related to as time
per se, as if there were no other times. Clock time has become naturalized.
This re/construction of time to human design is an essential precondition
to the development of industrial culture.
During the same period that clock time was emerging as an important
force in the organization and regulation of socio-economic life, Italian artists
developed the linear perspective, which involved parallel transformations
of the pre-modern logic. It is pertinent to see the two innovations together,
given that both are premised on abstraction, decontextualization, quantifi-
cation and rationalization, key processes that underpin the Enlightenment
project of modernization. Both revolutionized the way we see and under-
stand our relation to the external world. Both constitute crucial turning
points in the development towards the modern scientific, technological,
industrial way of life. The linear perspective separated observers from their
subject matters, isolated the objects of vision from their context and frag-
mented those objects behind a mathematical grid. By looking at the world
through such a grid, the world was translated from a living temporal process
into a set of fixed numerical relations.4 Moreover, it shifted the artist from
the participatory centre to a position of external spectator, from implicated
participant to objective observer. Abstraction from context, objective obser-
vation, quantification of sense data, the single fixed focus, preference for
62 Theory, Culture & Society 20(2)
space over time and the association of `the real' with visibility are its
innovative features. They are, of course, also the naturalized bedrock
assumptions upon which the laws of traditional science are built. Together
with the clock-work understanding of the world, this perspective today
permeates industrial societies' public knowledge worldwide. Contemporary
technological developments are the materialization of its logic, a logic that
has become an almost unquestioned norm, taken for granted and natural-
ized.
The naturalization of clock time, social scientists agree,5 has its roots
in the numerous monasteries of medieval Europe where the first and most
thorough social application of the clock-time logic had been introduced and
perfected. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber
(1989/1904­5) suggested that the purpose of such rationalized conduct was
to overcome the natural state: the strict time discipline was to free monks
from their dependence on impulses and the world of nature. Partitioning
and structuring their days into segments and stretches of time trained monks
objectively as workers in the service of God and thus ensured the salvation
of their souls. Gradually, Weber suggests, this concern for rational action
and proper time-keeping spilled over into the countryside and the market
place until it became a duty, an integral part of righteous conduct. Accord-
ing to Weber (1989/1904­5: 119), this active self-control in the service of
God, as it was practised by the monks, became the most important practical
ideal of Puritanism. The doctrines and guidelines for conduct of the various
forms of Puritanism prescribed methodical control over the whole person:
`now every Christian had to be a monk all his life' (Weber, 1989/1904­5:
121). Under Puritanism, however, the negative time discipline that
prevented any `waste of time' was extended to encompass a more active one
of intensifying efforts (Foucault, 1977: 154). Thus, as Lewis Mumford
(1955/1934: 5) suggested, `[t]ime-keeping passed into time serving and time
accounting into time rationing. As this took place, eternity ceased gradu-
ally to serve as measure and focus of human actions.' This engendered not
just the pursuit of a disciplined and frugal use of time but the quest for
maximum speed and efficiency, that is, the compression of time.
While the various institutional spheres of contemporary industrial
societies may have developed different uses of clock time, the principal
structure of the machine time remains common to them all. As Table 1
shows, in the realm of industrial politics, science and economics time is
decontextualized, spatial, invariant, quantifiable and external. Difficulties
clearly arise when the invariant measure is imposed as norm on highly
context-dependent, rhythmic and variable situations and processes, when
the new intersects and clashes with continuing earlier forms. Thus, for
example, we know that not all children learn at the same pace. Yet, age-
based classes, educational attainment targets and assessment apply the
invariable norm as measure. The periodic changing of the education system
therefore can be never more than a fiddling at the edges as long as it ignores
the contradictions and stresses of the competing temporal logics at the
Adam ­ Reflexive Modernization Temporalized 63
centre. We also know that all working time is not the same: night time is
different from daytime, weekends and festive days different from week days.
The idea of working `unsocial hours' acknowledges that there are significant
differences in the apparently neutral working hours, and many a strike and
labour dispute has arisen over this issue: while all hours are the same for
machines, this is not the case for people. Finally, we know that the rational-
ized time of the clock does not sit easily with animal husbandry and the
growing of crops. Industrial agriculture is the domain of production at the
sharpest end of this clash of temporal principles and relations. In each of
these examples the superimposed logic is impeccable. And, from within the
clock-time logic, there is no way of taking account of continuing contextual
variations and distinctions: the continuity is rendered invisible. That which
is repressed and negated, however, has not disappeared. Rather, it is merely
silenced ­ for a while. And, as I shall begin to show below, in this clash of
principles can be located not only the successes and the excesses of the
industrial way of life,6 but also the potential for radical change.
However, the fact that clock time has become naturalized as the public
norm and the linear perspective absorbed as common sense vastly increases
the difficulty of recognizing the role both innovations play/ed in everyday
life. Other principles fade into the background, become invisible. Both the
clock-time and linear-perspective norm act as filters through which reality
is sieved and as lens through which all social relations and structures are
refracted. As such they affect how industrial societies educate their
children, relate to nature and fellow creatures, treat land and livestock,
define and regulate their econo-political life and institutions. No longer
participants but observers, we are separated from that which we observe and
interact with. Objective and decontextualized, our actions lose the charac-
ter of personal involvement; we no longer accompany them and their effects
64 Theory, Culture & Society 20(2)
Table 1 Clock Time Across Institutional Spheres
Political time use Scientific time use Economic time use
Regulate time Measure time Use as resource
Define time values Create clock time Commodify time
Impose time values Impose clock time on Impose economic time
nature norm
Control (and discount) Control (and discount) Control and discount
future future future
Globalize clock time Colonize all time Globalize time economy
Time is Time is Time is
Clock time Clock time Clock time
Decontextualized Decontextualized Decontextualized
Quantified Quantified Quantified
Linear Linear Linear
Invariant Invariant Invariant
External External External
to their destination. Lines of responsibility are severed. Irresponsibility
becomes structurally located.
It is therefore pertinent for social and socio-environmental analyses to
call attention to the fact that the shift in cosmology is a conceptual move
with practical application, a heuristic that first transforms an ephemeral
world of infinite complexity into a static, bounded, quantifiable object for
comprehension and control, that secondly converts contingent, intercon-
nected processes into abstracted, isolated parts, that thirdly moves partici-
pants outside their frames of reference and that finally banishes into the
shadow world of invisibility whatever is incompatible with the logic. Focus
on the application of the clock-time logic in a variety of contexts, working
its way through a range of specific practices, allows us to see the hierar-
chically situated competing logics. Efforts to render explicit what are
currently implicit, taken-for-granted aspects of contemporary social struc-
tures on the one hand, and unintended `glocal' outcomes of processes, inter-
actions and exchanges on the other, are both an indication of reflexive
modernization and a means to facilitate change.
The creation of clock time is the foundation upon which other key
temporal strategies of industrialization are built. Having set out the clock-
time and linear-perspective base it is now possible to sketch the commod-
ification, compression, control and colonization of time as means to bring
into clear focus processes that are postulated by the theory of reflexive
modernization.
C2 ­ The Commodification of Time
The commodification of time needs to be understood with reference not only
to the prior development of clock time but also to changes during the Middle
Ages in religious dogma that facilitated the transformation of time as God's
gift into an object of trade and unquestioned exchange value. From the
Christian perspective, trade in time is theft because it is trade in something
that cannot belong to individuals ­ hence the charge of usury. As long as
the Christian Church considered the trade in time to be a sin and the notion
of earnings on time was rejected outright, capitalism and the money
economy could not develop, since, for the merchant, time is a prime oppor-
tunity for profit (Le Goff, 1980: 29­30).7 While interest and credit had been
known and documented since 3000 BC in Babylonia, it was not until the late
Middle Ages that the Christian church changed its position on usury
(Wendorff, 1991). It is against this background that we have to read the
extracts from Benjamin Franklin's (1736) text entitled Necessary Hints to
Those that Would be Rich, which contains the famous phrases `Remember,
that time is money. . . . Remember that money begets money' (quoted in
Weber, 1989/1904­5: 48­50). Clock time, the time created to human
design, was a precondition to this change in value and practice, and formed
the perfect partner to abstract, decontextualized money.
When `time is money', then time costs money and time makes money
because the economic practice of charging interest means that capital has
Adam ­ Reflexive Modernization Temporalized 65
got a built-in clock that is constantly ticking away. Every hour, every day,
every month and every year brings profit on the invested sum of money.
Equally, every hour, every day, every month and every year that money is
borrowed has to be paid for in interest. This inevitably leads to careful time
calculations with respect to the costs arising from the time that goods are
stored, the time materials spend in warehouses before they are used in the
production process, the time goods spend in transit, the time machines are
running, and the time products lie on the shelves before they are sold.
The time economy of interest and credit, moreover, directly feeds into
the monetary value of labour time, that is, paid employment. Any time of
work and production that is not easily translatable into money exists in the
shadow of this dominant perspective, falls outside its framework of evalu-
ation: the time of children and the elderly, the time of mothers and fathers
and of those who care for spouses in the home, the time of prisoners and
the unemployed. In the majority world, this negation applies to artisans and
subsistence farmers and traders, to the service industry and, more gener-
ally, to women's work the world over (Adam, 2002). Time outside the time
economy of money is `valued' in the shadow of economic relations, filtered
through that way of thinking about and evaluating the world. And since,
furthermore, money relates to power, any time that is not readily translat-
able into money tends to be associated with a lack of power.
Traditionally conceived, the economy is an endless circular flow of
money: that is, from firm to workers to goods and services back to firms,
with accumulated surplus needing to be reinvested back into the system.
This perpetual flow of money is the economic equivalent of the clock-time
and linear-perspective vision: abstract, decontextualized and de-temporal-
ized. In all three habits of mind, the environment (whether physical or
social) is external to, that is, excluded from, the conception. Processes and
products thus externalized become detached, free-floating, independent
agents belonging to everyone and no one in particular, with knock-on effects
for individual responsibility. Of course, here too, that which is banished
from the decontextualizing logic (externalized in economic discourse) has
never disappeared. Rather, it has been rendered invisible without losing any
of its pertinence.
What is not seen, not reflected upon, but externalised instead adds to the
structural rupture, which separates industrial society from risk society, which
separates it from the `new' modernities of the present and future. (Beck, 1994:
183)
In environmental problems, agricultural disasters and the crises of the
caring professions, to name just a few examples, we are today experiencing
the return of the repressed. Moreover, in support of Beck's theory, we can
see how the un/intended growth in `by-products' of the industrial relations
of time begins to dominate the econo-political agenda and force actions in
the present from the position of potential and anticipated effects in the
future.
66 Theory, Culture & Society 20(2)
C3 ­ The Compression of Time
When time is money, then faster means better. When (clock) time is
commodified, time compression becomes identified, equated even, with
efficiency and profit: speed is valorized as an unquestioned and unques-
tionable good. Naturalized, the valorization of speed overshadows other
social or environmental considerations. Time compression, as Harvey
(1989) and Castells (1996) identified, has been achieved by a number of
means: by increasing activity within the same unit of time (introduction of
machines and the intensification of labour), re-organizing the sequence and
ordering of activities (Taylorism and Fordism), using peaks and troughs
more effectively (flexibilization), and by eliminating all unproductive times
from the process (just-in-time production).
Paul Virilio (1991, 1995) has analysed a number of broad time-
compression strategies as they developed over the past 200 years. He has
clustered these into three epochs of time-compression: 19th-century trans-
port, 20th-century transmission and 21st-century transplantation, each with
their own distinct means of enhancing independence of the social relations
of time from space and the body.
19th-century Transport Throughout the ages, Virilio suggests, the wealth
and power associated with ownership of land were equally tied to the
capacity to traverse it and to the speed at which this could be achieved, just
as military prowess is tied to the speed of movement by bodies and missiles
across space. With the invention of trains, cars and aeroplanes, at the turn
of the last century, the relation of time and space has been altered.8 The
speed at which bodies can move across space has been massively increased,
the time it takes dramatically shortened. Since their inception, all improve-
ments in these modes of transport have been primarily in time compression.
However, these increases in speed, as Virilio insists, brought with them a
range of contradictions and paradoxes. Thus, for example, while cars, planes
and trains have become progressively faster, the time spent in transit has
not been compressed at an equal rate. Stand-still and traffic jams, snail's
pace and stop­go progression are key features of today's traffic around urban
centres. Endless queues in crowded lobbies are characteristic of travel by
plane, delays and cancellations an integral part of commuting by train.
Virilio (1991) has formulated the dromological law, which states that
increase in speed increases the potential for gridlock. Evidence of dis/conti-
nuity as well as the rise in paradoxes and contradictions points to the
relevance of the reflexive modernization thesis for these 19th-century inno-
vations in time compression.
20th-century Transmission Wireless telegraph, telephone, radio and, some
50 years later, computer and satellite communication have once more
changed the relationship between time and movement across space.
Together, these innovations in transmission replaced succession and
Adam ­ Reflexive Modernization Temporalized 67
duration with seeming simultaneity and instantaneity. Duration was
compressed to zero and the present extended spatially to encircle the globe:
it became a global present. Globally accessible events and the possibility
of concerted action in `real time' bring into one frame of reference causal
and non-causal, instantaneous and sequential processes. The intensive
(electronic) present, Virilio (1995) points out, is no longer part of chrono-
logical time; we have to conceptualize it instead as chronoscopic time. Real
space, he suggests, is making room for decontextualized `real-time'
processes and intensity takes over from extensity.9 Similar to the time
compression in transport the compression in transmission has led to an
overload of information so extensive that taking advantage of only the tiniest
fraction of it not only blows apart the principle of instantaneity and `real-
time' communication, but also slows down operators to a point where they
lose themselves in the eternity of electronically networked information. With
the potential capacity of extraterrestrial beings to be everywhere at once
and nowhere in particular bound to the inescapable embodied temporal
limits of terrestrial existence and sequential information processing, the real
capacity for parallel absorption of knowledge is disappointing.
21st-century Transplantation The time compression afforded by transplan-
tation is best exemplified by genotechnology, with its potential capacity to
reduce to an instant what took generations to achieve with conventional
breeding methods. This particular intensification of processes has enormous
implications with respect to matters of control and responsibility. I there-
fore want to talk about its promise and costs in more detail in later sections
on control and colonization.
Virilio understands human history in terms of a race with time, of ever-
increasing speeds that transcend humans' biological capacity. To theorize
culture without the dromosphere, that is, the sphere of beings in motion, he
therefore suggests, misses the key point of cultural activity and the unique-
ness of the industrial way of life. Without an explicit conceptualization of
the contemporary dromosphere ­ or, in my terms, timescapes ­ it is difficult
to understand fully the human­technology­environment constellation. It
becomes impossible to appreciate that people are the weakest link when the
time frames of action are compressed to zero and effects expanded to
eternity, when transmission and transplantation are instantaneous but their
outcomes extend into an open future, when instantaneity and eternity are
combined in a `merger of all times' (Castells, 1996: 463). There is no
question, therefore, that Virilio would agree with Beck's (1999: 87)
conclusion that reflexive modernization means that the social sciences
require `new categories, theories and methods' to theorize the dis/continu-
ity.
C4 ­ The Control of Time
The control of time has many facets. Initially it is tied to the re-creation of
the variable rhythmic times of life in uniform, invariable, decontextualized,
68 Theory, Culture & Society 20(2)
quantifiable form, which, in turn, has been imposed as the global standard.
In addition to being compressed through socio-economic technologies,
transport, transmission and transplantation, time is processed by regulating
and rationalizing the pace, order, sequence, rhythmicity and seasonality of
organisms, beings, social activities and institutions. The control of time thus
includes the slowing down of processes, the re-arrangement of past, present
and future, the re-ordering of sequence, and the transformation of rhyth-
micity into a rationalized beat.
Thus, for example, in the production of food it has proven economi-
cally advantageous not only to speed up the processes of growth and matu-
ration but also to control the rate of ripening and decay during transit and
storage. The control of shelf-life, the extension of the sell-by date, the
control of production, storage and delivery to a just-in-time system, all of
this depends on the control of time with respect to a desired pace. As part
of modernity's overall project of rationalization and predictable control, the
control of time is extended to the seasonal rhythmicity of nature, to the
variable patterns and cycles of activity and rest, growth and decay: fallow
periods are transformed into productive ones. The dormant season is, as
much as possible, negated or at least shortened by artificial means (electric
light, hydro-culture, genetic modification). Sexual, seasonal and matura-
tional rhythms are hormonally regulated.
The mastery of time and the control of rhythms, as Castells (1996)
points out, restructure temporality and, in the process, usher in contradic-
tory logics: time is both compressed and denied. When we re-visit the
temporal innovations associated with Virilio's three Ts (transport, trans-
mission and transplantation) we can see how the intensification of the
temporal logic (time = money, speed = profit, increased speed = unmitigated
good thing) has paradoxical consequences. The increase in mastery is
accompanied by a decrease in control. First, with mass public transport and
private (and corporate) car ownership, the speed afforded by that mode of
transportation has become an expectation, elevated almost to the status of a
human right. When it became apparent that there are socio-environmental
costs attached to this speed of movement, the deeply held beliefs and expec-
tations made it extremely difficult to mitigate some of those effects. Both
the underlying belief that time is money, and the association of speed with
individual rights, wealth and power, work energetically against any political
control and efforts to alleviate associated socio-environmental problems.
Second, with regard to late 20th-century transmission, the movement
of information has not just been decontextualized but de-materialized, with
the result that the power of the non-material and the virtual is on the ascent,
which means that events in one part of the world can have almost instan-
taneous effects on the other side of the globe and send ripples through the
entire network. Structural relations and processes that arise from the control
of time tend to be beyond the control of those involved, since the combi-
nation of instantaneity of communication with simultaneity of networked
relations no longer functions according to the principles of clock time and
Adam ­ Reflexive Modernization Temporalized 69
mechanical interaction. `The new level of interconnectivity', Mark Poster
(1990: 3) proposes, `heightens the fragility of social networks.' The
enormous speed coupled with multiple, simultaneous, reflexive connections,
moreover, poses problems at the level of perception, understanding, expec-
tation and action: it constitutes, at all these levels, an unconquered reality.
Social scientists have an important role to play here: elaborating the time
connections, showing how the control of time can lead to loss of control and
identifying access points for alternative action. Two further examples of
increased mastery and loss of control will serve to illustrate how the pursuit
of the Enlightenment logic has consequences that begin to erode it from
within, the key process of reflexive modernization first identified by Beck
in his seminal Risk Society (1992/1986).
Financial trading in stocks, futures and derivatives relies heavily on
electronic networked communication and, as such, is notoriously out of
control. Futures markets, in particular, we need to appreciate, do not trade
in goods but time alone. They are bets on future prices of the stock market,
currency prices, interest rates, even on the entire stock market indices. The
trade in time, which is estimated at $18 trillion for 1999, equals the entire
stock of productive fixed capital of the world. There is, however, an import-
ant difference between the two kinds of trade ­ the trade in goods and the
trade in futures ­ that sheds light on some of the inherent paradoxes associ-
ated with reflexive modernization. While the trade in goods requires
economic and financial stability to flourish, the speculation on and trade in
time requires volatility: the higher the volatility the higher the potential for
quick extractive returns. This financial trade in time spells big trouble for
national governments charged with managing their country's economy.
While the former create wealth on the basis of volatility the latter's task is
the creation of stability. Thus, controlling the future for the benefit of the
present in a context of networked instantaneity, once more is accompanied
by a loss of control that seems to be equal to the increase in mastery. It
means loss of control for governments charged with its control and regu-
lation, lack of control for contemporary members of society the world over
who are affected by that trade, and no control for successors whose present
has been pre-determined for the benefit of predecessors' financial gain.
Genetic modification, as I have already indicated above, is an
innovation with all the hallmarks of reflexive modernization. With genetic
engineering, science controls not just nature's products but its processes. It
controls time at the level of reproduction, which means it controls life and
the temporality of being. Genotechnology, therefore, has the potential of
realizing the time rationalizers' dream: precise control of reproduction and
instantaneous change in unlimited quantities. At a stroke, changes intro-
duced in the present alter the life-course and evolution forever. However,
the massive advances in control in the laboratory are not matched by the
control over genetically modified reproductive organisms once they are
released into the environment. Instead, unprecedented increase in control
in the laboratory over short-term processes is matched by an equally
70 Theory, Culture & Society 20(2)
unprecedented loss of control over long-term effects in species and their
environments: potential impacts of genetically modified organisms are
unbounded in time and space without the possibility of recall or of undoing
mistakes.10
`Throughout the modern era', writes Zygmunt Bauman (1998: 57), we
have grown used to the idea that order is tantamount to `being in control'.
Today, he suggests, `no one seems to be in control. Worse still ­ it is not clear
what "being in control" could, under the circumstances, be like' (Bauman,
1998: 58). Unintended consequences force us to operate in a no-man's-land
beyond design and action capacity. From a temporal perspective we can say
that, at the beginning of the 21st century, increased mastery over time tends
to be accompanied by an equivalent loss of control on the basis of (a) the
functional principles of the technologies and (b) the outcomes of the tech-
nologies. Thus, control is lost due to massively increased speed, instanta-
neity and networked connections. Instantaneity means `real-time' processes
across the globe coupled with the elimination of linear cause-and-effect
relations (in a context of continued linearity). This brings with it loss of time
to reflect and act in the intervening period between cause and effect. It turns
masters into slaves, designers and operators into the weakest links. It has
the effect of fostering ephemerality and volatility and with it a massive
reduction in econo-political stability, scientific predictability and social
security. Instantaneity, moreover, means that such loss of control is global
and affects not just innovators and perpetrators but people at the receiving
end of the time-space distantiated effects. The global reach therefore is
un/intended, that is, intended and unintended simultaneously.
C5 ­ The Colonization with and of Time
The global imposition of industrial time and the contemporary incursion into
the times of predecessors and successors are two different aspects of
temporal colonization. In the first case Western clock time and commodi-
fied time have been exported across the globe and imposed as the un-
questioned and unquestionable standard. This is colonization with time.
The second case refers to the contemporary economic and scientific-
technological reach into the past and future. With genotechnology, for
example, as I have suggested above, the reach extends to the beginning and
the end of time ­ the temporal equivalent to (spatial) globalization. This is
colonization of time. The colonization with and of time, as I shall show
below, provides an alternative perspective on globalization, a key feature of
reflexive modernization.
Colonization with time has been achieved with the aid of standard
time, time zones and world time on the one hand and with the globalization
of industrial time and its associated economic values as unquestioned norm
on the other. In the latter case, it is the time values and the social relations
of industrial time that are being adopted as well as imposed on a worldwide
basis. To be `modern', `progressive', even `civilized' means to embrace the
industrial approach to time. Towards the latter part of the 19th century, for
Adam ­ Reflexive Modernization Temporalized 71
example, Japan (Nishimoto, 1997) and Russia (Castells, 1996) proceeded
to `Westernize' their social relations of time. The political leaders of both
societies considered this to be a precondition of becoming a fully fledged
industrial nation. They realized that there is a heavy economic and political
price to be paid for any deviance from the industrial norm. In most cases
of Third World `development', however, clock time is imposed as norm irre-
spective of its suitability (Adam, 2002). This industrial norm, as I indicated
above, is fundamentally rooted in clock time and underpinned by natural-
ized assumptions about not just the capacity but also the need to commod-
ify, compress and control time. The elements of this package of industrial
time are both cumulative and mutually supporting and form a coherent, inte-
grated dis/continuous whole. As long as the underpinning assumptions
remain naturalized, taken for granted and unquestioned, unwilling recipi-
ents will find it difficult, if not impossible, to make their protests heard and
heeded. Only when the fault lines in the logic begin to become exposed and
irresolvable contradictions begin to destroy the system from within can
alternative visions take hold and openings for change be operationalized.
The colonization of time, in contrast, refers primarily to the econo-
political reach into, as well as the ab/use of, the past and future, that is,
predecessors' and successors' presents. Archaeology, astronomy and
geology, for example, provide insights into the very distant past. Entire
industries are building up around the uncovering of the past, that is, the
interpretation, representation and reconstruction of the past, both ancient
and more recent. Whether the colonization relates to distant planets and
black holes, to our earth history, to the lives of ancient cultures or to the
consumption of heritage, the past as a resource is brought into the present
for use and abuse. With genetic modification of organisms, as I suggested
above, the colonization of time has been taken to the limits of time, that is,
to the beginning and the end of time. With this technology, science extends
its deliberate reach to the beginning of time on the basis that it taps into
the shared origin of all life when it splices genes from one species into
another and it extends its (unintended?) reach to the end of time as soon as
genetically modified organisms are released and begin to interact with their
environments. With genetic engineering, science has therefore achieved the
temporal equivalent of (spatial) globalization: the reach to all time ­ past
and future.
In his Reith Lectures, Anthony Giddens (1999: 2) addresses the
colonization of the future when he suggests that `[m]odern capitalism
embeds itself into the future by calculating future profit and loss, and
thereby risk, as a continuous process'. It is distinct in its relationship to the
future, whether this be in its system of credit and interest, insurance or
financial trading, for example. Since the 16th century the insurance system
has redistributed risk. It makes projections about the future on the basis of
a known past and promises to financially compensate future loss in
exchange for payments in the present. Whether this economic engagement
with the future operates at the private, commercial or (welfare) state level,
72 Theory, Culture & Society 20(2)
it is based on the belief that the future is amenable to human regulation and
design in the present. Furthermore, since the latter part of the Middle Ages,
the economic future is understood with reference to the threat or benefit it
holds for the present. The economy therefore operates in the sphere between
present and future with a view to using the future to secure the present. To
achieve that task, it borrows from the future to finance the present. This
means a radical present-orientation makes parasitic use of the future ­ our
own and that of successor generations. Helga Nowotny (1994/1989) concep-
tualizes those incursions as `extended present', as a future that is organized,
regulated, tamed, safeguarded and foreclosed now. This is a political act for
which perpetrators are not and cannot be held accountable and the poten-
tially affected do not and cannot get redress as long as the five Cs of time
remain the naturalized norm.
Time for Reflexive Modernization
When social theory focuses explicitly on the social relations and structures
of time there emerge the kind of dis/continuities, paradoxes and conse-
quences that are hypothesized in the theory of reflexive modernization. From
the above it is clear that Bruno Latour's (this issue) renaming of reflexive
modernization as re-modernization is not appropriate, that it misses the
mark. As I showed with reference to just a few features of reflexive
modernization ­ naturalization and dis/continuity, the nature­culture separ-
ation, decontextualization and irresponsibility ­ the theory is not about a
doubling up or re-doing of modernization. Rather, its hallmarks are recur-
siveness, the stresses in the logic, the undermining of key premises, the
openings for change that arise from the paradoxes. Despite its awkwardness,
therefore, reflexive modernization is the more appropriate term.
From a time perspective we could see how unintended consequences
arose from a clash of temporal logics on the one hand and from the natu-
ralization of industrial time as norm on the other. We could appreciate how
the rationalization of time, taken to its limits, becomes irrational. In situ-
ations where the limits of time compression and colonization are reached
we could recognize the relationship between increase and loss of control.
From this perspective, discontinuity is to be located in the Middle Ages in
processes that began with the creation of time to human design and allied
disembedding processes such as the linear perspective, the logic of which
has been pursued ever since with almost missionary zeal.
In this article I have begun to show some of the processes involved
and worked through some of their institutional implications. On the basis
of the five Cs of industrial time ­ creation, commodification, compression,
control and colonization ­ it has been possible to identify the logic and
accompanying paradoxes and to show how the continuities associated with
the unwavering pursuit of the logic encompass their own dis/continuities
and potential destruction from within. This means that the system of
temporal coordinates is changing: clock time as the dominant, naturalized
temporal perspective is undermined by the results of its own logic being
Adam ­ Reflexive Modernization Temporalized 73
taken to the limit. Cause and effect, linearity, spatiality, invariability,
stability, clarity and precision are not being replaced but have alongside
and superimposed contrasting temporal principles such as instantaneity,
simultaneity, networked connections, ephemerality, volatility, uncertainty as
well as temporal multiplicity and complexity. Emerging alternative and
contradictory temporal principles constitute today a lived reality for a
significant number of people across the world: people engaged in infor-
mation technology systems, people interacting with electronic media, people
listening to TV and radio as well as those producing and presenting
programmes, people involved in financial markets, even people using the
phone, fax, email and the Internet, as well as people whose lives are struc-
tured to principles that are at odds with the imperialist incursions.
Furthermore, the level of both time control and temporal reach is
changing. Again, this is not about one system replacing another. Rather, it
is about interpenetration and mutual implication. All of the historically
established temporal control and reach continue to exist and coexist with
the new increased and intensified levels in an often conflictual and para-
doxical relation. It means, first, that when transmission technologies operate
at the speed of light then speeding up is no longer an option and econo-
political advantage has to be achieved by other, entirely new means. These
range from organizational technologies (e.g. flexibilization and just-in-time
processes) to innovations in transplantation such as xeno-transplantations
and animal `pharming' as well as geno-technology and molecular engineer-
ing.11 It means, second, that when genetic sciences potentially reach to all
time ­ the beginning and the end of time ­ in combination with instan-
taneous change then they have reached two temporal limits. Having reached
those temporal limits there is the potential for implosion or a move sideways
into entirely new options that have yet to be identified, explored, analysed.
As social scientists we have not even begun to contemplate the impli-
cations of this double move towards temporal limits for the economy, politics
and `glocal' society. This is the kind of challenging context that Beck's
theory addresses and for which he insists the social sciences require `new
categories, theories and methods' (Beck, 1996: 39, 1999: 87) in order to be
able to identify the access points for change in econo-political processes
and structures. Interception of the politics of time, as they are played out
in the political, economic and scientific institutions, requires that the social
sciences first break through the shield of their own taken-for-granted
temporal assumptions. Only then can the de-naturalization process of the
subject matter begin, only then is there a chance to identify access points
for change and follow Beck's call to `reinvent our political institutions and
invent new ways of conducting politics at social "sites" that were previously
considered unpolitical' (Beck, 1999: 93).
In the sphere of politics, those who cannot vote have no say in the
system of representative democracy. We have no institutions adequate and
appropriate to our current temporal politics. To date there exist no insti-
tutional means to be accountable to those most affected by the economic
74 Theory, Culture & Society 20(2)
and scientific construction of long-term futures. There is, in other words, no
governance of time. There are no democratically elected guardians of the
future. This point differs from the spatially constituted arguments that we
have no global governance and it temporally extends the space-based real-
ization that we have no institutions that monitor technological change on a
global basis. Similarly, in the sphere of economics almost every principle
and tool is predestined against taking responsibility for the future. Irre-
spective of whether this be insurance, the financial trading with time and
the future, or the discounting of the future, the emphasis is on the present
and what mis/fortune the future can yield for the benefit of the present.
Responsibility for the future is a principle that falls outside the remit of the
economic system. In the sphere of science, finally, the insistence on decon-
textualization and objectivity makes it difficult to entertain the idea of taking
responsibility for the future created by scientific action since it separates
actors from actions and their effects. The creation of hazards, dangers and
perils, as Ulrich Beck rightly insists in his theory of reflexive moderniz-
ation, is not an unintended consequence but an integral part of the rigorous
application of the modernist logic. To take responsibility for our actions, as
social scientists and as citizens, requires that we know ourselves in contexts,
acknowledge our shadow, accompany our actions not just into the immedi-
ate but the very long-term future.
Notes
1. The basic arguments for this article were developed in response to an invitation
by Ulrich Beck to take part in an international conference in Munich, organized
for theorists to discuss reflexive modernization from their field of expertise. I was
asked specifically to consider the relation between my work on social time and
Beck's theory.
2. For example, Bauman (1998), Castells (1996), Melucci (1996), Serres
(1995/1982) and Virilio (1991, 1995) have incorporated chapters on time in some
of their current publications. This literature is growing fast across the full range of
social science disciplines. Social theorists who took a lead earlier include Adam
(1990), Elias (1992), Frankenberg (1992), Giddens (1979, 1981), Harvey (1989),
Ingold (1986), Lash and Urry (1994), Nowotny (1994/1989), Rifkin (1987), Thrift
(1981, 1988), Urry (1995, 2000), Wendorff (1980).
3. There are numerous fascinating books on the subject of time and culture.
Reference to a small selection of these is therefore inevitably arbitrary. From
this vast selection I have particularly enjoyed Bourdieu (1979), Dunne (1973),
Eliade (1989/1954), Fraser (1981), Kern (1983), Le Goff (1980) and Mbiti
(1985/1969).
4. For more detailed expositions see Romanyshyn (1989); also Adam (1995: chs 6
and 7), Adam (1998: 37­9) and Arendt (1958: 165­7).
5. From Weber (1989/1904­5) to Mumford (1955/1934) to Foucault (1977), Le Goff
(1980) and Zerubavel (1981).
6. For work supporting this argument, see Adam (1998), Adam et al. (2002),
Castells (1996), Rifkin (1987), Virilio (1991, 1995), Whipp et al. (2002).
7. In footnote 2, Le Goff (1980: 289­90) quotes a long passage from G. d'Auxerre's
Adam ­ Reflexive Modernization Temporalized 75
(1160­1229) Summa aurea (III, 21), in which the position on usury is set out with
unambiguous clarity.
8. For a detailed cultural analysis of these changes, see Kern (1983).
9. Zygmunt Bauman (1998: 19) writes about `dephysicalization', where the power
holders of global finance and cyberspace, for example, become truly exterritorial,
even extraterrestrial.
10. For a more detailed argument see Adam (2000).
11. On molecular engineering and nano-technology, see Clark (1998).
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Barbara Adam is Professor of Sociology at Cardiff University. She is
founder editor of the journal Time & Society and has published extensively
on the socio-cultural relations of time, risk and environmental matters.
78 Theory, Culture & Society 20(2)