Can We Live Forever?

Bryan S. Turner

Can We Live Forever? A Sociological and Moral Inquiry

2009 Anthem Press

Publisher’s Description: ‘Can We Live Forever?’ addresses the modern debate about the Life Extension Project that results from revolutions (actual and predicted) in bio-medicine, transplantation, cosmetic surgery, genetic counseling, stem cell research, cryonics, cloning and so forth that cumulatively promise to deliver eternal life or at least ‘prolongevity’. In an engaging and thought-provoking work, the author traces the rise of the Life Extension Project and its claims against an intellectual background of recent analyses of ‘waste’, sustainable environments and complexity theory.

Although there has been much discussion of increasing life expectancy, this book looks at a range of additional issues: the religious implications of life extension; the psychological consequences, such as ennui; the negative global social and economic factors; the problems of intergenerational justice. The possible benefits and adverse consequences of living forever are fully explored in this illuminating text, offering substance to social scientists working on ageing and demographic change, philosophers interested in questions of continuity and identity, theologians concerned with secular changes in the life course, as well as the general reader.

Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time

James Williams

Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time: A Critical Introduction and Guide

2011 Columbia University Press

Publisher’s Description: Throughout his career, Deleuze developed a series of original philosophies of time and applied them successfully to many different fields. Now James Williams presents Deleuze’s philosophy of time as the central concept that connects his philosophy as a whole. The result is an important reading of Deleuze and the first full interpretation of his philosophy of time.

Ghosts of Memory

Janet Carsten

Ghosts of Memory: Essays on Remembrance and Relatedness

2009 University of Chicago Press

Publisher’s Description: Ghosts of Memory provides an overview of literature on relatedness and memory and then moves beyond traditional approaches to the subject, exploring the subtle and complex intersections between everyday forms of relatedness in the present and memories of the past. Explores how various subjects are located in personal and familial histories that connect to the wider political formations of which they are a part. Closely examines diverse and intriguing case studies, e.g. Catholic residents of a decayed railway colony in Bengal, and sex workers in London. Brings together original essays authored by contemporary experts in the field. Draws on anthropology, literature, memory studies, and social history.

Alienation and Acceleration

Hartmut Rosa

Alienation and Acceleration. Towards a Critical Theory of Late-Modern Temporality

2010 Nordic Summer University Press

Publisher’s Description: Modern life is speeding-up, incessantly. Strange as it is, while the art of saving time reaches unprecedented heights through the introduction of ever-new technologies of communication and production, it nevertheless feels like we are running out of time. In all western societies alike, time-famine is rising and individuals report the impression that they have to run faster and faster each year – not in order to get somewhere, but just to stay in place! This book presents an analytic framework to identify the causes and effects of the various sped-up-processes which define modernity – and it develops a critical theory of late-modern temporality. Crucial for this is the idea that acceleration in the end leads to monstrous forms of alienation from time and space, from things and actions – and from self and others.

Aristotle on Time

Tony Roark

Aristotle on Time: A Study of the Physics

2011 Cambridge University Press

Publisher’s Description: Aristotle’s definition of time as “a number of motion with respect to the before and after” has been branded as patently circular by commentators ranging from Simplicius to W. D. Ross. In this book Tony Roark presents an interpretation of the definition that renders it not only non-circular, but also worthy of serious philosophical scrutiny. He shows how Aristotle developed an account of the nature of time that is inspired by Plato while also thoroughly bound up with Aristotle’s sophisticated analyses of motion and perception. When Aristotle’s view is properly understood, Roark argues, it is immune to devastating objections against the possibility of temporal passage articulated by McTaggart and other twentieth-century philosophers. Roark’s novel and fascinating interpretation of Aristotle’s temporal theory will appeal to those interested in Aristotle, ancient philosophy, and the philosophy of time.

Memory in a Global Age

Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad (Eds)

Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories

2010 Palgrave Macmillan

Publisher’s Description: In the past decade, the field of memory has been dramatically reconfigured. Global conditions have powerfully impacted on memory debates, and at the same time, claims to memory are negotiated globally. This is a fundamental shift, as until recently, the dynamics of memory production unfolded primarily within the bounds of the nation-state; coming to terms with the past was largely a national project. Under the impact of processes of globalization, this has changed fundamentally. Today it has become impossible to understand the trajectories of memory outside a global frame of reference. This book offers an innovative inroad into the various problematics of memory in a global age. It presents analytical categories to chart the terrain, and it supplies richly documented case studies that illustrate the complexities of contemporary ways of appropriating the past. Written from different cultural positions and from different disciplinary backgrounds, the collection of essays emphasizes the positionality of memory production as it is negotiated locally and globally.

Images of the Future City

Mattias Höjer, Anders Gullberg, Ronny Pettersson (Eds)

Images of the Future City: Time and Space For Sustainable Development

2011 Springer

Publisher’s Description: What could a future Western city look like if energy use per capita was reduced by sixty percent? This is the overarching question researchers have addressed in a major backcasting study carried out in Stockholm in recent years, and their answers are revealed in this book. In Images of the Future City: Time and Space For Sustainable Development, fourteen researchers from numerous disciplines offer details on a variety of aspects of a future sustainable city, including travel, housing, eating, time use, consumption and urban form. The result is a complete illustration of what it could be like to live in a city based on sustainable energy use, with Stockholm 2050 as the geographical and temporal setting. This book is an ideal complement to studies showing the potentially devastating ecological effects of climate change, studies trying to calculate the costs of climate change, and studies trying to identify the most pressing needs in preparing for the new climate.

The Politics of Proximity

Giuseppina Pellegrino (Ed.)

The Politics of Proximity: Mobility and Immobility in Practice

2011 Ashgate

Publisher’s Description: Increasingly, everyday living and practices depend on how mobility (and immobility) is articulated through the ever-present influence of a range of physical and virtual infrastructures. This book focuses in particular on the ‘political’ dimension of mobility and immobility, which plays a key role in establishing patterns of proximity in real and virtual co-presence. Proximity is seen as the result of choices, negotiations and practices carried out in different settings.

Drawing from different literature streams (Sociology, Organization Studies and Science and Technology Studies), this book analyses patterns of mobility in relation to new possibilities of organizing space, time, and proximity to others. Different phenomena – from memorial sites to migration, from urban mobility to mobile work – are analysed, illustrating different types of proximity through mobility and immobility. In doing so, this book offers a cross-cultural and innovative theoretical framing of issues linked to mobility, through the link with immobility and proximity.

Geographies of Mobilities

Tim Cresswell (Ed.)

Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects

2010 Ashgate

Publisher’s Description: Over the past fifteen years or so, there has been a widespread and increasing fascination with issues of mobility across the social sciences and humanities. Of course, geographers have always had an interest in mobility, but as yet have not viewed this in the same ‘mobility turn’ as in other disciplines where it has been used to critique the standard approaches to the subjects. This edited volume brings together leading academics to provide a revitalised ‘geography of Mobilities’ informed by this wider ‘mobility turn’. It makes connections between the seemingly disparate sub-disciplinary worlds such as migration, transport and tourism, suggesting that each has much to learn from each other through the ontological and epistemological concern for mobility.
The book is divided into three sections. The first focuses on Mobile Practices – the experience and performance of mobility as something that is done, ranging from walking to flying. The second section examines mobile spaces; relatively fixed locales which enable mobility to occur such as roads, bridges and airports. The final section deals with mobile subjects, which includes tourist, refugee, commuter and migrant.

The Textures of Time

Michael G. Flaherty

The Textures of Time: Agency and Temporal Experience

2010 Temple University Press

Publisher’s Description: What do we mean when we say, “I made the time pass more quickly,” or, “I’m creating some ‘me’ time”? In The Textures of Time, Michael Flaherty examines how we alter or customize our experience of time. His detailed analysis reveals different strategies we use to try to manipulate time, further describing and defining those strategies within six discrete time categories: Duration, Frequency, Sequence, Timing, Allocation, and Taking Time.

Using in-depth interviews and analyzing responses through a sociological lens, Flaherty unearths folk theories and practices, which he calls “time work,” that construct circumstances in order to provoke desired forms of temporal experience. As such, time is not justinflicted on us; rather, its various textures result from our intervention, and/or from our efforts to create different forms of temporal experience. These first-person accounts also highlight ongoing tensions between agency and determinism in social groups. Ultimately, in keeping with his central thesis, Flaherty’s lucid prose make this book a quick read, and the strategies he describes reveal the profound and inventive ways we “manage the clock”.