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Polirical Geography, Vol. 17, No. I. pp. 71-82, 1998

Pergamon

1997 Elsevier Science Ltd

Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

0962-6298/98 $19.00 + 0.00

PII: SO962-6298 96)00097-2

The time of space and the space of time: the

future of social science

IMMANUELWALLERSTEIN

Femand Braudel Center, Binghamton University, PO Box 6000, Binghamton,

NY 13902-6000, USA

Assnu\cr. Time and space are irremediably locked together and constitute a

single dimension, TimeSpace. Social science, as invented between 1850 and

1914, has involved limited interpretations of TimeSpace emphasizing either

eternal TimeSpaces (economics.

sociology, political science) or episodic

geopolitical TimeSpaces (history, anthropology, Oriental studies). The difficulty

for establishing a successful discipline of geography was that it straddled these

two kinds of TimeSpace. Social science neglected three other types of

TimeSpace that were potentially subversive. The

nnales

school of history

emphasized cyclic-ideological TimeSpace and structural TimeSpace which

transcend the old choice between the idiographic and nomothetic through the

study of historical systems. Historical systems are defined by structural

TimeSpace and function through cyclico-ideological TimeSpace. Between

structural TimeSpaces there is transformational TimeSpace and our historical

social system is reaching such a moment of bifurcation. Intellectually, social

science needs refashioning into a tool of this transformation and, politically, we

have to dare to develop a sober utopia and to seek to construct it. 0 1997

Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Time and space are the most elementary parameters of our existence. We are taught these

concepts very early in life, and all of us use them constantly. We know what they are.

Furthermore, we know that time and space are quite different dimensions of reality,

though they are usually considered equally important. And we know that they are

objective realities, not dependent upon us, and ones we cannot affect in any significant

way. Chaucer expresses this oft-repeated view in The Clerkes Tale

For thogh we slepe or wake, or rome, or ryde,

Ay fleeth the tyne, it nyl no man abyde. (11.118-l 19)

1 wish to challenge these most obvious verities. I believe that the meaning of time and

space in our lives is a human invention, and that different groups of people define them

differently. I believe further that time and space are irremediably locked together and

constitute a single dimension, which I shall call Timespace. And I believe that not only

can we affect them in significant ways, but that all of social science has involved one vast

interpretation, and therefore manipulation,

of TimeSpace. The interpretation given

hitherto by social science was in fact a very particular interpretation, one that is coming

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72

The time of space and the space of time

under skeptical review today. Finally, I believe that our conceptualization of TimeSpace

can have a crucial impact on our collective social future, and that therefore it is very

important that we reflect carefully upon the history and use of the concept.

It is hard to know how other forms of sentient beings conceive of TimeSpace. Most

forms of animal life do seem to have some sense of territoriality, and they even seem to

have ways of marking it. Do they also have a sense of time? Mammals, at least, seem to

have some sense of life span, and some ways of recognizing its passage. But humans

seem to have taken all of this much further. For one thing we invented measurements of

time and space. There are such things as a ruler and a watch. These are, if you think of

it, remarkable inventions. They started out as crude mechanisms of measure and, as the

millennia went by, the technology was improved. Today physicists (or is engineers?) can

apparantly guarantee the so-called accuracy of these measurements to an extraordinarily

high degree. Not only can we tell how long is a second or an inch in terms of some cosmic

phenomenon that is thought to be stable (or at least more stable), but we define

astronomic distances in terms of the concept of a light-year, the space through which light

passes in a years time.

Such careful measurements are no doubt important for many highly technical and

difficult operations, but most of us, most of the time, are quite satisfied to use older and

cruder measures. We seldom expect that our watches will show exactly the same time, to

the second or even to the minute, as do the watches of those around us. We describe life

spans in terms of amorphous and inexact categories, like childhood, adolescence, and old

age. We use terms like large cities and small towns, and would be hard pressed to give

population figures in most cases, not to speak of knowing the number of square miles a

given city includes. We do not usually feel ourselves to be intellectually crippled by the

use of such approximations. Should we? I dont think so. The concept of large city is in

many ways far more meaningful than the concept of a city that contains 257.4 square

miles and 3,257,490 people. For one thing, the number of people in a city changes

virtually with each second. And decisions by municipal councils to include or exclude a

few more square miles often pass by totally unnoticed by most people. But we would find

it hard to discuss the modern world if we excised from our vocabulary the term, large

city.

What kinds of TimeSpace do we actually use, and for what ends? The we in this

question is ambiguous, because there are many wes. In a previous discussion

(Wallerstein, 19911, I categorized five different kinds of TimeSpace that are actually used

in the modern world. I gave names to these five varieties: episodic geopolitical

TimeSpace, cyclico-ideological TimeSpace, structural TimeSpace, eternal TimeSpace, and

transformational TimeSpace. Without repeating in detail my previous discussion, allow

me to define each very briefly, in order to be able to discuss how social science has used

them, or ignored them, over the past 150 years.

By episodic geopolitical TimeSpace, I mean those categories by which we discuss

immediate history, for example in every days newspaper, when it refers to riots in

Brighton or elections in Ulster. Immediate history doesnt have to be current history. The

fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 is also episodic geopolitical TimeSpace. The key

element is that it is short-term in its definitions of both time and space, and the events are

tied to the meanings given to them by the immediate context in which they occur.

By cyclico-ideological TimeSpace, I mean those categories by which we sometimes

explain immediate history, as when we account for elections in Ulster by long-standing

Catholic-Protestant differences in Ireland, or by Great Britains difficulties in liquidating

the sequels of British colonialism, or by some other factor that emphasizes a longer run

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IMMANUELWALLERSTEIN

73

of time, and that involves some definition of the situation deriving from an evaluation of

the meaning of location in time and space of particular groups.

By structural TimeSpace, I mean those categories by which we discuss phenomena

such as the so-called rise of the West or the continuing cultural relevance of the Roman

limes, or try to understand the origins of East Asias spectacular improvement of its

economic position in the world-economy in the light of the structural explanations of the

functioning of the modern world-system. The explanations here are much more long-

term, and are in fact definitions of the kind of historical system in which we live as well

as its boundaries in time and space.

By eternal TimeSpace, I mean, for example, explanations of ethnic cleansing in terms

of asserted fundamental incompatibilities of so-called ethnic groups with each other, or

aggressive instincts human beings are supposed to possess, or even the effect of climate

upon social behavior. The defining characteristic here is an assumption of timelessness

and spacelessness, in effect, of the irrelevance of time and space to the analysis.

By transformational TimeSpace, finally, I mean exactly the opposite kind of analysis,

one which emphasizes the specialness of the occurrence, its exceptional quality, and its

profound effect on all the major institutions of our world. The Christian explanation of the

coming of Christ on earth is one such explanation. We can cite the year and the place, but

do they matter? Or if you prefer a more secular example, we talk of the agricultural

revolution. Here too we can cite the year and the place, though much more

approximately, but once again, does it matter? What matters is the profound

transformation or rupture that we believe has occurred, and which has affected

everything subsequent to it. And yet, although the particular place and time do not seem

to matter in the sense that they are not really part of its intrinsic or even its immediate

explanation, transformational TimeSpace is said to occur, as we shall see, at the right

time and place, therefore in a sense at the only time and space at which it could have

occurred.

The important things to notice about these five varities of TimeSpace are that each

presents us with a totally different level of analysis and with different definitions of time

and space. Furthermore,

no particular expression of any of these varieties is

uncontroversial or uncontested. Whatever explanation I provide within the context of any

of the five varieties, there will be others who will say that I have got the particular

definitions of time and space wrong. Surely that is what is at stake in Ulster. For the Sinn

Fein, Ulster is part of a space called Ireland-morally and historically, if not juridically.

For the Unionists, Ulster is part of a space called the United Kingdom-morally,

historically, and juridically. In addition, if you ask either side for how long this has been

true, you will get different answers.

Sometimes the debate is about which kind of TimeSpace is most relevant, Take the

debate, obscure to all those who are not a part of it, over Kosovo. Kosovo is the natne of

a geographic district in post-1945 Yugoslavia. In the period when Tito was President, this

zone was accorded a special politico-juridical status. Although it was not one of the six

federated republics, it was proclaimed an autonomous region within one of those

republics, Serbia. In 1989, Serbia revoked Kosovos autonomous status unilaterally. I am

not prepared to discuss the constitutional legalities of this action. I am interested in the

justifications. The large majority of the population of Kosovo are Albanian in terms of the

ethnic definitions used in this part of the world. They claim the right of self-determination

on the basis of numbers in a locality whose boundaries were formally defined only in the

twentieth century. They are arguing in terms of episodic geopolitical TimeSpace. The

Serbian governments argument was quite different. They spoke in the name of a

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78e time of space and the space of time

presumably long-existing entity, the Serbian people. They said that Kosovo was the

historic cradle of the Serbian people because it was there that in I389 the Serbs chose

death rather than surrender to the Ottoman enemy (to whom the contemporary Albanians

in Kosovo, who are Muslims, are mentally assimilated). The argument was that this battle

gave rise to Serbian national consciousness, and that it was therefore inconceivable that

there could be a Serbian state that did not include Kosovo as an integral part. Hence, the

Serbians continued, current population figures and current boundaries are simply

irrelevant; Kosovo was part of Serbia morally because of things that happened in the

fourteenth century. These are arguments using sructural TimeSpace. Kosovos location in

Serbia was said to be structurally given. There is no way of resolving such a debate

intellectually. Neither side can demonstrate that it is right, if by demonstrating it we mean

that the arguments are sustained by the weight of the evidence in some scientific puzzle.

This is a political dispute, in which TimeSpace coordinates are simply a tool of each side.

The issue will only be resolved politically.

The debates about Ulster and Kosovo are typical political differences of our time. What

is interesting about them for our discussion is not only that they employ particular

concepts of TimeSpace but also they they both implicitly (and sometime explicitly) refer

to justifications deriving from the social sciences. The social sciences are not at all neutral

on such subjects, but they are often ambiguous. And it is with the hope both of reducing

some of the ambiguity and underlining the non-neutrality of the conceptualizations that

I address these issues today.

Let us start by remembering some of the history of the social sciences. This form of

knowledge, its very name, was essentially a product of the nineteenth century. It is not

that the issues discussed by social scientists were not previously elaborated by authors,

some of whom we think still worth reading today. But the idea that there was a specific

domain of knowledge we call social science, that it in turn was divided into something we

call disciplines, and that the production and reproduction of this disciplinary knowledge

should be located in special social institutions to house them-all this was definitively

constructed only in the period between 1850 and

1914

When I say that social institutions were constructed, I am thinking first of all of names

that became accepted as domains of knowledge, and the consecretion of such names by

universities in the form of chairs and departments of instruction bearing these names,

departments in which students could pursue degrees qualifying them as specialists in

these disciplines. Most of the students who obtained doctorates in these disciplines went

on to obtain positions as professors of these disciplines or as researchers in para-

university structures. In addition, these specialists created national (and later inter-

national) associations and established scholarly journals which bore these disciplinary

names. These associations and journals were intended to facilitate the exchange of views,

but they also served to define recognition within disciplinary boundaries. Finally, the so-

called great libraries began to catalogue their books in terms of these same disciplinary

distinctions. In this period, most of this activity (say 95 ) was occurring in only five

countries: Great Britain, France, the Germanies, the Italies, and the United States. Almost

none of these organizational structures existed as of 1850. And most of them were in place

by 1914 (for a detailed analysis of this whole process, see Wallerstein

et al.,

1996, Part

I).

The names that were consecrated were principally six, only six one should say:

history, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, and Oriental studies. Why

I do not include geography in this list is a question to which I shall return. If one looks

carefully at this list of six disciplines, as they were defined in this period, one sees that

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IMM NOEL

WALERSTEIN

75

they reflect three basic cleavages, all of which have to do with TimeSpace. First of all.

there was the cleavage past/present. History was supposed to deal with what occurred in

the past. Economics, political science, and sociology were de

fdCt

limited to a concern

with the present.

Secondly, there was the cleavage civilized/other, a cleavage that was defined as being

located geographically: West/non-West. The four disciplines I have just mentioned-

history, economics, political science, and sociology-all concerned themselves, virtually

exclusively in this period, with the West. Indeed, they concerned themselves over-

whelmingly only with the five countries I listed. Most of the other countries, the non-West,

were the domain of anthropology and Oriental studies. And here too the division

between these two disciplines was geographical. Anthropology wdS supposed to deal

with primitive tribes, who were located in specific areas of the world-most of Africa:

parts of southeast Asia; remoter zones (that is, mountainous or densely forested or glacial

zones) of the Americas, the far north of Eurasia, and the Himalayas; plus the isolated

islands of the globe. Oriental studies dealt with regions which were essentially defined as

located in zones that at some point in the past had large bureaucratic empires in political

control of them: notably China, Japan, India, the Arab world, Persia. the Turkic world. and

Byzantium.

In addition to the one cleavage (past/present) that was ostensibly temporal, and a

second cleavage (civilized/other) that was ostensibly spatial in character, there was a third

cleavage whose lines of demarcation were those of hypothetical space. This was the

cleavage among economics, political science. and sociology. This trio of disciplines

defined their boundaries in terms of the presumably autonomous domains of the market,

the state, and the civil society. Why do I call this hypothetical space? On inspection, it

turns out that the geographic boundary lines of each unit of analysis were actually

identical. De facto, the boundary lines were those of the state, as defined juridically in the

present, actually or potentially. There was thought to be a British national state, a British

national economy, and a British national society. You see immediately the problems of

such a definition when I use the instance of Great Britain. Why should we talk of British

national society, and not Scats and English national societies? Can there be said to he a

Northumberland civil society or a Highlander civil society? I call this hypothetical space

because the scholar is claiming to be able to distinguish activities that occur in the domain

of the state from those that occur in the market or in the civil society. He is asserting he

can somehow keep them separate analytically and concentrate his attention on one or the

other. But if they are truly separate, are they not hypothetically spatial, even if the spaces

overlap, a bit like the intermeshed jurisdictions of feudal Europe, which scholars describe

as a structure of parcellized sovereignty, precisely because a particular unit of land may

be part of multiple competing jurisdictions.

The partitioning of knowledge about the social world into these six disciplines was of

course not accidental. It reflected the dominant world views of the Western world in the

nineteenth century, and most particularly liberalism which became crystallized as the

geoculture of the world-system in response to the upheavals occasioned and symbolized

by the French Revolution. It was the epoch of a belief in progress, progress towards a

more civilized world, progress whose principal impulses were thought to be found in the

West, progress towards a world in which differentiation of institutions was considered to

be a mainstay of the social system.

The impact of this partitioning upon how we think about and use TimeSpace is seldom

discussed. Of the five kinds of T me S pace I have enumerated, it was eternal TimeSpace

that earned price of place. This is not really surprising. The same nineteenth century was

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76 The time of space and the space of time

the moment in time when the natural sciences, particularly in the form of Newtonian

mechanics, finally triumphed as the only truly legitimate form of knowledge. Theological

knowledge had at last been definitively dethroned, but so too had philosophical

knowledge, which now came to be perceived as no less arbitrary and speculative than

theology.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Windelbrand put forward the now widely-

accepted thesis that the social sciences were caught in what he called a Methodenstreit,

one between what he called idiographic and nomothetic epistemologies, that is, between

those who believed that every social situation was particular and that all that a scholar

could do was to reconstruct it empathetically or hermeneutically, and those who

believed that every social situation could be analyzed in terms of universal, so-called

covering, laws that applied through all of time and space. This was of course the same

distinction that C.P. Snow would make later between what he referred to as the two

cultures-the humanities or literature on the one hand and science on the other.

However, Windelbrand was speaking neither of literature nor of science but of social

science, which lets us see that the split between the two cultures occurred right in the

middle of that in-between form of knowledge we call social science. Social science,

methodologically, seemed to have no autonomy. Its practitioners were pulled in two

opposite directions by the two strong intellectual currents, and social scientists felt that

they had to choose sides.

We know which sides they chose. In the period going at least up to 1945, the majority

of those who called themselves historians tended to opt for the humanistic side, to

consider themselves practitioners of an idiographic epistemology. Their argument was

rather straightforward. The dense texture of historical reality could never be encapsulated

in simple formulas or equations. Historical events are unique and do not repeat

themselves. The closer we look at any particular sequence of events the more complex

it seems, in terms of motivations and the range of factors that explain its outcome. The

task of the historian should be to capture this reality in its richness, relying on written

documentation of the time (so-called primary documents), and to transmit what

happened empathetically to the reader.

To be sure, the historiographical revolution of the nineteenth century had been deeply

influenced by the mythology of science (Wallerstein,

1996 .

The historians said they

wanted to uncover what had really happened, and they wanted to use empirical (that is,

archival) evidence to establish this. They thus accepted that there did exist an objective

reality outside the investigator, a basic premise of science, and that the investigator should

not allow his prejudices to intrude upon his analysis (another basic premise).

Furthermore, they joined the natural scientists in denouncing philosophy, which seemed

to the historians the incarnation of myth rather than reality. It was however precisely

because they rejected philosophy so strongly that they became deeply suspicious of

generalizations, wondering what empirical validity such generalizations could have,

fearing that their use would be the path back to philosophical speculation.

So the historians preached staying close to the data found in archives, which was

terribly constraining in two ways. It was constraining geographically, since the existence

of archives depended on social preconditions which were not equally met in all parts of

the world. And it was constraining temporally because of the kind of data to be found in

archives. Archives normally contain data defined in terms of episodic geopolitical

TimeSpace. After all, who writes documents and who collects them? Primarily the states,

and primarily to keep records of current geopolitical transactions. There was indeed a

further constraint: archives contained secrets, and as a result states normally made them

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IMM NUEL W~nERsrrr~ 77

available only for periods long gone by.

A

50-year rule was commonplace. Hence,

archives could not be used to analyze the present.

Economists, political scientists, and sociologists went in quite another direction. These

disciplines were based upon the presumed differentiated institutions of the modern

world, In that sense, the pre-modern world seemed largely irrelevant intellectually. But

how can one know about the modern world? Here the scientific ethos directed these

scholars to look at it directly. The data which could throw light on the questions they

posed was by and large not to be found in archives. It was to be found in the public data

that existed, or could be created, about the state, the market, and the civil society. Such

data could be located and/or created most easily about the immediate present: non-secret

statistics, newspaper reports, interview data of all sorts.

How could one be sure that such data was reliable? The answer was seen in

quantification, and therefore in the careful collection of the data. This reinforced the

present-orientation of the three disciplines, since the best data (in terms of reliability) was

normally the most recent, and collected in sites which had the best infrastructure, which

reinforced the narrow geographic bias of these scholars. These scholars sought to

approximate the conditions of the natural scientists, creating pseudo-laboratories where

the practice of the scholars themselves could be controlled. There could be only one way

to justify the validity of data based on such a narrow sample, narrow in time and space,

and that was full faith in a nomothetic epistemology. If one assumed that social behavior

was governed by laws, then the locus of the sample was irrelevant. Eternal TimeSpace

was the necessary presumption of nomothetic social scientists.

When we turn to the extra-European social sciences-anthropology and Oriental

studies-we discover that they tended to defend epistemological positions very close to

those of history. Anthropologists were concerned with understanding, explaining, and

mediating the social realities of peoples who were, from a European point of view,

extremely strange. The consecreared term of the time was that they were primitive. The

concept of primitive had a clear operational meaning. These peoples had a technology

that did not use the knowledge of modern science; they did not have written documents;

they were located in relatively small spaces; they did not have differentiated institutions,

Two epistemological conclusions were drawn from such a definition One was that it was

quite difficult to acquire knowledge about such a people, and that only direct, prolonged

contact with the people, via a method called participant observation, would yield such

knowledge. This perforce meant that the data were primarily contemporary data. But, on

the other hand, it was assumed (and one has to underline the verb assumed) that, if they

were primitive in the present. there could have been no historical evolution, and

therefore that their behavior in the past must have been the same as their behavior in the

present. They were therefore peoples without history. For this reason, ethnographies

were written in what was called the anthropological present.

The Small space which such peoples covered invited the observation that each

neighboring people was different, in language, in customs, in beliefs. It was deduced that

the complex texture of each people was irreducible to formulas, and therefore that

generalizations, even about primitive peoples in general, were dubious if not totally

excluded. Thus we arrive at the same conclusions that the hislorians, faced with theil-

archival data, had reached, thdt only an idiographic epistemology was legitimate. The fact

that anthropologists came to defend the reasonableness of the strange customs of the

peoples they were describing reinforced this bias, in that all generalizations seemed to

reify European customs and norms as the only rational ones. In this way, ethnologists

were also using episodic geopolitical TimeSpace. even though the term geopolitical

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78 The time of space and the space of time

sounds anachronistic here, because the meanings are those given to the customs by the

immediate context in which they occur.

Oriental studies faced a different dilemma. These scholars were explaining what were

called in the nineteenth century high civilizations, Here too there was a clear operational

meaning. High civiiizations existed in large spaces over iong periods of time, had

complex technologies (though not as complex as those of the modern Western world),

written documents, unifying languages, and world religions (by which was meant

religions that were widespread throughout the area covered by the high civilization).

What underlay these traits was the existence at one or more moments of history of a large

bureaucratic empire covering the area encompassed by this civilization.

Nonetheless these high civilizations were not modern, and their non-modernity

became the central focus of the analysis. Why they were not modern, indeed why they

could not have become modern, was the puzzle that Oriental studies set itself to solve.

How could it do this? Here again the problem was one of access to knowledge of a

strange, but complex, civilization which required long contact with it. In this case,

however, the emphasis was on contact with the written texts, and not with the people.

These texts were for the most part ancient and religious, and required philological

analysis to be able to translate their wisdom into terms comprehensible by the Western

world. Somewhere in these texts the scholar could uncover the reasons for the non-

modernity and non-mnodernizability of these civilizations. Hence, although there was

obviously a diachronic history that mighr have been studied, the emphasis came to be on

those elements that froze rhe process and prevented the move forward into modernity.

In an important way, these civilizations incarnated the traditional past of the West that the

West had somehow overcome. Once again therefore the scholar was pressed back into an

idiographic framework, about the essential particularity of Chinese, or Hindu, or Arabo-

Muslim civilization. Once again the only TimeSpace that seemed no matter was episodic

geopolitical TimeSpace, to be sure on 3 grand scale, but nonethcles~ concerned with

meanings tied to the immediate context m which they occurred.

In summary, six disciplines emerged in this period. And in the grand kkhxk str~if,

three of them were nomothetic-econt,mich. political sclencc.

and sociology-and three

of them bvcre idiographic-history, anthropology, and Oriental studies. The former

used

eternal TimeSpace and the latter cpiaodic geopolitical TimeSpace. And none of them

seemctl to USC any of the other threv kinds of TimeSpace I have idenrified.

It IS now the moment to talk of geography

as ;I

clibcipline. Geography is of course

taught in almost all the universities of the ~~.orld. It is an honorccl name. ISut curiously. in

terms of numbers of scholars. and centrality of attention. it has never quite attained the

prominence of the six disciplines

I

have been discuss&.

(J Yet it is the only other social

science. along Lvith histoT. that is taught in all the stlcc~ncl~ry schools of the world. This

seems anomalous. 2nd requires some explanation.

I

belie\,c the key lips in rile fact ihat

geography i not fit in the neat pattern that I IML.C dcscribecl. It ignored thr

cleavages.

One the one hand. geography got great impulse from European exploration of the non-

European world. In the nineteenth century. particularly. this involved a strong overlap

Lvitll :intliropology,

and to

I

lesser exrcnt \\ith Oriental studies. Hut geography

also

concrrned itself with the Western world. 2nd most particularly Ivitti the country in which

particular geographers Lvcre located. and in this way overlapped very much with the

domain of history. All these disciplines were strongly idiographic, as we

have

seen. But

geography was also strongly oriented to the natural environment. overlapping with the

natural sciences, and drawn to nomothctic ~pistcrnol~~g~-l~~~~~~ cl\~erlapping \vith

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h, MANUEL WALLERSTEI N

79

economics, political science, and sociology. Cutting across the disciplinary divisions that

were emerging as it did, and fitting into none of them, we might have expected thdt

geography would die out as a separate study, its various parts being absorbed by the

other disciplines. Already in

1917, an Austrian geographer, H. Hassinger, was calling

geography the Cinderella of German science (cited in Droz,

1960: 18). The question then

becomes less why geography did not succeed in establishing itself better and more how

it managed to survive at all.

I think there are two answers here. One is the strong support it had from non-university

structures, such as the Royal Geographical Society, with a strong interest in exploration.

It is revealing to look at Vol. I, No. 1, 1893, of the Societys Geogruphical Journal. It

contains five signed articles:

Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, How can the North Polar Region be Crossed?

A.P. Harper, Hon. Sec., N.Z. Alpine Society, Exploration and Character of Principal New

Zealand Glaciers

Clinton Dent, F.R.C.S., Physiological Effects of High Altitudes

N. Andrusoff, Exploration of the Black Sea

Captain F.D. Lugard,, Treaty Making in Africa

This orientation to matters of immediate state interest certainly gave geography a

political base that other disciplines did not have. Rut this is less important, I think, than

a second reason why geography did not waste away. Remember that I observed that,

weak within the universities. geography \vas extremely strong within the secondary

schools, and indeed within the primary schools. Thih. 1 think, is the clue. Why was it so

strong within the school system? We must remember that one of the central social

functions of compulsory primaT (and later compulsory secondary) education in the late

ninetcwXh and twentieth centuries uas the function of national integration, via the

formation of national citizens. History was one pillar of this training, conveying to the

stiicl~nts that they Lvere part of 3 single national structure whose roots lay deep in time.

The famous French schoolbo),s recitation. Our ancestors. the Gauls. bears spectac.ula1

witness to this effort. Geography was the other pillx. What the schools taught \vas the

geography of their own country primaril~~, impressing on the students

; I

detailccl

kno\\ ledg:e of the place names. the regional \Mations. and abo\,e all the hypothetical

unit) )f the \\ hole. Geography \v;is offered ~1s i signal Icsson in \\hy no part of the state

coiiltl t>r neglected. and that all \\ ere i~xzful. ll~ii.4 geogaplq. xulyi\ ccl 3s 3 discipline. 1,111

just barely, 21s I poor relL1tiL.egood for sc%oolboys. As ;I result, hou,cver. it could play tittlc

role in forcing ;1 real ashcssmt~iit of tlic centralit)~ of 3p;ice in soci:1l analysis.

The social sciences

made

eternal TinMpace central. :1nd rcs~n~~l an important. albeit

seconclar\., place for episodic geopolitical Ti1neSpac.e.

but ignored all other kinds of

TimtSpace. What difference did thi:, make? The first thing to say is that, of the fi\,e kinds 01.

TimcSpace. the t\vo that were fa\xwetl \\ere the t\w \\ hich mxl c t i me- and space soc%1ll)

cxogcnous ancl. in consequence, in the long run socially unimportant. This is how u e teach

time 2nd space to little children. Time and space ;1rc there. out there

. duxys

there. to bc

measuwrl more OI- ess. They constitute> marhcrs in our lives. We pass milestones. We pass

:inni\ ersarie5. They are formicl:1btc realities. colossi to \vliosc impla~1l~le constraints \vc

moist yield. Such ;I conception is doul~ly nefarious. It kt*eps

us

from an xlecp~tc

unclcrstancling of the social ~vorlcl. And it mahes it difficult. if not impossible. to pla)

: I

siibst;inti;11 role in constructing the social world as \ve \voulcl want it to be.

ltlc idiograpt1ic thrust, using episodic gcopotiticxl IinieSpa~e. tells iis in effect that there

is no useful cspl:in:1tion of \\ h:1t 1~1.4i:rppcn~d. he ~ong recountin

g the sequence of e\ents

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80

7 e

time of space and the space of time

that preceded whatever it is we are observing. The amount of detail that is included in such

a sequence is a function of the availability of records, the judgment of the one who

reconstructs the sequence as to what merits inclusion, and the energy of the scholar and the

reader. Any sequence is infinitely extensible, and between any two points in the sequence,

there always lie other occurrences, A true reconstruction of the sequence would

encompass rerunning the diachronic history of the universe. Since this is absurd, the natural

tendency is to limit the sequence drastically. A country declared war on another because its

ruler decided it. The ruler decided it because he feared that the other country would do x or

y, or because the ruler was subject to the influence of a counselor who wished for war. The

unemployment rate has risen because the rate of exchange of the national currency has

become unfavorable. The rate of exchange has become unfavorable because production of

key exports has become less efficient. Production of key exports has become less efficient

because unions prevented the use of quality control. And so it goes.

In this kind of litany, we learn much, but we also learn nothing. What we can never tell

is whether all or any of these variables are crucial. Which of them could have been

changed, without altering the outcome? It is against the limitations of this kind of

idiographic use of immediate time and space that the nomothetic camp put forward its

alternative. Let us analyze, they said, all situations in which the rate of exchange becomes

unfavorable. Does unemployment always follow? If not always, under which particular

conditions? Here we go down the path of systematic and controlled comparison. But are

all these situations that are being compared the same in some essential way? There were

rates of exchange in East Asia in the twelfth century, and in Latin America in the twentieth

century. There were rates of exchange when there is a dominant gold standard, and rates

when there is a fluctuating dollar standard. Does even the concept, rate of exchange,

however operationally defined, apply in the same way in the different situations? In short,

have we reified rate of exchange into an essence by its narrow definition?

It was this latter set of questions that has led an increasing number of social scientists in

the twentieth century to reject the trap of being forced to choose between episodic

geopolitical TimeSpace and eternal TimeSpace, and to insist on the existence of other kinds

of TimeSpace. One important example is the Annalesversion of history, at least in the time

of Febvre, Bloch, and Braudel. Their emphasis was on cyclico-ideological TimeSpace and

structural TimeSpace. The heart of their argument was that concepts, the key tools we use to

make comparative analyses, are not eternal but are a function of the TimeSpace constructs

we make. Yes, explanations are possible in terms of general rules of behavior, but only

within the context of specific long-term structures, what I prefer to call historical systems.

Such historical systems have lives and spaces. They exist in time and space, and the time

and space of their existence is a crucial element in their definition, Hence they have

structural TimeSpace, and one of the key questions for the social science investigator is to

discern its parameters. It is not just there. It has been created as part of the creation of the

historical system. But once there, it is determinative of the regularities of the system, as well

as of its trajectories, It is by no means easy to delimit these parameters, particularly because

they are evolving over time and space, and are not predetermined by some heavenly force.

Not only are these time and space parameters constructed hut they must be internalized by

the members of the historical social system if they are to control (and limit) action. Yet,

because they are structural, they are internalized beneath the level of conscious awareness,

in order that they not be constantly open to question, in order that they function with

seeming automaticity. This is one of the fundamental reasons why nineteenth-century

social science did not wish to look at them. Looking at structural TimeSpace can be

subversive of its ability to structure the cultural discourse, and therefore subversive of the

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IMMANUELWALLEKSTEIN

81

historical social system itself. This is of course particularly true of the historical social system

in which we are living. But even looking at the structural TimeSpace of defunct historical

social systems can raise questions about that of the current system.

Within any structural TimeSpace there is cyclico-ideological TimeSpace, because this is

the kind of TimeSpace that permits the system to function. The analogy, and not a bad

one, is to human breathing. If we did not inhale and exhale, the human organism could

not survive. But inhaling and exhaling are different moments, and the body functions

differently when it is doing the one or the other. Cyclico-ideological TimeSpace is also

subversive, particularly of our modern world-system. By emphasising long-term repetitive

patterns, it raises into question the ideology of slow accretions of progress, the new

always being seen as something better. But if the new is not really new? Or rather, if we

learn to distinguish that which is cyclical from that which is a linear progression, may we

not see more clearly what are the contradictions of a given system and therefore how

cyclical processes are mechanisms to restore an equilibrium that is inevitably being

undermined as the system moves implacably and irremediably far from equilibrium? Has

it never struck you as peculiar that almost all economists are willing to acknowledge the

existence of very short-run 2-4 year cycles they call business cycles (about the length of

weather cycles) but most of these same economists consider it absurd to analyze 50-60

year cycles, the so-called Kondratieffs? How could one be considered so obvious and the

other so implausible? It is not that the longer cycles reveal certain patterns about the

functioning of our modern world-system, its relation to cycles of profit and sources of

profit, and therefore menace the ideological serenity of the major actors in the system,

whereas the ultra-short ones seem so comforting, assuring people that momentary

negative situations are only momentary? Why are we so unwilling to acknowledge that

the relative decline of US dominance in the world-system in the last 20 years bears

remarkable resemblance to what happened to Great Britain in the last quarter of the

nineteenth century? Why is this not a central matter of analysis for the social sciences?

Once we begin to enter into our analyses the TimeSpaces in which the world really

moves-cyclico-ideological TimeSpace and structural TimeSpace-we not only can

analyze effectively our contemporary world-system but all of human history as well. But

then we also see how absurd were the cleavages constructed by nineteenth-century social

science. The differences are not between past and present, or the civilized and the others,

but between different historical social systems, or at least different kinds of historical

social systems. Time and space are not just out there, but are the first elements at which

we look when we try to understand our world. What kind of TimeSpace are people using,

and why, and what kind will aid us in assessing the trajectories?

Critics of an emphasis on these other kinds of TimeSpace have one seemingly strong

argument. They say that, to the degree that we turn our attention first of all to structural

TimeSpace we seem to give priority to the immobile, and thereby to eliminate what some

call human agency. This is however to misunderstand structural TimeSpace. Structural

TimeSpace is not at all immobile. This is rather what eternal TimeSpace is. Eternal

TimeSpace pretends that it emphasizes eternal change (that is, progress) but it actually

gives us a model in which human behavior always obeys the same rules. Structural

TimeSpace emphasizes continuity, yes, but it also puts a time limit on the continuity.

Structures continue until their internal contradictions, their evolving trajectories, force a

bifurcation, and then they explode or implode, and real change occurs.

This then brings us to the last of the TimeSpaces, what I call transformational

Tim&pace. Unlike those who huff and puff about agency, I do not believe that we can

transform the world at every instant. We-singly, or even collectively-do not have this

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82

The time of space and the space of time

power. But we can transform the world sometimes, at the right moment. It is precisely

when structures move very far from equilibrium, when they are on the edge of

bifurcation, that small pushes in one direction or another can have an enormous impact,

and can in fact determine the shape of the replacement historical system that will come

into existence. Here again it is important therefore to be sensitive to our TimeSpaces. We

must recognize the TimeSpace possibilities of the moment. We must seize fortuna, but we

cannot seize fortuna if we do not know that fortuna exists and can be seized at certain

times and places and not at others. There is little use reaching out to grab it if it is not

there. And there is little value in its being there if we do not reach out to grab it. Social

science, if it has any function at all, must help us to recognize these moments.

We are condemned to be living in interesting times, as the old Chinese proverb would

have it. Our historical social system is reaching a moment of bifurcation. There are many

signs of this. One of the most interesting is that the scientific ethos, in its Newtonian form,

has been called into question by a significant segment of the scientific community in the

last 20 years. It was this old Newtonian model which legitimated directly the concept of

eternal TimeSpace and indirectly the concept of episodic geopolitical TimeSpace. Today

concepts like bifurcations, chaos that creates new order, and fractals are suddenly

popular. Suddenly, the particular interpretation that nineteenth-century social science

made of time and space is being undermined and therefore can be openly discussed.

Suddenly, the boundaries of the disciplines are once again up for grabs.

Of course, there are many other reasons to conclude that our historical social system is

in crisis, I cannot here develop them. In that sense, we are living in interesting times. In

that sense fortuna is out there to be grabbed. But there are no guarantees. It depends on

our intellectual will-to refashion the social sciences into a tool of this transformation. It

depends on our political will-to dare to develop a sober utopia and to seek to construct

it, We will do none of this unless we appreciate that space has time and time has space,

and that we may choose which TimeSpace we use. Let us look these possibilities squarely

in the face. I do not suggest that this is without risks, or that we should not be fearful. This

is no call for naive triumphalism about a better world. This is a call for moral and political

choice in a difficult situation about which we master too little knowledge, in a world that

is still sufficiently splintered (despite all the magic of the information revolution) to make

worldwide collective communication not at all easy.

Yet, why should moral and political choice be easy? If it were, there were not be much

choice, and probably what we could choose would not be something worth choosing.

Acknowledgements

This paper was a Tyneside Geographical Society Lecture, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 22

February 1996, co-sponsored by the Department of Geography and the Royal Geographical

Society.

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