Comment on "Social Acceleration" by Hartmut Rosa
barbara adam2003, Constellations
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Abstract
Hartmut Rosa's stimulating paper brings together work from a wide range of theoretical and empirical sources in order to develop a coherent theory of the acceleration of late-modern society. Its particular strength lies in the elaboration of the diverse features of this acceleration, showing their connections, i.e., how the elements relate to each other, and explaining the mechanisms that lie behind them. In the process of constructing this complex web of interdependencies, Rosa manages to show how the processes, together with their opposites, explain the complex mutual dependencies and model some of the prominent feedback-loops involved. Irrespective of whether or not one agrees with the central thesis that modernity is driven by acceleration, this is a paper to be admired for its breadth and depth of analysis and its impressive theory-building capacity. Rosa has created a rich tapestry of ideas and theories that includes work from cultural theory and history, sociology and social psychology; he weaves the threads of supporting evidence from developments in technology and politics, work and occupational structures. The resulting construct relates categories to mechanisms and drivers and these in turn to paradoxes and consequences. While not all sections of the paper are equally convincing, Rosa presents an excellent case for the paradoxes and contradictory tendencies that arise with the time compressing processes of modernization: acceleration leads not to time saving but time shortage while simultaneously being seen as an answer to the chronic shortage of time. Increases in the speed of information transfer and the pace of life fulfill neither the prospect of more efficient communication nor the promise of a good life; instead they result in information overload, entirely new worlds of services and entertainment, and an exponential increase in non-realizable options. Speed limits and deceleration are integral to the modernist logic of acceleration irrespective of whether they derive from physical limits, cultural islands of arrested time, unintended consequences of intended acceleration, or deliberate deceleration by anti-modernist tendencies. The modernist logic appears to fold back on itself. It seems that the success of acceleration begins to undermine its own preconditions for continuity, a process alluded to by theorists such a Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrillard and identified by Ulrich Beck with the concept of "reflexive modernization." 1 We could continue this train of thought by suggesting that the limits to and countervailing tendencies of acceleration could become sources of new innovation and deliberative change. That is to say,
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I argue that some arguments associated with "acceleration debate" consolidated by the work of Hartmut Rosa are "inflationary"-not necessarily incorrect. Then I explain what such conceptual dramatization means and what the "deflationary" approach is. After that I outline five polemical comments about accelerating capitalist modernity. Importantly, I do not take an issue with convincing arguments claiming that modern era is an era of social intensification, dynamization and acceleration as other important thinkers such as Reinhart Koselleck, Marshall Berman, Robert Hassan and Paul Virilio have claimed. In this essay I take issue with three dimensions of the acceleration debate. Namely with 1) often-apocalyptic outlook that many (not all) acceleration thinkers maintain; 2) with rather undifferentiated inferences made thereupon, and; 3) with some conceptual insensitivity associated with acceleration. The conclusion comprises a simple proposition-more ethnography of social acceleration is needed, more observation and in-situ social investigations of time use, temporal orders, social rhythms, waiting are overdue in order to substantiate conceptual debate on social acceleration.
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