They will take time out, and examine the power of keeping time together in music, dance, work, and faith. Readers of this book will explore cultural beliefs about the creation and end of time, the flow of time, and personal time as marked by rites of passage. Themes include time finding from nature and time keeping by human artifice. We organize our lives around it, and yet, do we really know what time is? Drawing upon collections in Harvard’s scientific, historical archaeological, anthropological, and natural history museums and libraries, the book explores the answers given to that question in different ages by different world cultures and disciplines. Time: We find it, keep it, measure it, obey it, rely on it, waste it, save it, chop it and try to stop it. Schechner Cambridge: Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University, 2014. We’ll talk about how monochronism and polychronism falls into time orientation next week.By Sara J. Time orientation combined with a culture’s values dictate much about the way individuals in said societies live their lives. This leads to a culture working against the clock. Milestones are often set to achieve this ideal. The “American Dream,” for instance, is a quintessential thread in the country’s cultural fabric.Ī dream is an ideal to work toward hence, it’s always in the future. Newer countries with an eye on innovation and the future, like the US, are future-oriented. Their values are more often thrill-seeking and pleasure-based, rather than with a view on the future or the past. Late trains and missed deadlines are to be expected.Ĭultures who live for today, like France, are considered present-oriented. A train in India will be late, and few will bother. The clock doesn’t rule such cultures – or, in fact, industry or infrastructure in such cultures. The broad scope of time in these cultures enables a view of time that judges minutes and hours as inconsequential.įorget the stampede and the rush to meet goals. Older countries with centuries of history, such as India and China, are generally past-oriented. Those with future-oriented cognitivity look at the bigger picture and follow their plans through to achieve that picture.Ĭommunication, particularly the content of what’s being communicated, as well as the urgency and frequency of communication. Future – the goal-setting, forward-thinking cultures are future-oriented.Present – you might think of a thrill-seeker when you think of present-oriented cognitivity.However, time-line cognitivity does not lend itself to multitasking. Time-line – this type of time cognitivity is a detail-oriented linear concept of time.They often do not fully grasp elapsed time. Past – the past and the present are interchangeable in past-oriented cultures.There are four different types of time orientation. So, just as children learn values – such as the importance of family – during their primary socialization, so they are oriented toward a specific time cognitivism based on those values. So, if they miss a deadline in lieu of putting time into a family matter, it’s a nonissue. As we mentioned in an earlier post, those from monochronic cultures value relationships above all else. Time perception is based on a society’s values. Just as values and norms are a culture’s learned behaviors, so is time perception. How is this time-orientation learned? Let’s take a look. We talked last week about cultures with informal concepts of time, including cultures that view time as exclusively present (not past or future) and those who view time as cyclical. The ways in which individuals in a culture work and how they view time frames are dictated by whether a culture runs according to a polychronic time system or a monochronic time system.
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