2. What Is Social Acceleration?

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Illustrations ix
4. Translator’s Introduction: Modernity and Time xi
5. In Place of a Preface xxxiii
6. Introduction 1
7. Part 1. The Categorial Framework of a Systematic Theory of Social Acceleration
8. 1. From the Love of Movement to the Law of Acceleration: Observations of Modernity 35
9. 2. What Is Social Acceleration? 63
10. Part 2. Mechanisms and Manifestations: A Phenomenology of Social Acceleration
11. 3. Technical Acceleration And The Revolutionizing Of The Space-Time Regime 97
12. 4. Slipping Slopes: The Acceleration Of Social Change And The Increase Of Contingency 108
13. 5. The Acceleration Of The “Pace Of Life” And Paradoxes In The Experience Of Time 120
14. Part 3. Causes
15. 6. The Speeding Up of Society as a Self-Propelling Process: The Circle of Acceleration 151
16. 7. Acceleration and Growth: External Drivers of Social Acceleration 160
17. 8. Power, War, and Speed: State and Military as Key Institutional Accelerators 195
18. Part 4. Consequences
19. 9. Acceleration, Globalization, Postmodernity 211
20. 10. Situational Identity: Of Drifters and Players 224
21. 11. Situational Politics: Paradoxical Time Horizons Between Desynchronization and Disintegration 251
22. 12. Acceleration and Rigidity: An Attempt at a Redefinition of Modernity 277
23. Conclusion: Frenetic Standstill? The End of History 299
24. Notes 323
25. Bibliography 419
26. Index 449