Time, Capitalism and Alienation

In Time, Capitalism and Alienation. A Socio-Historical Inquiry into the Making of Modern Time, Jonathan Martineau offers an account of the histories of social time in Europe, from the innovation of the clock around 1300 to the making of World Standard Time around the turn of the twentieth century. Approaching 'time' as a social phenomenon traversed by various power and property relations, this work provides a socio-theoretical and historical analysis of the relationship between clock-time and capitalist social relations, problematizing the rise to hegemony of a clock-time regime harnessing various social temporalities to the purpose of capitalist development. This book sheds light on the alienating tendencies of the modern temporal regime and the relationship between time and modern economic development.

Jonathan Martineau, Ph.D. (2012), York University, currently teaches at Concordia University and at Université du Québec à Montréal. He has published Marxisme anglo-saxon. Figures contemporaines (Montréal, Lux, 2013), as well as many articles and translations.