Sociological Futures: From Clock Time to Event Time

This article articulates a shift from clock time to event time, a shift which raises particular challenges to dominant sociological strategies in regard to temporality, especially in regard to the future. In particular it raises challenges to the idea that alternative futures may be found by stretching time to the time disenfranchised or by seeking out and uncovering counter hegemonic forms of time. Taking feminist sociological approaches to time as a case in point, this article shows that while such strategies were relevant when time operated externally to events; they have little traction when time unfolds with events. For Sociologists to continue in their promise of working to secure alternative futures, their analyses must therefore become entangled in event time.