In-between: The Simultaneity of the Non-simultaneous

ABSTRACT

At a given time, the sum of the layers that make up the phenomenon of society, “consist” of distinct attributes that emerged in different epochs; for example, different generations or indigenous and natural science knowledge. This is the normal state of affairs in modern societies. Society lacks, in this respect, distinctiveness. First, I am describing the twin concept as the idea of the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous as a cultural phenomenon itself, including many specimens, for example, Werner Sombart’s stimulating reflections about the social complexity of the social organization of capitalism. Next, I illustrate the concept in more detail, assisted by a brief description of three well-known social science phenomena: (1) the emergence, present and importance of generations as a macro sociological phenomenon, (2) the moralization of the markets as a mix of micro- and macro themes and what I designate as the (3) compartmentalization in everyday that allows for the presence of contradictory beliefs and activities as a genuine micro sociological topic. The discovery of layers of social phenomena as essential attributes of social reality. In closing the paper, I refer to many of the persisting virtues of the in-between concepts in theorizing and in mobilizing methodological caution in social science reasoning.

KEYWORDS:

• Social theory
• theory construction
• ambivalence
• layers of social reality

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for constructive advice to Karl Acham, Marian Adolf, Rafael Alvear, Peter Burke, Steve Fuller, Dieter Haselbach, Karl-Dieter Opp, and Dick Pels.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I am using the terms ‘simultaneity of the non-simultaneous’ not in the sense that social phenomena occur at the same moment, even minute. It may therefore he helpful to indicate that simultaneity of the non-simultaneous refers to what at times is designated as ‘contemporaneity of the con-contemporaneous’ (I am grateful to Peter Burke for the suggestion).

2. See Priya Sattia (2020), ‘History from Below,’ https://aeon.co/essays/what-shaped-e-p-thompson-historian-and-champion-of-working-people.

3. The simultaneity of the non-simultaneous apparently has a family resemblance to the idea of a path dependence of social phenomena. In general, the term ‘path dependence’ refers to the influence of the past on the present or, even more generally but also more diffusely that history matters. Given the broad definition, it is difficult to imagine how to empirically topple the hypothesis. Important for an understanding of the ways in which the term ‘path dependence’ is mobilized is that the literature on path dependence reveals ‘four related causes: Increasing returns, self-reinforcement, positive feedbacks, and log-in’ (Page 2006, 88). My usage of the twin-term is different. I am concerned with the cultural status of layers of social phenomena and how layers interact and influence each other; for example, how layers of co-existing social phenomena such as generations can be deployed as weapons in a struggle for dominance in interpreting the present. The ‘causality’ of the interpretative work of layers of phenomena may chronologically run, perhaps more typically, in reverse order, from the present into the past (reverse path-dependency). Finally, as I will show, my use of the twin term is closer to the intellectual development of the term.

4. The multiple meanings of the verb ‘transcend’ in the Hegelian/Marxian philosophical tradition are (1) to suspend or abolish. (2) to elevate or lift to a higher level and (3) to preserve or maintain (see Dahrendorf [1957] 1959, 29).

5. Ludwik Fleck ([1935] 1979, 20), in his observations on the (scientific) formation of concepts, draws attention to the fallacy of separating from the past world of concepts: ‘Whether we like or not, we can never sever or links with the past […] it survives in accepted concepts, in the presentation of problems, in the syllabus of forma education, in everyday life, as well as in language and institutions. Concepts ate not spontaneously created but are determined by their “ancestors”.’

6. My translation of the original German: ‘Wir verstehen aus diesem Grundverhältnis das die ganze Kulturgeschichte durchziehende Phänomen: daß einerseits das Alte als solches eine besondere Schätzung genießt, andrerseits aber gerade das Neue und Seltene als solches.’

7. In reality, it is of course conceivable that certain events always (and necessarily) occur in a certain chronological order, without these events being simultaneous: The sequence of legislation and application of law described by Stark (2016, 105–113) may serve as an example.

8. The historical discourse on the simultaneity of non-simultaneity is self-exemplifying. The twin-term is not only, as I will attempt to explain here, a theoretical tool that can still be fruitfully applied, but is itself theoretically and historically charged.

9. Wolfgang Hardtwig (1993, 11), for example, refers to the tension and coexistence in 19th century Germany of a very modern universal and equal suffrage (for men) and the lack of parliamentary responsibility of the government. Simultaneity is not ahistorical (cf. Schäfer 1994, 14). Life creates boundaries among sets of time. Life makes it possible to encounter non-simultaneousness in the present.

10. Sigmund Freud’s (1930) reconstruction of the construction of Rome could serve as another pertinent example: the ways in which the human psyche develops corresponds to layers of city history of Rome built on layer upon layer. The past does not lose its influence on the present although they represent distinct ages.

11. Achim Landwehr (2012, 15; also Uhl, 2003, 73–74) describes such a suspicion as follows: ‘What makes determinations of non-simultaneity generally suspect is the fact that it is always necessary to postulate a norm, a now, a present, a hic et nunc, which serves as a yardstick for all other time horizons and conceptions.’ If there should be any attempt at all to argue for a unifying norm of simultaneity of the simultaneous, this can only mean referring to the irreducible particularity of individuals, groups, cultures etc. (see also Herder 1774).

12. Prior to the invention of the necessary technical prerequisites, communication across longer distances, for example, in the form of a letter was always non-simultaneous (cf. Schäfer 1994, 139). This still applied (and applies today) to the late 20^th century when an airmail letter from Western Canada to Europe took more than seven days. Today, one could argue that the ‘logic of immediacy’ has radically reduced our understanding of the present time with the help of computational processes; ‘we are creating new kinds of temporality as the layer of effective computability expands’ (cf. Finn 2019, 563).

13. Sombart’s metaphor of late capitalism and the justification for its theoretical efficiency formally corresponds to Ulrich Beck’s ([1986] 1992, 10) justification of the idea of modernization: ‘Just as modernization dissolved the structure of feudal society in the nineteenth century and produced the industrial society, modernization today is dissolving industrial society and another modernity is coming into being.’ Obviously, modernization, as Beck defines it, is a category/process that transcends distinctive forms of society.

14. That give rise to what is properly designated as the ‘ideology of the non-simultaneous’ (Schäfer 1994).

15. One does not necessarily have to identify with every conception in the literature of the non-simultaneity of the non-simultaneous, for example with the ideology of European colonialism that tends to favor this conception, that is, to take an occidental-centrist value scale on board, in order to use the terms as a helpful theoretical, methodological and moral idea.

16. In the Preface to the Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx ([1859] 1977, 3–6) formulates his thesis more specifically: ‘No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.’

17. The perception of asynchronicity, as well as its moral or political explosiveness, can be exemplified by many examples of social processes; for example, the phenomenon of international migration. On the one hand, such movements can be attributed not only to the past, but also a welcome development, insofar as one is interested in the significance of past migration flows for the social structure of the population of the present, or one refers to the likely consequences of climate change as an interest in future but deemed dangerous ‘migrations of peoples’ (see also Shah 2020).

18. When I watched a professional ice hockey game with Niklas Luhmann in Edmonton, Alberta involving the Edmonton Oilers as the home team in the mid-1970s, with my colleague James Creechan in attendance as an expert witness, players could be seen with and without helmets, exemplifying the principle of the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous in the evolution of NHL rules concerning the protection of their players,

19. See also Niklas Luhmann’s (1975, 146) discussion of the time horizons of societies that are distinguished by their social complexity; early, segmented societies, for example, have only a short time horizon and therefore live mainly in a present-oriented way. Within the framework of his theory of post-industrial society, Daniel Bell (1976, 47) sketches an opposite conception. For Bell, post-industrial society is future-oriented (planning, predicting), pre-industrial society is past-oriented and industrial society is present-oriented. Luhmann calls the integration of different time horizons in modern functionally differentiated societies synchronization, which is about ‘coordinating events in the past and the future (and from the past into the future)’ (Luhmann 1990, 117), (i.e. exactly with our topic of the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous). A comprehensive description and critique of Luhmann’s conception of time can be found in Brose and Kirschsieper (2014).

20. My account of Karl Mannheim’s concept of generations with its selective affinity to the idea of the contemporaneity of the non-contemporaneous is just that, an account of the relevance of the concept of generations. It is not a critique of the phenomenon nor a description and critique of the many efforts to apply Mannheim’s concept of generations (e.g. Zieman 2020).

21. ‘Some physicists think the next great leap will come with advent of A.I. on quantum computers. Unlike classical computers, which manipulate bits that can be 1 or 0, the so-called qubits in quantum computers can be both at once. According to quantum physics, that is how elementary particles behave on the smallest scales of nature, and it allows quantum computers to process vast amounts of information simultaneously’ (see Dennis Overbye, ‘Can a Computer Devise a Theory of Everything? It might be possible, physicists say, but not anytime soon. And there’s no guarantee that we humans will understand the result’, New York Times, 23 November 2020: emphasis added).

22. https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/verkehr/suv-neuzulassungen-deutschland-juni-2019/

23. As Margaret Thatcher famously said in 1987: ‘Who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.’

24. Paul Feyerabend ([1994] 2019, 18) elaborates, ‘differences between languages, art forms, customs are not being denied. But I would ascribe them to accidents of location and/or history, not to clear, unambiguous, and immobile cultural essences: potentially every culture is all cultures.’

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Nico Stehr

Professor Nico Stehr, PhD, FSRC, is Professor emeritus (Karl Mannheim Professor for Cultural Studies) at Zeppelin University (2004 – 2018). He studied Economics, Sociology, Law, Social Policy Fiscal Theory and Policy at the Universities of Cologne and Oregon. After his PhD 1970, he was Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, (1979-1997), Eric-Voegelin-Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, (1984-1985), Paul F. Lazarsfeld Professor, Human- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Wien, (2002-2003), Alcatel Professor, TH Darmstadt, Germany 2001, he held between 1977-2000 Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Wien, Zürich, Konstanz, Augsburg and Duisburg. His most recent books include: Information, Power, and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Understanding Inequality. Social Costs and Benefits (with Amanda Machin, Springer, 2016); Knowledge. Is Knowledge Power? (with Marion Adolf, Routledge, 2017); Society & Climate (with Amanda Machin, World Scientific, 2019); Money. A Social Theory of Modernity (with Dustin Voss, Routledge, 2020). His book Knowledge Capitalism (Routledge, 2022) is in production. During the Winter Semester 2022/23 he will be a Visiting Professor at the Universität Zürich. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.