A Geography Of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist [Paperback]

Robert V. Levine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 23, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0465026427 | ISBN-13: 978-0465026425 | Edition: 1

In this engaging and spirited book, eminent social psychologist Robert Levine asks us to explore a dimension of our experience that we take for granted—our perception of time. When we travel to a different country, or even a different city in the United States, we assume that a certain amount of cultural adjustment will be required, whether it’s getting used to new food or negotiating a foreign language, adapting to a different standard of living or another currency. In fact, what contributes most to our sense of disorientation is having to adapt to another culture’s sense of time.Levine, who has devoted his career to studying time and the pace of life, takes us on an enchanting tour of time through the ages and around the world. As he recounts his unique experiences with humor and deep insight, we travel with him to Brazil, where to be three hours late is perfectly acceptable, and to Japan, where he finds a sense of the long-term that is unheard of in the West. We visit communities in the United States and find that population size affects the pace of life—and even the pace of walking. We travel back in time to ancient Greece to examine early clocks and sundials, then move forward through the centuries to the beginnings of ”clock time” during the Industrial Revolution. We learn that there are places in the world today where people still live according to ”nature time,” the rhythm of the sun and the seasons, and ”event time,” the structuring of time around happenings(when you want to make a late appointment in Burundi, you say, ”I’ll see you when the cows come in”).Levine raises some fascinating questions. How do we use our time? Are we being ruled by the clock? What is this doing to our cities? To our relationships? To our own bodies and psyches? Are there decisions we have made without conscious choice? Alternative tempos we might prefer? Perhaps, Levine argues, our goal should be to try to live in a ”multitemporal” society, one in which we learn to move back and forth among nature time, event time, and clock time. In other words, each of us must chart our own geography of time. If we can do that, we will have achieved temporal prosperity.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

On time, out of time, time out, time is money--if our vernacular is any indication, the concept of time has certainly infiltrated American culture. Does everybody in the world share the same perception of time? In A Geography of Time, psychologist Robert Levine puts time to the test by sending teams of researchers all over the world to measure everything from the average walking speed to the time it takes to buy a stamp at the post office. Levine scatters his findings among engaging accounts of his own encounters with the various perceptions of time in different cultures. From the history of clocks to how people tell time today, A Geography of Time is jam-packed with "timely" information. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Not limited by conventional notions of time?or "clock time," as he calls it?Levine (psychology, California State Univ., Fresno) presents a wide-ranging work loosely organized around a social construct of time. The result is an intellectualized "places-rated" guide containing observations on where people are the most generous and talk the fastest, as well as discussions of how "time wars" are waged and deeper insights into South American, Japanese, and other cultures through their perception of time. The first part of the book covers concepts of time and the history of the techniques used to measure it. The focus then shifts to the author's cross-cultural research on pace of life and its social implications. Time literacy, a type of multiculturalism, is advocated in the final section, which also contains advice for approaching life in "slower" cultures. Unique, wry, and readable, this well-documented book is recommended for social psychology collections and public libraries for sophisticated readers with the time to spare.?Antoinette Brinkman, Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (July 23, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465026427
• ISBN-13: 978-0465026425
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics > Time
  • #84 in Books > Science & Math > Experiments, Instruments & Measurement

More About the Author

Robert Levine grew up in Brooklyn New York. After graduating high school in 1963, he enrolled at UC Berkeley where he says he had the blind good luck to experience the sixties from hippy central. After Berkeley, he went on to get a master's degree in clinical psychology from Florida State University in 1969 and a Ph.D. in personality/social psychology from New York University in 1974. He's been a Professor of Psychology at California State University, Fresno ever since, with stints as Chairperson of the Department and as Associate Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics. Over the years he's also served as a Visiting Professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niteroi, Brazil, at Sapporo Medical University in Japan, and at Stockholm University in Sweden. He has won awards for both his teaching and research and is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association. He has published many articles in professional journals as well as articles in trade periodicals such as Discover, American Demographics, The New York Times, Utne Reader, and American Scientist. His book, A Geography of Time (Basic Books, 1997), was the subject of feature stories around the world, including Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, CNN, the BBC, ABC's Primetime, and NPR's All Things Considered and Marketplace. It has been translated into six languages. His book, The Power of Persuasion: How We're Bought and Sold (John Wiley & Sons, 2003), has been translated into seven languages. An updated, paperback revision was published in 2006. (Website: www.boblevine.net).

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 52 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Time well spent December 31, 2002

By Zack Davisson HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

"A Geography of Time" is an almost-excellent study of perception of time, and how this perception is affected by culture and location. A new vocabulary is introduced to the reader, along with a host of new ideas about time, including "event time," "natural time," and the familiar "clock time." The author's research is enlightening and challenging.

The concepts are easy to absorb, and the subject is well-researched and documented. I have no doubt that Levine's work is strong. Some of the work involves providing evidence for well-known concepts, such as bigger cities have a faster pace than smaller cities. Interesting correlations are drawn between the pace of a location and the accuracy of it's timepieces. I found the concept of being able to train oneself to elongate and condense time perception to be particularly interesting, such as in the case of a martial artist who moves fast by forcing an opponent to appear to move slow. Other interesting tidbits include the "contradiction of Japan," which shows that an ultra-fast paced life can be balanced out with cultural rules to prevent aggression, and how a slow-paced city is not necessarily kinder than a fast-paced city.

The reason why "A Geography of Time" is only almost-excellent is due to the author's skills as a writer. Ideas are not presented in a structured manner, information is redundantly repeated and personal opinions are freely mixed with research and evidence. Some difficult concepts, such as Einstein's time dilatation in Special Relativity are introduced as window dressing for what amounts to a sociological subject. A brief history of the introduction of clocks in America is included. The last chapter is almost a "self help" opinion piece by the author, on how to use knowledge of time to greatest advantage.

All in all, while the research is interesting and the concepts are worth reading, the book would have benefited from a tighter focus on the author's part. The book wander's lazily from concept to concept, and hurts the material overall. All in all, worth reading and enjoyable, but falling just short of the mark.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A winning combo of research/experience/insight July 4, 2000

By Susan K. Perry

Format:Paperback

I've been aware of Levine's work on "time" for more than a decade from articles and such, and I was thrilled to see this book. It's the best of its ilk: good qualitative research, heavily based on personal experience, written anecdotally and fascinatingly. I see this as akin to Deborah Tannen's excellent work in "You Just Don't Understand." If only more people were aware of how relative our cultural assumptions are, it might prevent some hair-tearing as we travel and also prevent some frustration here at home when we come upon others (even our own spouses....) who have another way of thinking/feeling about time.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Time, Place, Pace: New ways to think about our creation. October 20, 2004

By A. I. Baruti KMT-Sisouvong

Format:Paperback

A Geography of Time, by Robert Levine, discusses time as few may have previously considered it in their daily pursuits. Through personal experience, via a sabbatical, Levine offers keen insights into the rhythms of life as experienced by peoples and places the world over. Offering "tempo" and what he calls "clock time" and "event time," as points of departure in an analysis of his and his colleagues observations, Levine successfully illustrates how not only "personality types" impact a region, but also how the region impacts the personality as well, thus revealing the symbiotic relationship between the person or persons and place or places respectively.

By traversing not only the globe, but the subject of time as well, Levine has allowed readers to come closer to understanding their world and those of others with whom they come in contact. Of his main points, Levine successfully argues that we are oriented to clock-time, event-time, or "multitemporality," i.e., psychological androgyny. [Of this in between time and state of mind, Levine shows that we are better served in such a space than that of being exclusively in one or the other of either clock or event time; especially as it relates to our social, physical and psychological well being.]

Two chapters considered interesting by this reviewer are chapters one and ten. Due to the foundation established in chapter one regarding "tempo," and the last wherein Levine offers practical solutions to balance our activities and potentially lead healthier and happier lives, A Geography of Time, is not only a delightful read, it is also enormously illuminating. By providing an approachable perspective for consideration, as it relates to human activity and interaction, i.e., tempo, coupled with personal and collegial anecdotes, Levine has broached the subject of the relativity of time and pace with considerable depth and admirable precision.

In chapter one, "Tempo: The Speed of Life," Levine shows how humans, despite best efforts of social constructionists, still "march to the beat of different drummers." Borrowing from the field of music, the element of tempo, Levine notices, along with colleagues who have both traveled and lived in other countries, that not only do people have different rhythms in locales the world over, but that there seem to be distinguishable characteristics of and between the places as well. In asking the question, "what characteristics of places and cultures make them faster or slower?" Levine posits two elements for consideration: "economic well-being" and "degree of industrialization." With these elements in mind, Levine, in later chapters, develops some rather interesting and amusing ways to determine not only people's level of helpfulness in a specific locale, but also the pace of locales observed.

In chapter ten, "Minding your time, Timing your Mind," Levine successfully answers the "so what?" question. By illustrating that there are significant and avoidable consequences to certain tempos, he offers practical suggestions for a new way of not only interacting with members from different locales, but also for simply living. In coupling "lessons" learned in chapter nine, with ideas regarding middle-time in chapter ten, readers will come away from Levin's work with a clearer understanding not only themselves as "paced" individuals, but also how pace affects others in their midst. With this newfound knowledge, if put into practice, readers are sure to be in a better mental space for having been so informed.

As with any work, it has both its high and low points. With Levine's A Geography of Time, there are a few that deserve mention. However, for the sake of space and time, I will relegate my comments to chapters with the most "lows." That being said, chapters three and seven: "A Brief History of Clock Time," and "Health, Wealth, happiness, and Charity" respectively deserve my attention in this regard.

In chapter three, Levine discusses the "history of clock time," but omits some important elements for consideration. Having presented good historical information regarding the emergence of both watches and time zones in America, with the latter having ties to the railroad industry, it would have been illuminating to understand more about the socialization process of convincing the mass of people to accept this new way of thinking about the day. Another missed opportunity is found in the lack of in-depth discussion surrounding the carving up of the day into units of time, i.e., the twenty-four hour period and the sixty-minute hour. Perhaps a discussion of this element of the social construction of time would have lent more meat to a good beginning to the question of time and its social meaning.

Additionally, given his discussions of "time zones," it would have been equally revealing to read of the need for the creation of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), as it relates to globalization and economics. Not to mention the politics surrounding the choice of Greenwich as the focal point around which time has been socially constructed. Given that the Giza Plateau in Egypt is the geographical center of the pre-plate tectonic shifting of the earth's land mass; which for logical reasons seems a truer fit for the center of a "time-line," perhaps a discussion of some of the then discussions surrounding this event and its consequences, both pro and con, would have been a more just treatment of not only time in America, but around the globe as well; all of which serve as social tethers to and for time, clocks, watches, and socialization alike.

In chapter seven, while discussing "health, wealth, happiness, and charity," Levine merely makes allusion to that intangible something that gives a place its certain "feeling." In omitting this element of the place, Levine opts not to reveal the evident, but intangible components of a respective locale. Beyond stating, "our data strongly support the notion that cities, too, can be Type A" (as in personality). Perhaps it is in his "silence" on this subject that one may find some substance for consideration. For him with eyes and ears, this element is quite revealing.

Overall, Levine's work is compelling in that it reveals elements of our daily lives that provide clues as to how we have come to be that which we are: either a clock-time or event-time person, or some "androgynous" realization of the best of both worlds. In presenting this work, Levine has allowed for a clearer understanding of not only other locales around the world, their paces and people, but also those closer to home as well. In so doing, he has given the traveler and non-traveler alike, an opportunity to broaden their perspective on different cultures and potentially foster an even greater understanding of new peoples and societies with their time and pace peculiarities. Should the ideas be both understood and employed by readers, a level of respect will not only emerge for different cultures, but a more profound understanding of one's own culture as well; for this and many other reasons Levine's work should be praised.