The Social Structure of Space and Time: Preliminary Generalizations

The most fundamental aspect of our moment-to-moment perception—space and time— has, to this point, been ignored by sociologists. Sociologists have, of course, spent a great deal of time considering the cultural import of time schedules, the periodicity of interactions, life-course and age-related trajectories, the use of public and private spaces, and the traversal of space enabled by transportation technology and electronic media. What they have not done, however, is consider how neurophysiological processes alter and distort situational perceptions of spatiotemporality itself. Doing so is important because spatiotemporal perception implicates important aspects of behavioral regulation and impulse control. In this paper, I describe the neurophysiology of spatiotemporal perception, link it to behavioral regulation/impulse control and describe in detail, across 26 testable propositions, how a theory of situational spatiotemporal perception can generate novel predictions in a handful of our most influential sociological theories.