M G Flaherty
Biographic Data
| ID | 647570 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M G Flaherty |
| GIVEN NAMES | M G |
| FAMILY NAME | Flaherty |
| SIGNATURE | FLAHERTY M G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Eckerd College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0460-0594 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 275 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1968 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Znaniecki Belongs in the Conversation: His Contributions to the Sociology of Culture, the Study of Social Interaction, and the Practice of Qualitative Research
Tinder and Time Work through the Lens of Gender: Temporal Agency, Technology, and Intimacy
Time work has served as part of the conceptual framework for research that explores the connection between agency and temporal experience. We advance this line of inquiry by asking how temporal agency is refracted through the lens of gender when people use the Tinder dating app. Our analysis is based on 44 semistructured interviews with Tinder users in Romania conducted between 2019 and 2022. Tinder is designed to promote a fast-paced dating dyna…
Time and ADHD in Danish Families: Mutual Affect Through Rhythm
Based on fieldwork in Danish families living with ADHD, we expand on Nielsen's insight that ADHD is experienced as a state of desynchronization by showing how family members' rhythms mutually affect each other. We argue that ADHD is not only a biological and psychiatric condition, but also a temporal and socially responsive phenomenon. The intensity of ADHD is influenced by mutual affect in families and by general life circumstances. Families con…
Prison Media: Incarceration and the Infrastructures of Work and Technology
The Social Bifurcation of Reality: Symmetrical Construction of Knowledge in Science-Trusting and Science-Distrusting Discourses
This article proposes a conceptual framework to study the social bifurcation of reality in polarized science-trusting and science-distrusting lay worldviews, by analyzing and integrating five concepts: science work, number work, emotion work, time work, and boundary work. Despite the epistemological asymmetry between accounts relying on mainstream science and science-distrusting or denialist ones, there are symmetrical social processes contributi…
Whose time is it? Negotiating temporality in everyday life
Online Memes and Covid-19
In this article, the authors highlight their findings on online memes to see what they reveal about self and time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their analysis shows that the self and time are related aspects of social interaction. The self is akin to a theatrical performance and our perception of time is altered by problematic circumstances
Argumentative time work for legitimizing homeopathy: Temporal reasons for the acceptance of an alternative medical practice
In Romania, as elsewhere, there is persistent controversy surrounding homeopathy wherein various parties try to draw the boundaries of legitimate medical practice. The literature on complementary and alternative medicine features little discussion on the temporal dimensions of controversies surrounding these therapies, focusing mainly on the temporalities of the lived experience of treatment. Yet time is a powerful resource for challenging and ga…
The Lathe of Time: Some Principles of Temporal Agency
Crystal balls and calendars: A structural analysis of projected futures
This study examines the temporal structure of projected futures. The sociology of time is an established line of inquiry, but the existing literature lacks empirically grounded description of the cultural and cognitive dimensions of projected futures. When individuals imagine their futures, what is the qualitative nature and temporal structure of their projected futures? In order to address these questions, we used a mixed-methods strategy of int…
Erotics of Time: Toward the Cross-Cultural Study of Temporal Experience
Research in anthropology and sociology has focused on the social organization of time and time reckoning. There is, consequently, an emphasis on cross-cultural differences in the meaning of time. This line of inquiry neglects variation in the perceived passage of time as well as temporal agency. Following a review of extant research in anthropology, I call for cross-cultural research on the perception of time or subjective temporal experience. Us…
Young Men, Time, and Boredom in the Republic of Georgia
Let's Study Time and Technology Rather than Editorialize
Sociology as a Conversation: The Present Circumstances and Future Prospects of Peer Review
Age and agency: Time work across the life course
Scholars have observed growing variability in life course transitions, such as entry into a full-time job. Life course theorists use the concept of agency to account for increasing diversity and unpredictability in developmental trajectories. In so doing, they presume that agency can only be a source of heterogeneity. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 406 people from all walks of life, I examine a form of temporal agency or 'time work' - that…
Promises, Promises, Promises
Variation in the Perceived Passage of Time: A Cross-National Study
Flaherty's cross-cultural theory purports to account for variation in the perceived passage of time. Recent events in Argentina provide an opportunity to assess the applicability of this theory to a Latin American nation. We conducted interviews with 198 persons who participated in various kinds of political activism. The respondents who felt that time had passed “quickly” emphasized an increase in governmental and personal activity. For those wh…
Sociotemporal Rhythms in E-mail: A case study
This study examines sociotemporal rhythms in the volume of e-mail. E-mail is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but we hypothesize that there are non-random patterns in the temporal flow of e-mail. We counted the total number of e-mail messages received per hour by any address at our college for more than eight months. Non-random patterns emerged in our data. The volume of e-mail per hour is above average during traditional working hour…
An Accelerating Tempo: Recent Contributions to the Study of Time:Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past;The Human Organization of Time: Temporal Realities and Experience
Time Work: Customizing Temporal Experience
The literature on agency neglects temporality; the literature on temporality neglects agency. This paper integrates these largely separate lines of research with the concept work, which is defined as individual or interpersonal efforts to create or suppress particular kinds of temporal experience. Semistructured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 398 subjects, who were asked to describe ways in which they engage in time work. Analytic ind…
Reply [from Michael G. Flaherty]
Emotions, the Social Bond, and Human Reality: Part/Whole Analysis
Humor: The Psychology of Living Buoyantly
Making Time: Agency and the Construction of Temporal Experience
In this note, I conceptualize four models of causal processes that govern various dimensions of temporal experience. The first is classic determinism, while the other three are variations on the theme of self-determination. Efforts at self-determination are defined as forms of agency that I call time work. These agentic practices involve attempts to control, manipulate, or customize one's own temporality or that of others. I draw empirical instan…
How Emotions Work
Time Work: Customizing Temporal Experience
The literature on agency neglects temporality; the literature on temporality neglects agency. This paper integrates these largely separate lines of research with the concept work, which is defined as individual or interpersonal efforts to create or suppress particular kinds of temporal experience. Semistructured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 398 subjects, who were asked to describe ways in which they engage in time work. Analytic ind…
Present, Past, and Future
Time is of utmost importance in the writings of George Herbert Mead, the American pragmatist philosopher and social psychologist. Yet, despite Mead's prominence as the primary source of the symbolic interactionist approach to sociology, most social scientists are unfamiliar with his perspective on temporality. We describe his analysis of the present, the past, and the future - emphasizing that, for Mead, people live in the present, and that their…
Age and agency: Time work across the life course
Scholars have observed growing variability in life course transitions, such as entry into a full-time job. Life course theorists use the concept of agency to account for increasing diversity and unpredictability in developmental trajectories. In so doing, they presume that agency can only be a source of heterogeneity. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 406 people from all walks of life, I examine a form of temporal agency or 'time work' - that…
Making Time: Agency and the Construction of Temporal Experience
In this note, I conceptualize four models of causal processes that govern various dimensions of temporal experience. The first is classic determinism, while the other three are variations on the theme of self-determination. Efforts at self-determination are defined as forms of agency that I call time work. These agentic practices involve attempts to control, manipulate, or customize one's own temporality or that of others. I draw empirical instan…
Young Men, Time, and Boredom in the Republic of Georgia
The Perception of Time and Situated Engrossment
This paper concerns the relationship between objective and subjective time. Ordinarily one's perception of time is synchronized roughly with the time of clocks and calendars (synchronicity), but under certain conditions it seems that time is passing very slowly (protracted duration). We used two different methods to obtain personal narratives concerning the experience of protracted duration
Multiple Realities and the Experience of Duration
This article documents an exploration of the following question: How does transition from one to another subuniverse of social reality shape the individual's sense of duration? That question is addressed through a phenomenological analysis of time-consciousness. The data consist of personal testimony in the form of anecdotes that summarize incidents in which time was felt to slow noticeably. Analytic induction is applied to these ethnographic obs…
How Time Flies: Age, Memory, and Temporal Compression
We formulate a comprehensive theory that accounts for variation in the perception of time. According to our theory, lived time is perceived to pass slowly (protracted duration) when conscious information processing is high; lived time is perceived to be synchronized with clock time (synchronicity) when conscious information processing is moderate; and lived time is perceived to have passed quickly (temporal compression) when conscious information…
Variation in the Perceived Passage of Time: A Cross-National Study
Flaherty's cross-cultural theory purports to account for variation in the perceived passage of time. Recent events in Argentina provide an opportunity to assess the applicability of this theory to a Latin American nation. We conducted interviews with 198 persons who participated in various kinds of political activism. The respondents who felt that time had passed “quickly” emphasized an increase in governmental and personal activity. For those wh…
Sociotemporal Rhythms in E-mail: A case study
This study examines sociotemporal rhythms in the volume of e-mail. E-mail is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but we hypothesize that there are non-random patterns in the temporal flow of e-mail. We counted the total number of e-mail messages received per hour by any address at our college for more than eight months. Non-random patterns emerged in our data. The volume of e-mail per hour is above average during traditional working hour…
Two Conceptions of the Social Situation: Some Implications of Humor
This article appraises two images of the social situation: Blumer's symbolic interactionism and Goffman's microstructuralism. Blumer stresses the improvisational and consequently unpredictable character of social interaction, while Goffman emphasizes situational determinism along with mutual predictability through self-abnegation. The evaluation of their respective positions is based upon their relative efficacy in the analysis of data drawn from…
Whose time is it? Negotiating temporality in everyday life
Argumentative time work for legitimizing homeopathy: Temporal reasons for the acceptance of an alternative medical practice
In Romania, as elsewhere, there is persistent controversy surrounding homeopathy wherein various parties try to draw the boundaries of legitimate medical practice. The literature on complementary and alternative medicine features little discussion on the temporal dimensions of controversies surrounding these therapies, focusing mainly on the temporalities of the lived experience of treatment. Yet time is a powerful resource for challenging and ga…
Crystal balls and calendars: A structural analysis of projected futures
This study examines the temporal structure of projected futures. The sociology of time is an established line of inquiry, but the existing literature lacks empirically grounded description of the cultural and cognitive dimensions of projected futures. When individuals imagine their futures, what is the qualitative nature and temporal structure of their projected futures? In order to address these questions, we used a mixed-methods strategy of int…
Some Methodological Principles From Research in Practice: Validity, Truth, and Method in the Study of Lived Time
The author has spent much of the last 10 years investigating variation in the perceived passage of time. In this article, the author reflects on the conduct of that research and discusses 5 principles that are pertinent to issues of validity, truth, and method in the study of temporal experience: intellectual curiosity, systematic empiricism, analytic induction, pragmatic orientation, and commitment to progress. The article concludes with a call …
Conceptualizing Variation in the Experience of Time
This paper presents a theoretical model that identifies and accounts for the full range of variation in the experience of duration. The model has been generated through inductive theory construction, using empirical materials drawn from the triangulation of qualitative methods. Its central proposition is that variation in the perceived passage of time reflects variation in the density of conscious information processing per standard temporal unit
Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards
Tinder and Time Work through the Lens of Gender: Temporal Agency, Technology, and Intimacy
Time work has served as part of the conceptual framework for research that explores the connection between agency and temporal experience. We advance this line of inquiry by asking how temporal agency is refracted through the lens of gender when people use the Tinder dating app. Our analysis is based on 44 semistructured interviews with Tinder users in Romania conducted between 2019 and 2022. Tinder is designed to promote a fast-paced dating dyna…
Time and ADHD in Danish Families: Mutual Affect Through Rhythm
Based on fieldwork in Danish families living with ADHD, we expand on Nielsen's insight that ADHD is experienced as a state of desynchronization by showing how family members' rhythms mutually affect each other. We argue that ADHD is not only a biological and psychiatric condition, but also a temporal and socially responsive phenomenon. The intensity of ADHD is influenced by mutual affect in families and by general life circumstances. Families con…
Let's Study Time and Technology Rather than Editorialize
Sociology as a Conversation: The Present Circumstances and Future Prospects of Peer Review
An Accelerating Tempo: Recent Contributions to the Study of Time:Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past;The Human Organization of Time: Temporal Realities and Experience
How Emotions Work
A Note from the New Editor
Lessing and Opera: A Re-Evaluation
(1969). Lessing and Opera: A Re-Evaluation. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory: Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 95-109
The Defenders of Baroque Opera-Harbingers of Modern Criticism
TH HE DEFENDERS OF BAROQUE OPERA -HARBINGERS OF MODERN CRITICISM1 V BY M. G. FLAHERTY V Opera was a product of Renaissance desires to revive the art forms of classical antiquity. Originally intended as a restoration of Greek tragedy, it became something entirely different when Baroque longings for an artistic synthesis made it into a theatrical genre which employed several arts within a dramatic framework. Opera gained such wide acclaim that it d…
Lessing and Opera: A Re-Evaluation
(1969). Lessing and Opera: A Re-Evaluation. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory: Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 95-109
Die Sachsische Komodie: Studien zum Sprachstil
Curt von Faber du Faur, German Baroque Literature: A Catalogue of the Collection in the Yale University Library, Volume 2
Curt von Faber du Faur, German Baroque Literature: A Catalogue of the Collection in the Yale University Library, Volume 2." The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory, 48(4), pp. 321–322
The Sociology of Hope
Multiple Realities and the Experience of Duration
This article documents an exploration of the following question: How does transition from one to another subuniverse of social reality shape the individual's sense of duration? That question is addressed through a phenomenological analysis of time-consciousness. The data consist of personal testimony in the form of anecdotes that summarize incidents in which time was felt to slow noticeably. Analytic induction is applied to these ethnographic obs…
The Gift Economy
Humor and Society: Explorations in the Sociology of Humor
Two Conceptions of the Social Situation: Some Implications of Humor
This article appraises two images of the social situation: Blumer's symbolic interactionism and Goffman's microstructuralism. Blumer stresses the improvisational and consequently unpredictable character of social interaction, while Goffman emphasizes situational determinism along with mutual predictability through self-abnegation. The evaluation of their respective positions is based upon their relative efficacy in the analysis of data drawn from…
The Perception of Time and Situated Engrossment
This paper concerns the relationship between objective and subjective time. Ordinarily one's perception of time is synchronized roughly with the time of clocks and calendars (synchronicity), but under certain conditions it seems that time is passing very slowly (protracted duration). We used two different methods to obtain personal narratives concerning the experience of protracted duration
Time and Social Theory
Four Ironies: A Comment on Rigney and Smith's 'A Behavioral Examination of Mead's View of Role-Taking
Conceptualizing Variation in the Experience of Time
This paper presents a theoretical model that identifies and accounts for the full range of variation in the experience of duration. The model has been generated through inductive theory construction, using empirical materials drawn from the triangulation of qualitative methods. Its central proposition is that variation in the perceived passage of time reflects variation in the density of conscious information processing per standard temporal unit
New Philosophy of Social Science: Problems of Indeterminacy.James Bohman
How Time Flies: Age, Memory, and Temporal Compression
We formulate a comprehensive theory that accounts for variation in the perception of time. According to our theory, lived time is perceived to pass slowly (protracted duration) when conscious information processing is high; lived time is perceived to be synchronized with clock time (synchronicity) when conscious information processing is moderate; and lived time is perceived to have passed quickly (temporal compression) when conscious information…
A Note from the New Editor
Some Methodological Principles From Research in Practice: Validity, Truth, and Method in the Study of Lived Time
The author has spent much of the last 10 years investigating variation in the perceived passage of time. In this article, the author reflects on the conduct of that research and discusses 5 principles that are pertinent to issues of validity, truth, and method in the study of temporal experience: intellectual curiosity, systematic empiricism, analytic induction, pragmatic orientation, and commitment to progress. The article concludes with a call …
A Note From the Outgoing Editor
Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards
How Emotions Work
Present, Past, and Future
Time is of utmost importance in the writings of George Herbert Mead, the American pragmatist philosopher and social psychologist. Yet, despite Mead's prominence as the primary source of the symbolic interactionist approach to sociology, most social scientists are unfamiliar with his perspective on temporality. We describe his analysis of the present, the past, and the future - emphasizing that, for Mead, people live in the present, and that their…
Humor: The Psychology of Living Buoyantly
Making Time: Agency and the Construction of Temporal Experience
In this note, I conceptualize four models of causal processes that govern various dimensions of temporal experience. The first is classic determinism, while the other three are variations on the theme of self-determination. Efforts at self-determination are defined as forms of agency that I call time work. These agentic practices involve attempts to control, manipulate, or customize one's own temporality or that of others. I draw empirical instan…
Time Work: Customizing Temporal Experience
The literature on agency neglects temporality; the literature on temporality neglects agency. This paper integrates these largely separate lines of research with the concept work, which is defined as individual or interpersonal efforts to create or suppress particular kinds of temporal experience. Semistructured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 398 subjects, who were asked to describe ways in which they engage in time work. Analytic ind…
Reply [from Michael G. Flaherty]
Sociology (32 works) · Psychology (24 works) · Epistemology (17 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Social science (14 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Political science (9 works)