Review: SOCIAL THEORY OF SPEED

Reviewed Work(s): Beschleunigung. Die Veränderung der Zeitstruktur in der Moderne

by Hartmut Rosa
Review by: WILLIAM E. SCHEUERMAN
Source: European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie /
Europäisches Archiv für Soziologie , 2006, Vol. 47, No. 3 (2006), pp. 443-445
Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23998956

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 ZEITSTRUKTUR

SOCIAL THEORY OF SPEED

The scholarly universe is already overpopulated with

unnecessary jargon. So why add the term "social acceleration" to the dir
tory?
The German social theorist Hartmut Rosa's path breaking contribution
to social theory makes a plausible case that we not only can deepen our
general understanding of modern society by understanding its high-speed
temporality, but indeed that social acceleration represents a core attribute of
modernity. Ours is a high-speed society: we need a proper conceptual and
theoretical framework for making sense of it. As Rosa shows in this ambi
tious study, the concept of social acceleration offers a rich starting point for
doing so.
To be sure, social temporality has been an important theme in modern
social theory at least since Dürkheim. And many recent social and cultural
analysts (most prominently perhaps, the idiosyncratic Paul Virilio) have
underscored the high-speed contours of modern experiences of time. Yet
Rosa's study goes well beyond these earlier bodies of research in at least two
decisive ways. Although appreciative of existing work on social temporality,
he worries that too much of it fails to capture what is distinct about the
temporal attributes of contemporary society. Rosa endorses much of Viri
lio's emphasis on the specifically accelerated character of modern social
time, but he develops this basic intuition in a more systematic manner than
we encounter in the existing literature. For those understandably skeptical
of vague (and increasingly fashionable) references to speed or acceleration,
Rosa's book is the perfect antidote: he offers a conceptually clear definition
of acceleration, a theoretically rigorous (and empirically testable) conception
of its main manifestations and their underlying causal roots, as well as
significant empirical evidence in support of his views. Last but by no means
least, he explains why the predominant theoretical models of modern society
require revision in light of his social theory of acceleration.
Those familiar with the German intellectual scene know that Rosa's book
has already garnered wide attention since its release in December 2005.
Within a mere few months of publication, Surkamp had already sold thou
sands of copies and was forced into a second print run. Germany's most
serious and prestigious newsweekly, Die Zeit, recommended the volume as a
"book of the year". Rosa's ideas have now been widely discussed both in
scholarly outlets and in major German news outlets. The book's remarkable
success is reminiscent of the initial reception of Ulrich Beck's Risk Society,
which similarly found itself catapulted into the national - and soon inter
national - limelight within an astonishingly brief span of time. Like Beck,

* About Hartmut Rosa, Beschleunigung. Die Veränderung der Zeitstruktur in der Moderne
(Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2005).

44d

William E. Scheuerman, Indiana University (Bloomington) [wscheuer@indiana.

edu].
Arch.europsociol., XLVII, 3 (2006), pp. 443-445—ooo3-9756/o6/oooo-84i£o7.5oper art + îo.io per pageC>20o6
A.E.S.

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 SCHEUERMAN

Rosa has managed to bring creative theoretical reflections to b

resonating deeply with popular anxiety. For Beck's readers, Ch
contemporary debates about nuclear armament helped make hi
discussion of the risky character of contemporary society any
purely academic exercise. For Rosa's present-day (and mostly central
European) readers, ubiquitous anxieties about "falling behind" in the
context of globalization probably play a similar role. Wherever substantial
empirical evidence shows that growing numbers of people feel rushed and
harried (Rosa's book usefully summarizes the vast data on this matter),
however, even his most difficult theoretical claims are likely to seem directly
relevant to everyday concerns.
As Rosa shows, the term social acceleration allows us to make sense of a
series of familiar social trends working to transform human existence.
Technological advances allow vast currents of capital to circle the globe at
the blink of an eye, and firms to produce different components of a single
commodity in distant corners of the globe. Ours is an era in which innu
merable forms of activity suggest heightened possibilities for change and
innovation: instantaneous global communication, rapid-fire production and
consumption, fast information technologies, as well as high-speed weapons
of mass destruction constitute some of the more familiar manifestations of
the accelerated tempo of present-day social existence. Rosa starts with these
familiar trends, but only in order to show that the driving forces behind them
represent pivotal features of modern society. Although the author carefully
explains how many of the great texts of classical political and social theory
addressed different facets of social acceleration, and even though he knows
that high-speed temporality has often been a major theme for literary figures
and cultural critics, Rosa makes a strong case that even the most impressive
discussions of the topic have failed to do justice to its overriding significance.
A proper theory of modern (and postmodern) society, he argues, needs to
place high-speed temporality at its very core: one of the book's most pro
vocative claims is that many of the central theoretical themes in the analysis
of modernity (e.g., rationalization, individualization) need to be supple
mented by a systematic analysis of social acceleration.
Much more should be said about Rosa's fascinating book than any
reviewer can possibly accomplish in a short review. However, let me
conclude by mentioning one possible weakness. In this manner also remi
niscent of Beck, the author occasionally picks up on some set of complex and
arguably contradictory set of empirical tendencies in order to posit a global
trend about contemporary society. For example, he concedes that military
rivalry and competition between and among independent nation-states role
in much of modern history played a decisive role in generating various forms
of acceleration: think, for example, of the countless ways in which military
innovation depended on faster and temporally more efficient instruments
and institutional forms. However, Rosa now believes that military competi
tion and the nation state increasingly function as "decelerators" (p. 329), and

444

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 ZEITSTRUKTUR

he boldly asserts that many familiar features of modern po

longer primarily contribute to the overall process of social a
making this claim, he refers to substantial evidence showing
forms of bureaucratic state and military organization are no
porally efficient than we might initially expect, mixed in wi
observation that contemporary warfare increasingly seems t
non-state actors in a decentralized, non-hierarchical, and non
manner. However, as Rosa himself concedes, many of these
remain complex and even contradictory. In many settings, in
still seems to lead state actors to seek new and faster forms of mass des
truction and military organization. (As I write, Iran seems eagerly bent on
acquiring high-speed nuclear weapons, in part because of its concerns about
US and Israeli military power in the Near East.) More fundamentally, Rosa
risks collapsing a broader discussion of a complex set of political incentives
which encourage nation-states to pursue social acceleration in the context of
warfare and interstate rivalry to a somewhat truncated analysis of the tem
poral shortcomings of traditional bureaucratic and administrative organi
zation. States and their militaries seem to be cautiously moving away from
such traditional bureaucratic organizational forms, in favor of embracing
new and more decentralized network-like organizational structures, preci
sely because they seek to gain the temporal advantages enjoyed by new and
more flexible forms of organization. In other words, the recent trends in
political and military organization correctly described by Rosa by no means
demonstrate that the nation-state and military are now "decelerators". On
the contrary, such trends arguably point to the continuing existence of
deeply-rooted structural incentives which lead the state and military, as so
often in the past, to adapt their organizational structures to a political and
military universe in which those who can strike quickly and effectively often
enjoy awesome power advantages.

WILLIAM E. SCHEUERMAN

445

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