Social Time in a Period of Change, or on the New Differentiations in Polish society

Abstract

The author draws attention to the appearance of a new source of differentiations in Polish society at the beginning of the 1990s—the clearly perceptible and subjective sense of an uneven distribution of time. She uses the varying lifestyles and associated temporal orientations observed by Polish sociologists in the 1970s as a reference point: the conservative style, looking to the past; the innovative style, or susceptibility to change; and the ‘today’ style, that is, an orientation toward the present moment, which is systemically conditioned and predominates in various segments of society. The systemic transformation brought major alterations in attitudes to time and change. A deficit of time became more common, and yet as society accelerated sociologists were surprised to observe an increase in groups of people suffering from too much free time. This was a sign of deep social polarization: a division between successful people, who were keeping up with the changes, and were oriented toward the future—planning, and valuing time as a necessity for the realization of those plans—and marginalized people, who were not actively participating in the changes and had too much time on their hands. For both groups, the change in the distribution of time could have negative consequences. For one group, in spite of the satisfaction of achieving goals, there was fatigue, lack of family time, limited participation in cultural activities, and lack of time for reflection. For the other group, there was unused time as a cause of apathy, passivity, and a sense of social marginalization.