Abstract

CRISTIANO, Javier. For Sociological Precision Regarding the Concept of Social Acceleration. Estud. sociol [online]. 2020, vol.38, n.114, pp.829-848.  Epub Nov 25, 2020. ISSN 2448-6442.  https://doi.org/10.24201/es.2020v38n114.1811.

The issue of social acceleration, which has gained ground in the debates on capitalism and modernity, encounters -as is often the case with clichés- the misunderstandings characteristic of a thought-provoking term that is also ambiguous and polyvalent. This article seeks to contribute to a sociological delimitation of the concept, based on a definition of its literal meaning (the term acceleration), to subsequently proceed to sociologically relevant levels in which acceleration processes can take place. It distinguishes between the structural level, the agency level and the one involving the structure/action link, identifying the sub-levels and sub-types of social acceleration in each. In addition to providing accuracy -which, in my view, is unusual in debates on the subject-, the main interest of the proposal is its potential to discern degrees of theoretical and empirical interest in specific phenomena involving social acceleration.

Keywords : acceleration; time; structure; agency.

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