Upcoming events
26 – 28 November 2024: International Conference
Lived Time
Routines, Temporal Norms and Identities from Antiquity to the Modern World
Orientation in time is a constant in life: people are continually responding to social conventions about timing. They share ideas about which times are appropriate to do something or to be somewhere, and use these to synchronize their lives with others. People eat when others eat, work according to set temporal patterns, and avoid certain places when ‘others’ control them. As Norbert Elias (1984) already pointed out, self-regulation in time is an important social habitus that enables people to live in societies, that is, together. But social synchronization is also complex: various temporalities mingle and compete within communities and even within individuals, and in this complex temporal landscape, people can use specific conventions to perform differences. Celebrating a specific festival according to a specific calendar, for example, is not a neutral choice, but can be a performance of a specific identity.
In this conference, we want to explore people’s lived time, that is the concrete ways in which individuals experience the time at hand – the present, the recent past and the near future. The idea of lived time is inspired by lived religion, an approach from religious studies that examines religious practices as performed and experienced in everyday life, and studies how individual actors respond to religious norms and traditions. The time scales we focus on are those of hours, days, weeks, seasons and the year. How do people schedule conventional activities such as work, meals, rest or religious practices? How do they use time to make statements (consciously or unconsciously) about their place on their community’s social map? What do their working routines, liturgical schedules and temporal norms says about their values and relations to others? In what ways did people synchronize with others, and did these practices increase or rather transcend cultural, social or religious differences? How are temporal norms gendered?
The conference will create opportunities for scholars working on different periods and regions – historians as well as social scientists – to explore together how we can analyse these basic but fleeting aspects of life and the social dynamics they reveal. We invite speakers to discuss all kinds of temporal practices that are connected to multiple, intersecting identities (e.g. religion, ethnic identity, gender, class).
Past events
21 October 2022. Workshop: “Daily Life in Changing Times. The Agency of Ordinary People in Late Antiquity.” Read more
31 October 2022. Seminar with contributions from Elsa Lucassen and Dr. Renate Dekker. Dr. Arietta Papaconstantinou (University of Reading) acted as respondent. Read more
29 November 2022. Seminar on the Córdoba Calendar with Cathrien Hoijinck (Radboud University). Read more
7 February 2023. Seminar on time practices in the early Islamic world with Dr. Johannes Thomann (University of Zürich) and Dr. Eugenio Garosi. Read more
13 June 2023. Seminar on the festival calendar in Late Antique Egypt with Dr. Élodie Mazy (University College London) and Elsa Lucassen. Read more
19 September 2023. Seminar on the study of ancient religion with Dr. Mattias Brand (University of Zürich). Read more
17 May 2024: Conference: Urban Times: Temporality and routines in Greek and Roman cities at Bonn University (DE). View the full program here.