Filip Vostal spoke about temporal regimes of knowledge production

Filip Vostal gave a talk on the seminar “Academic Timescapes. The use of time in the academy and its influence on the production of knowledge” with the title “communication” On temporal regimes of knowledge production “. The seminar took place at the Institute of Social Sciences, in the University of Minho, on May 22. The author of the book “Accelerating Academy: The Changing Structure of Academic Time” (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), said that we are no longer in a moment for a timeless time academy characterized by long times to be dedicated to reflexivity, participation and pondering. As it happens with all the other organizations, academy is now a place of passage and the boundaries between capitalist dynamics and academic life have become more or less diluted. Time in the academy is distributed in a diverse and sometimes uneven manner and the deadlines multiply and overlap in chaotic ways. Technologies solve some difficulties, but complicate and originate others by multiplying requests for information. Knowledge flows and circulates at intense rhythms in response to various social and economic transformations and one cannot think of social and technical “acceleration” or periods or slowdown as necessarily perverse or good.

Therefore, a time policy in science is necessary to make the sequence of requests more evident and consistent at several hierarchical levels, including the various audiences involved. More ethnographic research is needed to take a closer look at the dynamics and the ways in which time is used and perceived in science and in academia.

The intervention from the Czech Republic was followed by a discussion with colleagues from the University of Minho and of the University of Aveiro invited to the event – Madalena Oliveira, Teresa Carvalho, Óscar Gonçalves, Cidália Silva, Manuel Pinto and Emília Araújo – who supported some of those positions, emphasizing the importance studies in SSH may have fueling practices concerning management of science and knowledge in academia and science. The diversity and the multiplicity of times are two core issues to consider.

The initiative was organized by the CECS and LAB2PT and includes the cycle now known as “Social Studies of Time”, which aims to be a space for thinking about the importance of time, rhythms and temporalities in understanding the social world, in its diversity and multiplicity.

Vítor de Sousa/Emília Araújo