Professor Judy Wajcman: ‘Pressed for time: Everyday life in the digital age’

Leeds Social Sciences Institute / The Bauman Institute
Professor Judy Wajcman

Judy Wajcman will explore why technology is blamed for accelerating everyday life and yet we turn to digital devices for the solution during a talk that is being co-hosted by Leeds Social Sciences Institute / The Bauman Institute.

The Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science will give a presentation based on her new book, ‘Pressed for Time: Is the problem digital devices, or the way we design and use them?’ (University of Chicago Press, 2015).

The event will include a Q&A and drinks reception.

Abstract

There is a widespread assumption that digital devices make us live too fast, a sense that time is scarce and that the pace of everyday life is accelerating beyond our control. The iconic image that abounds is that of the frenetic, technologically tethered, iPhone-addicted citizen.

So what is the relationship between technology and time? Does technological acceleration inexorably hasten the pace of work and everyday life?

This talk presents a sociological understanding of the paradoxes of time in a digital age.

Professor Wajcman will argue that there is no temporal logic inherent in technologies. As opposed to the technologically determinist approach, she will argue that it is our concrete social practices that generate those qualities of technologies that we usually consider as intrinsic and permanent.

Technologies do play a central role in the constitution of time regimes, as our very experience of human action and the material world is mediated by technology. But we make the world together with technology and so it is with time.

Registration

The event will be held on Tuesday, 7 July between 4-6.30pm in the Yorkshire Bank Lecture Theatre, LUBS.

Attendance is free but due to limited space it is necessary to register in advance by completing the online booking form. Places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

About the speaker

Judy Wajcman is the Anthony Giddens Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was previously Professor of Sociology in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. She has held posts in Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester, Sydney, Tokyo, Vienna, Warwick and Zurich.

She was President of the Society for the Social Studies of Science and is a recipient of the CITASA William F. Ogburn Career Achievement Award of the American Sociological Association. This award recognizes a sustained body of research that has made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of knowledge in the area of sociology of communications or the sociology of information technology.

Her books include: The Politics of Working Life, TechnoFeminism, Managing Like a Man: Women and Men in Corporate Management, Feminism Confronts Technology and The Social Shaping of Technology. Her work has been translated into French, German, Greek, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.