The Temporal Turn in Social Movement Studies: Political Readings of Temporality

ABSTRACT

The study of temporality has gained increasing prominence in sociology and social movement studies. As this wave of research on temporality has risen, scholars have increasingly argued that time should not be understood as a neutral backdrop but as a dimension of power and conflict. Building on the concept of the capitalist timescape as a socio‐political regime that organises, synchronises, and commodifies time through dynamics of acceleration and permanent crisis, this emerging critical field shows how temporal logics discipline everyday rhythms, compress horizons of political action, and foreclose alternative futures. Fighting against the capitalist temporal order is a battlefield of social movements which do not simply exist in time but act upon it, generating counter‐temporalities that reconfigure pasts, presents, and futures. By explicitly bridging the sociology of time and social movement studies, this article shows that the temporal turn cannot be understood without situating social movements within broader socio‐political regimes of temporality. Recent scholarship has articulated this “temporal turn” in Social Movement Studies, highlighting how social movements mobilise concepts such as critical junctures, memory, rhythm, anticipation, and prefiguration to contest the capitalist timescape. While contributions have multiplied in recent years, they remain fragmented across these different strands. This article provides an analytical overview of this literature and calls for a more integrated framework to capture how affective, symbolic, and practical practices of temporal agency intersect. It argues that grasping time politically is crucial to deconstruct the capitalist temporal order, and strengthen the strategies of resistance that emerge against it.