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The coronavirus is not only a medical threat but also collides with the temporal logic inherent to capitalism. While capitalism demands constant growth, acceleration and efficiency, the outbreak urges societies to reduce, slow down and be patient. This article provides a sociological comment on the pandemic that focuses on the role of time and temporality. It explores the multiple ways in which the required responses to Covid-19 are at odds with the temporal order of capitalism. In the midst of crisis, the specific features, contradictions and weaknesses of the time regime governing modern societies become even more apparent – and make sociological scrutiny more necessary than ever. While this comment relates to the insights provided by the sociology of time, it uses a children’s book to illustrate its argument. Drawing on Michael Ende’s story of the orphan girl Momo and the grey gentlemen who steal people’s time, I recapture the main features of capitalism as a time regime: measurement and commodification of time, temporal expansion, acceleration, appropriation of the future, and unequal temporal autonomy. The current pandemic challenges both individual and collective temporalities that are governed by these temporal imperatives of capitalism. I conclude with reflections on the feasibility of a more sustainable temporal order that Michael Ende’s novel hints at and suggest how sociological research could support such an endeavour in the current crisis.

Since the 1990s sociology has rediscovered a theme already present in the discipline’s foundational theories: the salience of future perceptions for social action. This article provides an overview of “the sociology of imagined futures”, a diverse but still scattered research field explicitly engaged with expectations, aspirations and future orientations. A review of recent scholarship emphasizes how an imagined future perspective is related to a wide range of topics and allows for innovative vantage points on persisting sociological research concerns, such as inequality, social identities, agency, coordination, power or understanding innovation and change. By systematically highlighting these contributions, but also by pointing to promising lacunae and perspectives that merit further development, this article shows how a reorientation of sociological research “back to the future” seems a promising way forward.

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Der Ausgang des Brexit-Referendums steht stellvertretend für das Erstarken populistischer Bewegungen, die etablierte Ordnungen in ihrem Kern infrage stellen. Zur Erklärung dieser politischen Verwerfungen werden gemeinhin zwei gegensätzliche Ansätze ins Spiel gebracht, »Cultural Backlash« und »Economic Deprivation«. Dieser Artikel stellt die dichotome Heuristik »Identität versus Ökonomie«, die beiden Ansätzen zugrunde liegt, infrage und entwirft stattdessen das Konzept der kollektiven ökonomischen Identität. Entlang einer diskursanalytischen Untersuchung von rund 400 Dokumenten der Brexit-Kampagne zeige ich, dass die Argumentation der Brexit-Befürworter*innen keinesfalls durch eine Aussparung ökonomischer Aspekte gekennzeichnet war. Im Unterschied zu ihren Kontrahent*innen verknüpften die EU-Kritiker*innen ökonomische Sachverhalte jedoch mit Verweisen auf eine geteilte Vergangenheit und britische Wirtschaftstraditionen. Indem es den Fürsprecher*innen eines EU-Austritts gelang, ökonomische Kritik identitär aufzuladen, konnten sie teils widersprüchliche wirtschaftspolitische Argumente integrieren und ein heterogenes Bündnis mobilisieren.