Gender and Temporality in Interpersonal Systems

Abstract

This essay provides a nonessentializing account of how gender affects the social construction of time in communicative interactions. Niklas Luhmann's systems theory serves as the theoretical framework for explaining how time is constructed through communication codes. Using Luhmann's model, the essay argues that gender is a communication code that operates to align social participants' perspectives towards a socially constructed “present.” However, the essay notes that participants' experience of that present will be contingent upon the specific cultural and historical criteria that constitute their use of the gender code. The criteria specific to Anglo‐American culture are used to illustrate how this instanciation of the gender code might affect temporal experience.

Time perspective and autobiographical memory: Individual and gender differences in experiencing time and remembering the past

“…This sense of connection is itself taken by Nadesan (1997) to form the basis for women's richer sense of temporality. She argued that women's communicative style establishes a greater sense of temporality through its heightened intersubjectivity.…”

Simultaneity, Sequentiality, and Speed: Organizational Messages About Multiple-Task Completion

“…It also extends our current understanding of multiple-task completion preferences, and allows elaboration on how temporal values and work pace can collectively inform a contemporary perspective on multitasking. It thus contributes to the growing body of communication scholarship relating to issues of human temporality (Ballard, 2009;Ballard & Seibold, 2000, 2003Baron, 2008Baron, , 2010Bennett, 2000;Bruneau, 1979;Buzzanell & Liu, 2005;Hylmö & Buzzanell, 2002;Katz & Aakhus, 2002;Kirby & Krone, 2002;Kleinman, 2009;McKerrow, 1999;Monge & Kalman, 1996;Nadesan, 1997;Peterson, 1996;Stephens, 2007;Stephens & Rains, 2011;Turner & Reinsch, 2007;Wolburg, 1999Wolburg, , 2001, and underscores its unique relevance in contemporary organizational settings.…”

Public and Private Priorities in Managing Time in Genetic Research: The Icelandic deCode Case

“…Mead's ideas of time emphasize how actors invoke and define past events in the interest of present continuity toward a desirable future. Interactionists have made productive use of Mead's ideas on the mediation of temporal segments in social action, with their epistemological load and their optimism for social realization of the futures (e.g., Katovich 1987a; Katovich and Couch 1992; Maines, Sugrue, and Katovich 1983; Milligan 1998; Nadesan 1997; TenHouten 1999). Seeking to extend the range of public issues and to expand awareness of the complexity of social issues, interactionists have also studied how interest groups compete over scarce resources (Joas 1982, 1993; Lüscher 1990).…”