Social Acceleration: Five “Deflationary” Comments

Abstract

I argue that some arguments associated with “acceleration debate” consolidated by the work of Hartmut Rosa are “inflationary” –not necessarily incorrect. Then I explain what such conceptual dramatization means and what the “deflationary” approach is. After that I outline five polemical comments about accelerating capitalist modernity. Importantly, I do not take an issue with convincing arguments claiming that modern era is an era of social intensification, dynamization and acceleration as other important thinkers such as Reinhart Koselleck, Marshall Berman, Robert Hassan and Paul Virilio have claimed. In this essay I take issue with three dimensions of the acceleration debate. Namely with 1) often-apocalyptic outlook that many (not all) acceleration thinkers maintain; 2) with rather undifferentiated inferences made thereupon, and; 3) with some conceptual insensitivity associated with acceleration. The conclusion comprises a simple proposition –more ethnography of social acceleration is needed, more observation and in-situ social investigations of time use, temporal orders, social rhythms, waiting are overdue in order to substantiate conceptual debate on social acceleration.