Temporality and Social Movements

A growth in interest in temporality among social movement scholars can be dated to McAdam and Sewell’s contention that “much, if not most, scholarship in the field ... betrays no temporality whatsoever” (2001, 90). While consideration of the way that time matters for social movement research had rarely been explicit, however, issues of historical timing, pace, sequence, and rhythm are at least implicit in many standard accounts of protest, movements, and contentious politics more broadly. More recent focus on time adds a distinctive “eventful” temporality within which movements act, as well as studies of the uses of time in the discursive and strategic aspects of movements.