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Deep Time and Secular Time: A Critique of the Environmental ‘Long View’
Open accessAbstract
The Anthropocene concept allows human history to be imagined within the temporal framework of planetary processes. Accordingly, some environmentalists increasingly favour massively lengthening the temporal horizons of moral concern. Whilst there are defensible reasons for doing so, I wish to take issue with the ‘secular time’ perspective underlying some such approaches. To make my case, I present, in the first section, two recent manifestations of the long view perspective: a) ‘deep future’ narratives in popular climate science and futurism; b) the ideas behind the Long Now Foundation. In the second section, I apply a critical lens to these perspectives via classic analyses of secular time by Charles Taylor, Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. I conclude by suggesting that these post-secular critiques should be considered alongside recent approaches to the Anthropocene and the ‘geological turn’ from new materialist perspectives.
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Timely hypocrisy? Hypocrisy temporalities in CSR communication
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“The dominant business narrative on economic growth is characterized by a linear conception of time, according to which the future is “an indefinite extension of present commitments” (Skrimshire, 2018: 5; see also Slawinski & Bansal, 2012).”
BackgroundInfluential
Metadata
- Authors
- Skrimshire, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Leeds (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Skrimshire, Stefan
- Venue
- Theory, Culture & Society
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2018-06-07
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 63-81
- ISSN
- 0263-2764 (ISSN-L)
- 1460-3616
- OpenAlex
- W2806494142
- Cited by
- 32
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 3
- FWCI
- 31.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Theory Culture & Society (publishedVersion)
- White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) (acceptedVersion)
- Publication Database GFZ (GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences) (submittedVersion)
- Publication Database IASS (Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS)) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Nature and Landscape Conservation › Environmental Philosophy and Ethics
- Keywords
- Anthropocene, secular time, deep time, environmental ethics, Charles Taylor, Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben, post-secularism, new materialism, Futurism
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