Normativity of social time in the Russian tradition
https://doi.org/10.24290/1029-3736-2026-32-3-112-151
Abstract
This article attempts to reconstruct the normative types of social time traced in the Russian philosophical and sociological traditions. The corpus was formed according to two criteria: the explicit temporal problematic and the implicit temporality of social-theoretical works. Reconstruction is understood here as an analytical model, rather than the retrospective construction of a «school» or canon. It is shown that the rejection of temporal monism and a multi-layered understanding of time form a common thread throughout the corpus, extending from the natural-scientific projects of the early 20th century to the late Soviet sociology of biography and émigré sociological thought. Based on this material, five main levels of temporal normativity are identified: cosmo-noospheric, historical-eschatological, civilizational-cyclical, resource-based, and biographical. Each of these levels defines its own criterion of timeliness and its own form of obligation. P.A. Sorokin's methodological concept of social time and Georges Gurvitch’s models, which intersect all levels. Their analytical value lies in their ability to describe conflicts and mutual absorptions between levels – that is, situations where biographical time is reduced to planned time, eschatological time breaks through institutional time, and cyclical time restructures the structural positions of the world-system. Challenges for testing the model were identified empirically – using data from current sociological surveys on planning horizons, reproductive expectations, and the age structure of Russian society. These surveys reveal a desynchronization of temporal levels in contemporary Russian everyday life. It is concluded that the concept of the normativity of time can become a rallying point for the sociology of time, overcoming its disintegration into the philosophy of duration, budget statistics, and the psychology of timeliness.
About the Author
S. V. LvovRussian Federation
Lvov Stepan V., Cand. Sc. in Sociology, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the VCIOM Analytical Center; Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
st. Prechistenka, bld. 38, Moscow
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Review
For citations:
Lvov S.V. Normativity of social time in the Russian tradition. Moscow State University Bulletin. Series 18. Sociology and Political Science. 2026;32(3):112-151. https://doi.org/10.24290/1029-3736-2026-32-3-112-151
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