全球化进程中的时间标准化

On the Standardization of Time in the Course of Globalization

对于全球化的历史,人们多关注人类活动空间范围的扩大和联系纽带的加强,说明和诠释人类从彼此相对孤立的状态,转向相互联系渐趋密切,并最终发展成为一个整体的过程。但这种关注欠缺一个重要的维度,即世界各地趋向于使用统一的时间体系的过程。事实上,在全球化的历史进程中,人类空间联系的逐渐扩大和加强,与人类为建立全球统一的时间体系作不断的努力是同步进行的。时间的标准化,既是全球化进程的产物,同时也是推动全球化向纵深发展的重要因素。人类的时间是社会文化时间,时间的社会性必然导致人类在全球交往层面上所使用的时间趋同。与全球化一样,全球时间标准化是一个必然的进程,与这个趋势的任何抵触都难免失败。不过,这不纯粹是一个自然的历史过程。由于时间又具有政治性,时间趋向统一的过程中充满了竞争和霸权。到19世纪后期,以格列高利历和格林威治本初子午线为基础的全球通用时间体系和时间标准基本形成,体现了英美等西方国家在当时世界上所处的霸权地位。

In considering the history of globalization,we tend to pay attention to the expansion of the spatial scope of human activities and the strengthening of their linkages,features that explain and interpret how people have moved from a relatively isolated state into increasingly close contact and finally into a holistic entity.But this approach lacks a significant dimension:the process by which all countries have moved toward a unified system of time-keeping.In fact,in the historical process of globalization,spatial contacts were extended and reinforced gradually,in synchrony with efforts to set up a unified system of global time.The standardization of time is a product of the process of globalization and at the same time an important factor intensifying globalization.Human time is the timing of social culture;its social nature necessarily leads to the convergence of time-keeping at the level of global communication.Like globalization,the standardization of global time is a necessary process which nothing can resist.But this convergence was not a purely natural historical process.Because time also possesses a political character,the process by which it moved toward unification involved competition and hegemony.By the late 19 th century,global standard time and time standards based on the Gregorian calendar and Greenwich Mean Time had largely taken shape,demonstrating the hegemonic position of Britain,the USA and other Western countries in the world at the time.