Culture of the Slow Social Deceleration in an Accelerated World
Across the world, there has been a growing dissatisfaction with the tempo of modern life. Described simply as the 'slow phenomenon', this volume explores this new brand of living that entails not simply slowing down but an embracing of alternative activit
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Slow Culture: An Introduction
If we carry on at this rate, the cult of speed can only get worse. When everyone takes the fast option, the advantage of going fast vanishes, forcing us to go faster still. Eventually, what we are left with is an arms race based on speed, and we all know where arms races end up: in the grim stalemate of Mutually Assured Destruction. (Honoré 2004, p. 11) To keep up in this competition, the average individual needs to earn more money. This means that he or she must work longer hours, take higher-paying but more demanding jobs, and so on. Ceteris paribus, these processes will lower the fraction of productivity growth which individuals desire to take as free time, and increase their demands for income. (Schor 1998a, p. 123)
Introduction There is a powerful message permeating our social lives today, found in our self-help networks, talkback television and radio shows, and online forums. It is a warning that, through technology and modernisation, our lifestyles have become increasingly hectic, fast, complex and immediate. ‘Life’, writes online author Leo Babauta (2009, para. 2), ‘moves at such a fast pace that it seems to pass us by before we can really enjoy it’. We are encouraged to take a step back, to breathe deeply and ‘slow down’, in order to recapture the essence of ‘real’ living. By doing so, we can escape the seemingly endless stresses associated with our multi-tasked, timecompressed and instantaneous speed culture (Tomlinson 2007). This 1
10.1057/9781137319449.0004 - Slow Culture, Nick Osbaldiston
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Bibliotheque de l'Universite Laval - PalgraveConnect - 2014-07-03
Nick Osbaldiston
Slow Culture: An Introduction
book presents illustrations of how people are beginning to disentangle themselves from a speed culture by embracing slowness. It is not simply a matter of slowing down, as the term implies, but of undertaking changes in the way we do things at an everyday level. Underpinning these transformations is a concern, as Babauta (2009) suggests, with the uniquely stressful lifestyles we are living in contemporary culture. These concerns are certainly not unmerited. The reality of increasing technological advance and the expansion of consumer capitalism is that social life has become increasingly more complex and accelerated. In particular, advances in communication and information technologies in the market, in social networks and in the work place (as well as sport and mass media) have created a culture of ‘immediacy’ or instantaneity (Tomlinson 2007; Macnaughten and Urry 199
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