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Gender and Temporality in Interpersonal Systems
Author(s) -
Nadesan Majia Holmer
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.1997.20.1.21
Subject(s) - temporality , interpersonal communication , code (set theory) , sociology , affect (linguistics) , epistemology , social psychology , psychology , social science , computer science , communication , philosophy , set (abstract data type) , programming language
This essay provides a nonessentializing account of how gender affects the social construction of time in communicative interactions. Niklas Luhmann's systems theory serves as the theoretical framework for explaining how time is constructed through communication codes. Using Luhmann's model, the essay argues that gender is a communication code that operates to align social participants' perspectives towards a socially constructed “present.” However, the essay notes that participants' experience of that present will be contingent upon the specific cultural and historical criteria that constitute their use of the gender code. The criteria specific to Anglo‐American culture are used to illustrate how this instanciation of the gender code might affect temporal experience.