Four Temporalities: Toward a Typology of Narrative Forms

I outline four temporalities that appear in highly regarded explanatory historical social science. Given William Sewell’s centrality to the literature, I do so through a critique of his proposition that there are “three temporalities”—experimental time, teleology, and eventfulness—and that only the last of them is valid. I concede that his rejection of “experimental” time is justified. But I argue that the category of “teleology,” which Sewell rejects, encompasses two forms of transitional change—“tendencies” and “thresholds”—that are coherent and defensible. I further argue that his preferred category of “eventfulness” really refers to two distinct temporalities—“coincidences” and “contrivances”—rather than just one. I illustrate tendencies, thresholds, coincidences, and contrivances in the works of John Veugelers, Ivan Ermakoff, Marshall Sahlins, and, of course, Sewell.