Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time. By
William Scheuerman. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
312p. $42.00.
While the political ramifications of social acceleration have
preoccupied thinkers in a variety of disciplines at least since the
Industrial Revolution, and contemporary works by such thinkers as Paul
Virilio, David Harvey, James Der Derian, and William Connolly have
highlighted various modes of speed, many in political science have been
slow to pay heed. William Scheuerman's book aims to redress this lag
in the discipline, taking up the theme of social acceleration from these
and other authors and using it to frame a wide-ranging assessment of
transformations to liberal democratic legal and political
institutions.