Use of Social Time in Iraqi culture

Post-modern societies conceive time as ‘money’, where every minute counts, whilst pre-modern societies treat time more liberally; hours and days are utilized less effectively, with little achieved at its end. Method: A quantitative method of data collection has been used to compare two samples from different cultures, Results: A large divide was observed between the sample of a post-modern society at Leeds University when compared to that of a pre-modern society in the form of students at Baghdad University. Conclusion: At present a large difference is observed between the two sample groups P<.0001. This may seem to be an unbridgeable gap when the two societies are compared side by side. Societal change is required in Iraq that draws importance to the value of time, and this should occur as the process of industrialization and urbanization proceeds at an accelerated pace in the future.


Introduction
Social time is a concept rarely seen in sociological literature, yet, many sociologists, as Lewis & Weigart (1981:432) stated, "treat time as incidental to other sociological problems rather than meriting investigation in its own right". At best it is connected to work and leisure. Philosophy, geography, history and economics are more familiar with the concept. Anthropologists like E. Hall (1959) over half a century ago, draw attention to the subject of time in daily life interaction, which is the main focus of this paper. The problem of time as a social value is not only addressed during work or leisure but in all life activities. Our life moves clockwise, from early morning until late at night, from birth to death, but time appreciation has different sentiment in terms of culture diversity; one hour late in one culture, equivalents to two minutes late in another. There are some cultures that wear watches and hang clocks on walls but they lack a sense of time. In the west, some people view time as "money", for some, every minute counts, for others hours, days and probably life times are wasted. However, time is interrelated with change. Without time no one can measure changes, as Toffler (1971:29) said "without time change has no meaning, and without change time would stop". Time can also be viewed in relation to space, every event in our life occurs in place, the place is not merely the location on earth, but includes the location on earth and the people in action, the people who act and react within this dichotomy. In this paper we explore the 90 use and abuse of social time in a cross-cultural context with special reference to Iraqi culture.

Aims
The paper aims to investigate the use and abuse of the social time phenomenon in contemporary Iraq, this phenomenon has to be tackled within the cultural context to pinpoint the value of time in daily life interactions. Assessing the differences can be seen in the way time is valued. Punctuality, maintaining appointments, time wasted, time spent, time budgets and timeless time are the themes supporting the aim of the study.

Methods
A descriptive method of data collection, (widely used in sociological studies) has been used in our research. Within this context, quantitative approaches have been adopted through a standardized questionnaire (attitude scale). This method has links with either middle range theories or grand theories, which operate as a guidance for research in social studies (Bryman 2001). According to Merton (1967) the Grand theories, like structural-functionalism, symbolic interactionism, post-structural and so on, would offer limited use for social science research, unless someone desires to test a theory. Thus, middle range theories like labelling theory, attitude and structuration, are much more useful to guide empirical studies. In Bryman words, "middle-range theories are much more likely to be the focus of empirical enquiry", these type of theories as Giddens (1984) emphasized would bridge the gap between the notions of structure and real actions in social life.

The Concept of Time: From sacred to secular.
Herodotus (484-430 BC, 1997) regarded time as events which follow one another in a linear fashion. Both Plato and Herodotus attributed the time throughout life, before life and the here-after to metaphysical powers. Likewise, Altabery (838-922, 1995) in his history, viewed time as a correlated event conducted by individuals and nations' social action; time is comprised of day and night sequences, short or long durations of social activities.
The Islamic calendar is full of sacred rituals, determined by the sacred text of "Quran" and interpreted to a practical ritual by the prophet; on daily basis, Muslims must pray five times a day during fixed intervals, according to the suns position in the sky. Other sacred activities of the time of reckoning are connected to the lunar calendar, (which is approximately 10 days a year shorter than the solar calendar), the month of fasting (Ramadan) resides within the eighth month of the lunar year. Pilgrimage to Makkah, starts at the beginning of last month of the lunar year. However, there are many other sacred occasions in the calendar, but because they follow the 91 lunar cycle, the events fall in different seasons; Ramadan, can fall during the summer, autumn, spring or summer.
Judaism, Christianity and Islam, some differences in rituals and festivals, and some other details but they share the main aspects of the Monotheism doctrine. Rituals like praying, fasting, as well as attending the synagogue, church, or mosque. All the three religions share the story of creation and according to the story, God created light and separated it from the dark; calling the light 'day' and the dark 'night', this is the first sacred classification of time in these monotheistic religions (old and new testament, Qur'an). The original calendar of the Jewish people is the Lunar calendar, recently changed to lunisolar calendar, whilst in Christianity, the solar calendar is used and in Islam the lunar calendar is used, so sacred time in practice of the religious rituals follow the calendar of each religion. (Giddens 1989, Broom et al 1981 The sacred time of Hindus is also connected to the lunar calendar, but the lunar calendar is adjusted to the solar calendar, so the rituals fall within the same time every year. The main festivals Hindus celebrate are the birthdays of the gods Rama, Krishna, Ganesh, Lakshmi, Durga and many others. In brief, the sacred time of the Hindus involve many local rituals and festivals, some of them with special deities (Narayanan 2005).
Buddhists sacred time also follows the lunar calendar, the rituals and the festivals mainly relate to key events of the Buddha's life, his miracles and scripture. Buddhists in different countries marking their rituals and festivals in different times of the lunar year, some in the first mid-month of the year (Tibetan) some in fourth (Sri Lanka and other Theravada countries) and some in eighth month of the year (China and Japan).
Unlike others, Taoists, are regarded as masters of time and space, their rituals and festivals reflects their desire to be in line with the rhythms of the universe and with the cycle of time of the "yin (Femininity), yang (Masculinity) and the five phases". The five Phases are natural seasons that are recognized in the five senses, and represent the five main elements of the earth and are characterized as wood, fire, earth, metal and water, (Oldstone-Moor 2005, Hofstede 2002). The pattern of time according to Oldstone-Moor (2005:282) is "part of the unfold creation--it is to be identified, learned and used to one's benefit".
Some aspects of sacred time of other polytheistic religions (even in the digital age and in the realm of globalization) can be traced allover the world and not just in Asia. Secular time has never abolished sacred time despite the development of science and technology but the sacred time has been adjusted and transformed to be more symbolic rather than actual practice, and the people have gradually moved toward secular time. The religion itself has been lost by more and more individuals, thus most cultures started looking at time in a different way. The time that related to certain occasions such as time of famines, floods of the river or guessing time according to the solar or lunar movement no longer exists (Alneamy 1993, Bock 1969). Sociologists who abandon social time in their studies start looking at it as a dimension of human life and their activities.
Apart from the sacred time, the turning points in studying social time as secular phenomenon are mainly attributed to Durkheim (1915). Durkheim introduced three characteristics to the definition of social time which were inherited later by sociologists; the sociological approach, rational approach and relativistic approach. The notion of time has been conceived as a natural environment engulfing human experience, and philosophically viewed as a human method of systemizing experiences residing in mind rather than in reality. Durkheim transferred the time phenomenon to the domain of social life, he viewed time as 'social fact', and like other social facts, conceived by people as socially constructed. In Sztompka's (1998:53) words: Like other socially constructed 'social facts' time appears to people as something external, encountered and exerts…. It provides normative regulation of social life, and in this way feeds back on the society from which it has emanated.
Durkheim conceived the dialectics of time; time reflects the tempo of collective activities, which is reflexively regulated. For him time is not substance or entity of being, it is a set of relations, a scale in which people can regulate their activities. Durkheim set a sold base for sociology of time and motivated future sociologists to follow in his footsteps.
One of the most influential works on the theory of time is the contribution of Sorokin and Merton (1937). In their well-known article "social time" they analyse time in relation to socio-cultural context and close connection to social change, their emphases on the qualitative and relativistic nature of time haven't isolated the quantitive scaling for measuring social change. Durkheim, Sorokin & Merton paved the way for more sociologists to involve the study of time as a social phenomenon reflecting the cultural aspects of human life; like Gurvitch (1964), and recently Zerubavel (1990) who focused on the commodity of time, where one can buy or sell some of his private time. The secular time shaped the whole of modern life, even with the study of religious life and went beyond the function and structure of the phenomenon.

Time as a dimension of social phenomena.
Social phenomena usually relate to other phenomena, either cause or effect. No single or unique phenomenon has taken place without a link with one or more other phenomena; One form of the linkage is sequential; war followed by peace, childhood followed by adulthood, poverty by an increased number of ailments. As Sztompka (1998:42) stated: Coming closer to daily realities, breakfast is followed by underground journey to work. Then lunch-break comes, then a committee meeting then the return journey home, watching tv, eating dinner, going to bed. These events mark the stretch of everyday life. At all sequence, precedes or succeeds others, happen before or after others. It occurs at some time. Putting it in other words, all social acts are temporarily fitted inside of large social acts, we call this time embeddedness.
Some aspects of time like consciousness, memory or anticipation, are not discussed in situations that require planning and deadlines (Adam 1995). However, time seems to have quite a clear relation with external social phenomena that humans are involved with the cause or result, but more clearly and specifically, social time breaks into sequences, these sequences are temporally interrelated; whether we are reading a book, chatting in a coffee shop or travelling, we use time sequence, each of these activities have durations that could last minutes, hours, days or could take a life time. Social events and phenomena take place in an irreversible way, once it happens it cannot be undone, time is always moving forward. Heraclitus put it simply, in his well-known proposition, 'one cannot step twice into the same river' (Adam 1990:168), as neither the stepping action nor the water in the river would ever be the same. The irreversible events and time moving forward underpinning the idea of time orientation, that implies distinction between past, present and future. The distinction between them as Sztompka (1998:43) pointed out, are not as sharp as they seem to be, whereas social action and interaction is a continues process from the past to the future; the minutes passing by, shouting, revising, instantly crossing from the past to the future. The present is a phantom line, disappearing before we can grasp at it. However, the concept of time, is likley conceived very differently by members of different cultures. Beattie (1985) adopted the argument of the American Anthropologist Whorf (1952) who claimed that the Hopi people of American south-west, do not conceive time as other American people do, as time for them related to certain events, flow without distinction between before and after; without the use of time-scale that embodies the tense structure.

Social Time and Social Change
In 1970's before the digital revolution, Alvin Toffler (1970) argued that the pace of life is accelerating and moving faster. At the time of no internet, no satellite navigations for public use, no mobile phones, no televisions, no digital cameras and many other devices that were developed after 1990's. If he was still alive and saw the pace of life nowadays, he may change his mind and rephrase or modify his arguments. Toffler's vision of the future put him in the front seat of all human science thinkers, however, he admitted that no absolute method of measuring change exists, since changes take place in an uneven way. In order to measure time, he stated: We need, however, a yardstick that makes it possible to compare highly diverse processes, and this yardstick is time. Without time change has no meaning. And without change, time would stop. Time can be conceived as the intervals during which events occur. PP. [28][29] Strasser and Randall (1981) discussed time as a dimension of social change, through the direction of change, he assumed that social change was usually comprehended in either a cyclical or linear fashion; progressive or regressive, past oriented or future concerned, but, the time span has to be considered.
Within the same context Adam (1995:168-69) draw our attention to the measurement of change by time, as change was caused by the past in a cumulative and sequential way, and as a result measured by a 'before and after basis', the comparison between the different component of this dichotomy would give the change its meaning and provide us with the suitable scale or yardstick of measurement.
In fact, time and change are closely interrelated. change is ubiquitous, everything changes from the tenuous virus to the largest Galaxy, from tiny stones on the pavement to the scrapers, and from a single person to the whole social structure. Change could be visible like changing multi-storey buildings to a playground, or invisible like the changing of one's attitude or the construction of the bodies cells. Change could be conceivable in the short term or long term, but all have to be measured by time (Sztompka 1998, Giddens 1984, Strasser et al 1981.

Time and Culture
Fast and unprecedented change in the last two decades has altered the face of the world, isolated cultures no longer exist, the world united under the umbrella of digital culture; the network culture reconfiguring the human society and bridging the gap between cultures and societies, as Bauman (200) describes the modern world as "liquid" in order to understand the fast changes and melting power of cultures; beside the movement of people, goods, money, information and images all over the globe, certain values, norms and the way of life become common-sense. As Dürrschmidt and Tylor (2007:4) point out: "Globalization implies a historical process by which the economic, political and cultural geographies of society are redrawn beyond the territoriality of the nation state".
The diffusion of cross-cultural information technology that reshaped the modern human activities and underpinning the pattern of non-linear social change would intercept and modify the traditional conception of time. Nevertheless, globalization doesn't abolish cultural diversity, as the world is still divided culturally in terms of belief, values, norms, traditions, as well as time perception, time orientation and time recognition. Beattie (1985: 76) suggested that category like "time" may be conceived differently by the people of different cultures. Edward Hall in his silent language (1959) and hidden differences (1987) provided an ethnographic image of the cultural differences in relation to time perception, as some native American Indians have no word for time. Middle eastern people have no problem if they give short notice (like half an hour) about extending an invitation for a wedding, or party, "because their informal time system places everything beyond a week into single category of "future" in which plans tend to slip off their minds" P. 26 He reported that in America if you call someone early morning, while he is shaving or taking his breakfast, is must be something urgent, the same applies to a call after 11PM. And after 12AM it is not merely urgent it would be a matter of life or death. In the South Pacific, the people can wake anyone at three o'clock in morning to for general conversations not considered urgent.
Edward Hall (1987:17-18)  Before the industrial revolution the vast majority of human cultures, time followed a natural rhythm, in association with daily, monthly and yearly cycles, sleeping at a certain time, and waking up at a certain time with the internal biological clock, hunting, cultivating, harvesting in relation to the sequence of natural movement of solar and lunar system. After the industrial revolution scholars like Lee and Newby (19840) started talking about 'the tyranny of the clock' to organize the processes of production to maximize the production in shortest possible time. Time accordingly become money. Max Weber (1930Weber ( /1976) long before Lee & Newby 96 used the phrase of Benjamin Franklin (time is money) to describe the capitalistic view of time as a valuable aspect of the socio-economic system. Now all human beings, in all cultures, consciously and unconsciously have awareness of time, but as Bellerman said 'the devil is in the detail', as the differences become obvious when it comes to cultural perception of time value in practice. Sztompka (1998) indicated that perception of time is a universal human experience, but societies with specific values, norms, rules and orientations referring to time have always a unique view or perception of time, if we compare, the American and Iraqi culture, or the German with Greek, or the Japanese with the Egyptians, we will find fundamental differences between them; some deals with time as sharp and uncompromised, while other more flexible, some clinging to the past while others look forward to the future and utterly discard the past, some are obsessed with time value in terms of punctuality, passing time, saving time, exploiting time, while other have no real sense of time, are notoriously late, negligent, and permissive. Alvin Toffler (1970:46) mentioned a story in the context of comparing the pace of time between German engineers and Iranian workers when the German engineers in the pre-world war 1, helping the Iranians to construct a railway track. He stated: Iranians and Middle Easterners generally take a far more relaxed attitude towards time than Americans or Western Europeans. When Iranian work crews consistently showed up for work ten minutes late, the German, themselves super-punctual and always in hurry, fired them in droves. Iranian engineers had a difficult time persuading them that by Middle Eastern standards the workers were being historically punctual, and that if firing continued there would soon be no one left to do the work but women and children.
Toffler, provides more examples about the indifference to time, even within the same culture; the north Italians of the industrial cities look down to their counterpart in the south who are still geared to the agrarian rhythms, in Sweden and the United states, the northerners look to the southerners as people in slow-motion. Liven (1985) in a comparative study between the American and Brazilian students found that the Brazilians are more flexible on time and punctuality than their American counterparts.

Time in Traditional Cultures
The comprehension of time by traditional culture is often slack, flexible and unspent. Time ticks but is not considered as "money", it is wasted rather than saved or exploited. The recent advances in technology are used in all of lifes aspects, but most people misuse it, they have modern cars, the most advanced computers and mobile 97 phones, but they often use them for passing time, not to improve their quality of life in terms of production, punctuality and exactitude in daily activities. The people in which task-orientation prevail, indicated little demarcation between work and leisure (Thomson 1968). The people of traditional cultures work in a similar way to those of the pre-industrial world, having slow rhythms which are determined by a necessity of work. These people when deployed to work by the clock give the impression of laziness. In Lee and Newby's (1984:29) words: "to those who are accustomed to labour timed by the clock, workers whose attitude to time based upon taskorientation will appear lazy, wasteful and lacking in urgency". On the other hand, the most advanced societies, express the pressure of time and modifying their activities to be controlled by the segment of the minute; they changed the way in which reckoning time, and "timeless time" appeared (Castles 2000, Zaloom 2004). Jordan and Pile (2002:282) explain the idea of "timeless time" as how people within society "play with time, to re-order and control time in ways that others cannot" it is not the case in traditional societies, despite the fact they are using the same technology albeit in different ways; they have plenty of time to waste, not to exploit, for example the universities and other government offices have the internet, through email they can achieve and solve most problems in their domain of work, but as in the case of Iraq, they still use piles of paper every day, and take too long to accomplish basic tasks, even within the same building. They use the mobile phone and landline phones, not for work, but for their own leisure and enjoyment.
The problem of traditional cultures and societies is not with the availability of modern technology, but the management, the perception of time and the cultural value system of a pre-industrial society. Levine (1988) mention a story about two Afghan brothers who had agreed to meet each other in Kabul, but forgot to say when and how. This is quite usual in Arab culture and in Iraq particularly, as any one can say I will see you on Friday in 'Almutnaby' (famous stationary and books market in central Baghdad), yet they rarely meet, and if they do, they are over two hours late. Students in colleges and Universities are always late, usually between ten to sixty minutes for the first morning lecture. I have never tolerated lateness in my class, and through reinforcement of the rules, the pupils learn to arrive on time. Initially the pupils give you excuse after excuse, and the administration could pressurise you to give them at least ten minutes of leeway, as the professors, the lecturers and the administrator staff themselves often come late. Time is never considered as 'gold'. The table below shows how many students visited the University of Baghdad central library per-month lecturers, one thousand professors, 80,000 undergraduate and 10,000 post-graduate students. There was a sizeable number of students from eight non-profitable universities and many other private universities. The concerning thing is that a huge number of students and lecturers do not the use the library. This is only an example of how the educated class deal with time in the acquirement of knowledge.

The empirical Procedures
The questionnaire was constructed in light of the literature and the researchers experience (see appendix 2), it included nine items (statements) in order to measure the social time, use and abuse among the university students. The scale Alpha reliability was .885 which is highly reliable. A sample of 200 male and female students were equally chosen from College of Art, University of Baghdad and University of Leeds UK, which was selected according to a systematic sampling method, which can be "select units directly from the sampling frame-that is, without resorting to a table of random numbers". (Bryman 2001:90). The age mean was 20.5 (Appendix:1).

10.The Findings
Alongside the context, this paper adopted the scholars' assumption that the adjustment to time in terms of utilization in daily life activities are determined culturally. Now, with the field work processed, the assumption is not in a position of testing, but rather to understand the magnitude of the culture gap in relation to the use of social time. In order to analyze the obtained information from two different cultural settings, it could be reasonable to start with a quote of Toffler's (1971:43) expression, who said "the inhabitants of earth are divided not only by race, nation, religion, or ideology, but also in sense, by their position in time" the idea of Toffler remarks on a cultures orientation to time; the people of traditional cultures such as those in Iraqi culture still cling to the past, some other cultures may live in the present but there are other advanced peoples, probably labeled the people of the future. I understand that it is unfair to compare people of pre-modern culture with the people of a postmodern culture. Logically it is unacceptable, but methodologically it is possible. However, the outcomes, to some degree, are shocking, as one may expect slight to moderate differences between the two groups, but the gap between them look very wide and unbridgeable at the present time. The responses to the question "time is money but no one appreciates it" revealed significant statistical differences (F= 166.5 df=1 sig = <.001). The data showed that Leeds University students not only agreed that time is money but they don't know anyone in British culture who doesn't appreciate the value of time. The students of Baghdad university also understand the time and value but the vast majority of them admitted that no one appreciate times value. This result come in line with the study of Levine (1988:44) who described the people promptness in the most advance cultures in sense that "time is commodity not to be wasted, and the need to make every minute count have been seen as particularly characteristic of people from the United States, Germany and Switzerland". Edward Hall (1989:18) indicated that the American people overseas psychologically stressed when they met people who function in slow motion and time wasters such as those frequently encountered in the Middle East. "The government bureaucracies of Mediterranean countries: A cabinet officer, for instance, may have a large reception area outside his private office. There are almost always a small group waiting in this area, and these groups are visited by government officials, who move around the room conferring with each. Much of their business is transacted in public instead of having a series of private meetings in an inner office". This is a cultural pattern of misuse of public time, thus people keep coming and going for a transaction that could be completed in minutes, in reality it takes weeks or months for completion. Punctuality is another item to be tested comparatively, the data showed significant statistical differences between Leeds university students and their Baghdad university counterparts (F= 185.1 df= 1 sig =< .001). Adam (1995:88) in her discussion of Max Weber "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" indicated that Weber did not mention time directly, but inside the lines you can realize that the Puritan attitude appreciate the value of time "Assumptions of predictability and calculability become visible in the requirement of punctuality, one of the highly praised virtues of the Protestant ethic"; according to Adam, then, punctuality is a cultural heritage of the Puritan, which has paved the way to industrialization and urbanization. Norman Rich (1989) in his discussion of Hitler's foreign policy indicated that he was super punctual in planning, preparing and timing, he reflects the German super punctuality. On the other hand, Middle Eastern people can have a very relaxed approach on punctuality, in an empirical investigation Alneamy (1993) found the Iraqi people can come to work ten minutes to half an hour late, they can be found to never come or leave on time. Levine and Wolff (1985) compared the time sense of students in Brazil and USA, they also found that the Brazilian students were more flexible in their punctuality.
Managing daily routines certainly needs time-budgeting although individual people differ in their attitudes toward social time; as Sztompka (1998:46) said: "some people are obsessively punctual, other notoriously late" but all culturally patterned. In the west, the people manage their daily activities by dividing the day into sequences of minutes and seconds. Hofstede (1994:119) indicated that the most advanced cultures such as the British and German are very strict in managing their daily activities in term of "objectives, detailed assignments and strict time-table". The sample of Leeds University Confirmed this view and the vast majority of them disagree with the provoking statement "daily routine makes life boring and robotic" while the majority of their counterparts in Iraq agreed, with statistically significant differences (F= 50.7, df=1 sig= <.001). In relation to the daily routine, one can understand the people's sense of time through the use of a diary rather than depend on the memory or the natural sense of time (biological clock). Traditional people hardly use a diary, accept those who learn the time rhythm in western cultures, like medical doctors and alike, even the politicians and the officials who are supposed to use a diary, often do not (Alneamy 1993). The data in this context revealed that 90% of the Leeds student sample disagreed to the negative question "I don't have a diary to arrange my activities" while nearly similar number of their counterparts agreed that they don't have and they don't use a diary to arrange their daily activities (f=294 df=1 sig= <.001).
Similar results found for "time pressure", as the sample of Leeds feel the pressure of time much more than their counterpart (F=167 df=1 sig= <.001). In modern society, Sztompka (1998) said people distinguish public time from private time and they have to set temporal objectives, such as schedule, time-budget and time-table, and develop a standard time orientation in order to reduce the pressure of time, while in traditional society, the people deal with time in an arbitrary way; so they don't feel the pressure of time. The conclusion is the sample of a post-modern society works in what Tim Jordan (2002:282) called "timeless time" while the others work in open time. There is no sense of "time running out" or learning the habit of the clock, and this could be why the majority of them admitted that they are not very keen in thinking about the future and they don't care about lateness, again with statistically significant differences at level (.001).
Edward Hall (1959) argued that every minute in American culture will be considered, for equal meet, one to three minutes tardiness will be tolerable, five minutes late, the person has to give a short apology, for ten minutes, a full apology is required; fifteen to twenty minutes is considered the mildly insulting period; thirty minutes, rude; and forty-five minutes, downright insulting. One-hour, two-hour lateness in Iraq requires only a mild apology, and one can justify such behavior even if he never attends, as a normative premodern cultural structure.

Conclusion
Time is money, and time holds no value, people of the past and people of the future, pre-modern society and post-modern society, two different perceptions of social time in two different cultural settings, it should be expected that there is a difference with regards to time in terms of development, time management, time abuse, pace of life and time sense. However, the expectation was far beyond the reality, as the gap is very wide between the two populations. The problem can be attributed to many different factors: 1. The original milieu of socio-cultural and technological development was started in the west. 2. The process of industrialization and urbanization accelerating the process of social change, and viewed as the major shift in time and space. 3. As Max Weber argued, the doctrine base of the Puritan, encourage the way in which the capitalist societies grasp and mange time. 4. The political stability of the post-modern societies, have the vital role in social and technological development that taught individuals the habit of the clock. 5. Transfer of the modern technologies to traditional social environments, would not develop these societies, they would rather abuse the technology and create divergence dichotomy in work activities and social life.

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6. The political corruption in traditional societies reduce the chance of rationality in their use of time; rationality which accompanies postmodern societies. Although, the comparison can't be justified, such studies open the field of understanding. This comparison between pre-modern and post-modern cultures started a long time ago with the work of Edward Hall and Liven & Wolff and many other scholars in the field of sociology and social Psychology. However, perception of time is a universal human experience, but the position of each society in time, the way in which each culture conceive time is the main obstacle as Sztompka (1998:47)  The differences that the data revealed in this paper certainly reflects the cultural differences in their awareness of time, as traditional culture like the Iraqi culture still has slow pace of life, the people have time sense but the social life tempo is still of an agrarian tempo, because the vast majority of the city dwellers only recently became urbanized. Urbanized without urbanism; the city itself become a large village with all the rural relations and interactions.
To appreciate time and act under the ticking clock, the traditional societies have to be fully industrialised and urbanised, otherwise the gap will dramatically widen.