Chronos, kairos e sociologia. Il cammino di un campo di studi

The principal aim of this essay is to provide a detailed and critical reconstruction of the temporal path of a current fundamental field of the sociological theory and research: the sociology of time. Born thanks to some great figures of the sociological thought during the first half of 20th century (above all Durkheim, Halbwachs, Sorokin, Gurvitch), it remained for a long period in a marginal position among prominent and more consolidated sociological branches. Then, it got a true explosion of interest over the last decades of the same century; an explosion still in act. This reconstruction is based on a large bibliographical research and on the continuous reference to the deep social evolution occurred since Seventies. Transition from modern to postmodern society, as well as the following emerged models of life based on speed and risk in the so called “network society”, pushed to end many old cultural paradigms and also the traditional conception of time, with the consequent evolution of sociological thought about it.