%0 Journal Article
%T If Only the French Republicans Had Known This: The Week as a Social Fact
%A Theun Pieter van Tienoven
%A Ignace Glorieux
%A Joeri Minnen
%A Sarah Daniels
%A Djiwo Weenas
%J Societies
%D 2013
%I MDPI AG
%R 10.3390/soc3040399
%X During the French Revolution and inspired by the Enlightenment, an attempt was made to replace the Gregorian calendar (which was based on ¡®irrational¡¯ overlapping cycles linked to religious celebrations) by the Republican calendar (which was based on ¡®rational¡¯ clearly nested cycles in accordance with the metric system). Although the starting point was an ideological and aesthetic expression of rationalism, this calendar also had to fulfill a coordinating and integrating function. Thus the calendric reform faced a tremendous challenge: re-creating a socio-temporal order. One of the crucial socio-temporal frameworks that guide daily behavior in Western societies is the 7-day cycle of the week. In the new calendar, the week was to be replaced by the 10-day cycle or the d¨¦cade, which turned out the greatest stumbling block for calendar-reformation. Theoretically this is explained by the social nature of time and the ¡®second nature¡¯ of time reckoning, but the unawareness of a socially established weekly rhythm in our daily behavior is hard to illustrate. Today, however, society is full of traces of so-called ¡®big data¡¯ that humans leave behind. This paper uses ¡®big data¡¯ on re-charges of electronic keys to show that even though a 10-day re-charging cycle is proposed, a 7-day re-charging cycle will surface.
%K social time
%K French Revolution
%K the week
%K calendric reform
%K big data
%U http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/3/4/399