In recent years, the concept of the "acceleration of time" associated with the multiplication of information flows, has become an important subject in the social sciences. In this context, knowledge emerges as an essential component of the productivity of postindustrial societies. These developments influence the role of universities in societies and, therefore, the formation of academic disciplines. This article is based on in-depth interviews, held in 2017, of teachers of social workers in Chile, with the aim of analyzing the temporal dimensions of the current definition of their discipline. This article proposes to conceptualize nostalgia as inter-temporality, so that it can be used as an analytical category for the formation of the approaches of other fields of the social sciences in Latin America.