Time & Society current issue

Editorial

Hassan, R., Rosa, H. — 2009-09-02

Domestic orchestration: Rhythms in the mediated home

Nansen, B., Arnold, M., Gibbs, M. R., Davis, H. — 2009-09-02

The steady proliferation of media and connectivity reconstitutes domestic rhythms in ways that make them emergent, relational, negotiated, and multiple. In an attempt to capture some of the entangled dynamics characteristic of contemporary domestic chronometrics (time-measured), chronaesthetics (time-felt) and chronomanagement (time-ordered), we use the terms ‘reticular rhythms’ and ‘technologies of reticulation’. In our analysis of interviews with five families over three years we identify four interrelated forms of reticular rhythms that together constitute the rhythms of contemporary domestic life. These four are: a polyphonic drone, a polychronic dissonance, an asynchronous consonance, and an orchestrated performance. Each of these forms of rhythm are described and illustrated.

Discourse analysis of a childcare drama: Or the interfaces between paradoxical discourses of time in the context of social work

Fahlgren, S. — 2009-09-02

This article presents a discourse analysis of a childcare drama. The purpose is to focus upon paradoxical discourses of social work that include different time orders. Social work seems to be carried out according to a linear time order implicitly assuming improvement over time. At the same time the social worker is supposed to assist the individual according to the individual’s current subjective needs within a time order referred to as the time of the mindful body. It is of great significance to critically reflect upon the power of these discourses that set the framework of social work thus creating ethical dilemmas.

Accumulating care: Mothers beyond the conflicting temporalities of caring and work

Maher, J. — 2009-09-02

Women who mother and undertake paid work are often represented as moving between separate spheres of caring and paid labour whilst facing intractable temporal conflicts. Despite this conflict, often represented as a ‘care time deficit’, mothers in western societies have continued their movement into the paid workforce. I examine the different temporal modes of paid work and caring labour that women undertake and argue that there are temporal commonalities as well as conflicts in paid work and care. I propose that women’s diverse labours across these spheres are directed towards accumulating care, and suggest women may be generating a new temporal framework for work and care beyond conflicting schedules. I argue that women’s practices do occur across complex and potentially conflictive temporalities but are unified by a focus on the accumulation of care. Recognizing women’s capacity to draw together and synthesize work across diverse temporal orders may allow for greater understanding of how women create and use time to give care.

Gendered relations to working time and union agreements: Contradictory outcomes in acute and community nursing settings in Australia

Willis, E., Henderson, J., Toffoli, L., Walter, B. — 2009-09-02

The intensification of working time is a major impediment to the recruitment and retention of nurses worldwide. This article examines the outcomes of negotiations between the Australian Nursing Federation (South Australia), the major nursing union and the South Australian Government, with a particular focus on working-time tools introduced to deintensify nurses’ labour. The article compares two strategies negotiated by the union: one for public sector nurses working in acute hospitals where the throughput of patients is short term, the other in the community sector where most patients have chronic mental or physical conditions and their care requirements are long term. The outcomes of the two tools for reducing work intensification reflect gendered relations to time, but are contradictory in terms of control over the labour process. The tool used in the acute sector is highly successful in reducing work intensity but shifts control of the labour process to management. The community-based tool provides nurses with control over the labour process, but is less successful in reducing work intensification or working hours.

Working status and leisure: An analysis of the trade-off between solitary and social time

Kraaykamp, G., van Gils, W., van der Lippe, T. — 2009-09-02

Paid labour is often said to come at a price. Using time-budget information on 9063 Dutch respondents and their partners, we investigated whether couples working full time economize on their solitary and social time budget. Results show that individuals who are part of a full-time working couple spend a smaller share of their available time budget on social interaction with relatives and friends than individuals from single-earner families or combination households. Instead, in full-time working couples, partners prefer to spend a relatively large share of their leisure time on institutionalized social interaction, such as volunteering, cultural participation and attending sports events.

'Agency time': A case study of the postindustrial timescape and its impact on the domestic sphere

Ladner, S. — 2009-09-02

This article investigates the postindustrial temporal landscape, or ‘timescape’, through a case study of a specific industry: Internet advertising. The theoretical portion of this article finds that the expansion of digital information communication technologies (ICTs) has radically transformed time keeping into ‘calculation’ in many of today’s workplaces. Additionally, globalized production has also rendered many locally constructed symbols of time less relevant. The author contrasts these events to the domestic time, which is constructed through contextual events and symbols, thereby making the postindustrial timescape further estranged from the domestic than even the Fordist timescape. The empirical portion of this article summarizes qualitative findings of time reckoning among Internet advertising workers. Time is not constructed out of local, material experiences but through digital means. This estranges domestic time even further, which has unintended but differential gendered effects. The implications of these findings include the emergence of a new sense of precarity, one based on ‘productivity’ of time spent on work. Additionally, a potentially new ‘glass ceiling’ could be emerging, based on the increased levels of home-based paid work. Women’s domestic responsibilities may make it relatively more difficult for them to advance when home-based paid work is expected.

The relationship between timing of entry into a foreign market, entry mode decision and market selection

Gallego, M. A., Hidalgo, E. R., Acedo, F. J., Casillas, J. C., Moreno, A. M. — 2009-09-02

Companies that decide to internationalize have to respond to some basic questions, such as where and how to carry out their strategy. Classic literature regarding the internationalization process has focused on entry mode and market selection decisions. However, the recent international entrepreneurship perspective considers a new dimension: timing of entry. This new approach has opened up a new line of research, arguing that time is a dimension that must be explicitly considered in order to develop a proper understanding of the internationalization process of firms. However, very few papers have looked at all these questions from this perspective in an integrative manner. This article puts forward a proposal about the relationship that exists between the timing of entry into foreign markets, the entry mode decision, and market/country selection. Starting with a review of the variables that have traditionally been used to explain timing of entry and then looking at the different forms of internationalization, the aim of this article is to propose a link between these important questions in order to increase our understanding of a company’s internationalization process.

Toward a psychology of chronic time pressure: Conceptual and methodological review

Szollos, A. — 2009-09-02

Complaints about time shortage permeate contemporary western societies. Many disciplines, from sociology to economics, have been involved in research and theorizing about time shortage, in contrast to the paucity of psychological research. This review of the extant heterogeneous terminology proposes that chronic time pressure (CTP) be used as temporary overarching term, subsuming the objective component of time shortage and the subjective-emotional component of being rushed. Feeling rushed may lead to the perception of time shortage. The review explores how most previous research on CTP used surveys and time-diaries that were developed to assess time allocations and have limited usefulness in examining subjective temporal experience. The recently developed Experience Sampling Method and Daily Reconstruction Method, combined with in-depth interviews, augment existing methods and may provide detailed analyses of the being rushed component of CTP. Conceptual ties to other disciplines and to well-being and stress research are also emphasized.

No longer young, not yet old: Biographical uncertainty in late-adult temporality

Facchini, C., Rampazi, M. — 2009-09-02

The article explores the pluralization of biographical time perspectives in contemporary transition from adulthood to old age, focusing on the relationship between life-time structuring in late adulthood and the different ways in which individuals experience ‘biographical uncertainty’ at psycho-physical, economic and relational levels. Finally, the concept of ‘reflected uncertainty’ is proposed, to analyse the ambiguous effects of young people’s ‘biographical uncertainty’ on late adults’ own perspective. The discussion is supported by the results of qualitative research on Lombard 55—65-year-olds, in light of the Italian situation.

The body in times of acceleration and delimitation

Gerisch, B. — 2009-09-02

This article discusses the evident popularity of the body as an expression of manipulative attacks on time-bound physicality or, to be more exact, the dialectics of aestheticizing and destructive body practices. The perspective is explicitly psychoanalytic-psychodynamic and claims neither to be a statement of totality nor does it draw on traditional empirical evidence. The topic is triggered by the fact that we are faced with a paradoxical situation: on the one hand, unimagined technical methods of perfecting the body are available as never before — body-shaping possibilities in the broadest sense — while, on the other, we are aware of the increase in grave, wordless self-destructive practices, such as eating disorders and self-harming. This article examines the complex interaction of the inner and outer world, and plumbs the depths of the unconscious to question why, in the late modern era, the body has become a stage on which intra-psychic and social productions are enacted. These theories are exemplified by means of clinical experience.

The re-enchantment of time: Death and alternative temporality

Lee, R. L.M. — 2009-09-02

Rationalization of time is generally taken as part of the human effort to break free from the vicissitudes of nature and to actualize greater stability in social life through structured routines predicated on temporal measurements. As a result, abstract notions of time allow the conceptualization of the future to be framed as calculable alternative possibilities related to decisions and actions made in the here and now. However, the problem of reflexivity in modernity as well as the question of fragmentation in postmodernism introduced deep scepticism to the idea of calculable and predictable futures. Variable risks and yawning uncertainties accompany the endeavour to see and plan the future. Rationalization has ironically increased the inexactitude of the means to perceive the future. Here, a parallel can be drawn with the fear of death as the delimitation of the life space where the means to perceive the future are not conceived as applicable beyond the point of death. In the modern world of hard-nosed empiricism and hard-driving technology, death is reckoned as the final frontier in which the future is simply unknowable, and so it comes to present a source of consternation for any individual inquiring into the possibility of existence beyond the life space. Yet re-enchantment of this life space is providing new means for perceiving alternative time and reviving ideas about the afterlife. In a sense, the uncertainty of what the future holds for individuals living in late modernity is compensated by alternative beliefs in transcendental futures.

Editorial: Time and Society Review of Books

Watts, L., Sabelis, I. — 2009-09-02

The Poetics of Waiting Without Value: Harold Schweizer, On Waiting. London: Routledge, 2008. ISBN 0415775078

Bissell, D. — 2009-09-02

The Irony of Memory Politics: Geoffrey C. Bowker, Memory Practices in the Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. ISBN 0262524899

Danyi, E. — 2009-09-02