1.1 Introduction
Lewis Carrollâs white rabbit from Alice in Wonderlandâthe white rabbit who frantically dashes around holding a clock claiming âIâm late, Iâm late, for a very important dateââconjures the image of being a slave to time, of time being something against which actions in daily life are measured and judged. The âwhite rabbitâ has come to symbolically represent dominant interpretations of time in contemporary societies because it captures the common perception that the pace of daily life is accelerating and that there is an increasing shortage of time. Time famine, the time squeeze, the harried leisure class and the search for quality time are popular topics of public discussion and of more and less popular social science books (e.g. Colville 2016; Demos 1995; Gleick 1999; Hewitt 1993; Linder 1970; Schor 1992; Schulte 2015). The time squeeze has become a contemporary malady for which a range of prescriptions have been spawned which promise to help alleviate its effects. Examples include time management books, websites and consultants; gadgets of various descriptions including labour-saving technologies, traffic warning devices that allow you to find a quicker route to your destination and the replacement of âsnail mailâ by email; a range of services have emerged that offer convenience, whether that relates to the delivery of groceries or assistance with the selection of gifts for oneâs partner or children. In response, various social movements and ethical concerns have emerged that espouse the slowing down of daily life (e.g. the Slow Food Movement), mindfulness and the âdownshiftingâ of lifestyles, while governments and firms seek to offer their employees flexible working arrangements in order to facilitate work-life balance policies.
The reasons for concern are multiple and profound. The time squeeze is held either directly or indirectly responsible for a wide range of contemporary social problems. Families are torn asunder because couples do not have the time available to spend with one another, while parents struggle to spend meaningful time with their children. Busy lifestyles are forever being cited as a principal reason for the breakdown of intimate relationships, and it is commonly implied that children watch too much television and spend too much time playing computer games simply because their parents are too busy with work and domestic commitments to do other, presumably more virtuous, cultural activities with them. Communities also suffer. Finding time to spend with friends, for idle chat with neighbours, is often assumed to be connected in some way or other with people having a âlack of timeâ. There are simply too many competing demands on our time such that we prioritize consuming and working, rationing our time accordingly, and wider community relationships suffer most. People live in communities where they know a few of their neighbours in any form other than to say a passing âhelloâ. Unsurprisingly, given the aforementioned set of associations between a time squeeze and the decline of family and community relationships, senses of well-being are undermined. The popular discourse of contemporary life as being âstressfulâ is well established and often, at least indirectly, correlated with the rise of mental illness (Rosa 2017). Even leisure, that segment of social life associated with rest, recuperation and pleasure, is often described as being âless leisurelyâ as people rush to fit it into their hectic lives (Roberts 1976).
Broader still, the time squeeze has profound implications for the organization of societies. Social capital, which refers to degrees of trust in others and the strength of social networks, are eroded as people lack time to participate in community activities and civil society, leading scholars such as Robert Putnam (2000) to complain that âBowling Aloneâ leads to the fragmentation of public life and political disinterestedness. Indeed, in 2006 the Power Inquiry into British Democracy drew a direct correlation between the presumed decline of time spent eating together and political apathy because people do not have the time to discuss and debate key political issues. Crudely speaking, the time squeeze further exacerbates a contemporary process of individualization whereby individuals become increasingly self-aware and compelled to make choices in contexts of weakening social rules or norms to guide or constrain their actions (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001). The perceived need to manage oneâs time reinforces processes of individualization and exacerbates senses of personal responsibility to manage that time effectively, intensifying our awareness and focus on time as a resource (or commodity) to be used purposefully. Concerns around climate change and environmental sustainability represent a further case where the perceived lack of time is held to be a barrier to pro-environmental lifestyle choices (Southerton 2013). People constantly report being concerned about the environment but also report feeling helpless in their response because they do not have the time to adopt a more sustainable lifestyleâto substitute slower transportation methods for car driving or carefully sourcing local products from markets as opposed to the one-stop trip to supermarkets.
The popular image presented in these contemporary maladies of time is a social world so tightly calibrated and filled with so many activities and commitments that critical features of social, cultural and political life have been squeezed out. Those activities have not disappeared, people still eat together, parents do spend time with their children and people still engage in community events. But, according to popular commentary, they do so more seldomly than in the past and such engagement is performed within contexts of rush and haste.
There are many competing diagnoses of the time squeeze predicament, most of which assume there to be some substantive basis for these concerns. Many try to explain why, despite it being possible for most people to have more free time and a more relaxed pace of life, people perversely opt to remain harried. Critical to such accounts is the rising significance of consumer culture, with people becoming locked-in to âwork-spendâ cycles as they seek to earn the money required to fund the ever-rising expectations of a consumer lifestyle. The claim that people are working more is a vexed issue and, as will be argued, limits our understandings of socio-temporal change. The puzzle is, however, deepened by much time diary evidence. For example, Robinson and Godbey (1997) show that, paradoxically, Americans felt more rushed in 1985 than in 1965 despite having substantially more free time. Gershunyâs (2000) cross-cultural analysis replicates this findingâmost people spend less time in paid work than did the workers of 50 years ago.
Other accounts focus on economic restructuring and changing domestic divisions of labour. As more women enter paid employment, they find themselves juggling the roles, responsibilities and associated activities of an employee, mother, homemaker and partner. Working mothers especially experience a dual burden of juggling work and domestic life. A strong argument is presented regarding the rationalization of everyday life, with more domestic and social tasks becoming subject to the time-disciplining effects of technologies, such as washing machines and email. Accounts of the âacceleration of everythingâ (Gleick 1999) attempt to demonstrate that the pace of change creates a condition in which social, economic and cultural life is experienced as one of perpetual and ever-faster change. And, finally, there are accounts which attempt to correct against a largely negative view of time scarcity. Being busy, harried and rushed can lead to senses of achievement and offer a form of social status (Gershuny 2005). A busy lifestyle demonstrates a âfull and valued lifeâ to the self and to others.
These broad theoretical accounts of profound societal changes employ âclock timeâ as the conceptual basis for their analyses. The precise measurement of the passage of time in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years is a dominant feature of modern life. Societies are calibrated around clock time: trains arrive and disembark at given times; meetings are scheduled for a particular time of a particular day and, often, are allocated a particular duration; family life is organized around the specific timings of the school day, the work day, childcare and mealtimes; the organization of any workplace is dependent on people, goods and services arriving and leaving at designated times. Not only is clock time inescapable in modern life, our social and economic systems would, quite literally, grind to a halt without it.
This book takes the time squeeze as its substantive starting point. It distinguishes between time scarcity and time pressure to explore the extent to which contemporary everyday lives are experiences of time being squeezed. It has three principal aims. First, it provides a systematic review of social scientific theories that seek to explain the changing significance of time in social life. Second, it presents empirical studies that examine socio-temporal experiences of everyday life. The term temporal is nebulous in that it refers to perceptions of social phenomena related to or of time, and thus opens up empirical analysis to consider a wide range of interconnected dimensions through which daily activities can be analysed. Principal dimensions considered in the analysis of this book are timing, tempo, periodicity, sequence, synchronization (of activities), coordination (of participants) and durations. Finally, this book aims to advance theoretical understandings of the socio-temporal organization of daily lives through the application of social practice theories. In doing so, it will be argued that the patterns of consumption embedded in contemporary arrangements and performances of social practices should be conceptualized as formations of socio-temporal rhythms. The implications of such an approach move social theory beyond the dominance of clock time and towards explanations focused on the coordination and synchronization of social practices.
1.2 Thinking Time
Daily life has not always been so regimented by objective (e.g. clock) measures of time. Historical archives that document the canonization process (the inquiry through which a deceased person was judged whether or not they should be made a saint) provide a rich source of data on âtime reckoningâ in medieval times. In 1287, the Welshman William Cragh was hung outside the walls of Swansea, only to be revived by the Bishop of Hereford, Thomas de Cantilupe. In 1307, the now dead Bishop was to be considered for canonization, on account of his miracle revival of William Cragh. What is interesting about the archives is not whether this was actually a miracle, but the evidence provided ...