Time pressure, speed and the desire for instant consumption pervade accounts of contemporary lives. Why is it that people feel pressed for time, in what ways have societies changed to create this condition, and with what implications?
This book examines critical contentions in the field of time and society, ranging from the emergence and dominance of ‘clock time’ and time discipline, the time pressures associated with consumer culture, through to technological innovation and the acceleration of everyday lives.
Through extensive analysis of empirical studies of the changing ways in which people organise and experience home, work, leisure, consumption and personal relationships, time pressure is shown to be a problem of the coordination and synchronization of activities. Appreciation of temporal rhythms – formed and reproduced through the organisation and performance of social practices – is necessary to tackle the challenges of coordination, and offers new avenues for analysing social issues such as sustainable consumption, health and well-being.
This book is essential reading for all of those interested in social change, consumption and time, including researchers and students from across the social sciences.
Author(s): Dale Southerton
Publisher: Springer Nature
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 226
Tags: Consumption, Time
Acknowledgements
Contents
1: Introducing Time, Temporality and Societal Change
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Thinking Time
1.3 Towards a Social Practice Theory of the Socio-Temporal Organization
References
2: The Rise of the Clock: Time Discipline and Consumer Culture
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Time Discipline in Industrial Societies
2.3 The Commodification of Time, Leisure Society and Consumer Culture
2.4 Conclusion
References
3: Time Scarcity: Work, Home and Personal Lives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Time Spent Working and Gendered Divisions of Labour
3.3 Flexitime and Work-Life Balance
3.4 Time for Personal Life
3.5 Conclusion
References
4: Time Pressure: Innovation, Acceleration and the Speeding-Up of Everyday Life
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Modernity: Speeding-up the Circulation of People and Goods and Compressing Time and Space
4.3 Accelerated Societies, Dynamic Stabilization and Desynchronization
4.4 Information and Communications Technologies: Empirical Studies of Intensification, Fragmentation and Acceleration of the Pace of Daily Life
4.5 Conclusion
References
5: Temporalities of Harriedness
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Feeling Pressed for Time: Popular Perceptions of the Causes of Time Scarcity
5.3 Harriedness: Volume, Coordination and Allocation of Practices
Volumes of Activities
Temporal Coordination: Sequencing Activities and Synchronizing Networks
Allocating Time
Summary: Hot and Cold Spots of Daily Activities
5.4 Conclusion
References
6: Past Times: The Contrasting Timings of Everyday Activities
6.1 Introduction
6.2 The Mass Observation Archive
6.3 1937: ‘A Day in the Life’
6.4 The Temporal Organization of Everyday Activities
6.5 Conclusion
References
7: Socio-Temporal Rhythms, Social Practices and Everyday Life
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Socio-Temporal Rhythms
7.3 Social Practice Theory
7.4 Laundry Practices and Socio-Temporal Rhythms
7.5 Conclusion
References
8: Conclusion: Time, Consumption and Societal Problems
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Commodification, Coordination, Synchronization and Rhythms
8.3 Implications
References
References
Index
