Pub Date : 2021-06-25DOI: 10.1177/0961463X211027420
Tianna Loose, M. Wittmann, A. Vásquez-Echeverría
Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has majorly disrupted many aspects of people’s lives, provoking psychosocial distress among students. People’s positive and negative attitudes towards the past, present and future were a dispositional pre–COVID-19 reality. Faced with a pandemic, people have reported disruptions in the speed of passing time. People can shift their attention more towards the past, present or future when major changes in society occur. These aspects of psychological time would be key to understanding the quality of psychosocial adjustment to the pandemic. We hypothesized that dispositional time attitudes impact psychosocial distress because they would trigger situational changes in our time perception and temporal focus. Methods One hundred and forty-four university students in Uruguay responded to self-report questionnaires online while in-person classes were cancelled. Students reported on shifts in temporal focus, changes in time awareness and dispositional time attitudes. Reactive psychological, social and learning environment distress were reported. Results Students reported substantial changes in time perception and temporal focus. A correlation matrix showed significant relationships between time attitudes, focus and awareness. For example, psychological distress was correlated with negative time attitudes, slower passage of time, boredom, blurred sense of time and shifting focus to the past. Mediation models were derived. The indirect effect of time attitudes on psychological distress was significant through past focus. Discussion Dispositional time attitudes would impact students’ capacity to cope with the pandemic. Situational shifts in temporal focus and perception were prevalent and can be viewed as temporal coping mechanisms in the wake of powerful societal change. Our mediation models showed that those with negative time attitudes experienced more psychological distress because they shifted their attention to the past. Future directions for research and practical implications are discussed.
{"title":"Disrupting times in the wake of the pandemic: Dispositional time attitudes, time perception and temporal focus","authors":"Tianna Loose, M. Wittmann, A. Vásquez-Echeverría","doi":"10.1177/0961463X211027420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X211027420","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has majorly disrupted many aspects of people’s lives, provoking psychosocial distress among students. People’s positive and negative attitudes towards the past, present and future were a dispositional pre–COVID-19 reality. Faced with a pandemic, people have reported disruptions in the speed of passing time. People can shift their attention more towards the past, present or future when major changes in society occur. These aspects of psychological time would be key to understanding the quality of psychosocial adjustment to the pandemic. We hypothesized that dispositional time attitudes impact psychosocial distress because they would trigger situational changes in our time perception and temporal focus. Methods One hundred and forty-four university students in Uruguay responded to self-report questionnaires online while in-person classes were cancelled. Students reported on shifts in temporal focus, changes in time awareness and dispositional time attitudes. Reactive psychological, social and learning environment distress were reported. Results Students reported substantial changes in time perception and temporal focus. A correlation matrix showed significant relationships between time attitudes, focus and awareness. For example, psychological distress was correlated with negative time attitudes, slower passage of time, boredom, blurred sense of time and shifting focus to the past. Mediation models were derived. The indirect effect of time attitudes on psychological distress was significant through past focus. Discussion Dispositional time attitudes would impact students’ capacity to cope with the pandemic. Situational shifts in temporal focus and perception were prevalent and can be viewed as temporal coping mechanisms in the wake of powerful societal change. Our mediation models showed that those with negative time attitudes experienced more psychological distress because they shifted their attention to the past. Future directions for research and practical implications are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47347,"journal":{"name":"Time & Society","volume":"31 1","pages":"110 - 131"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0961463X211027420","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47302818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-05DOI: 10.1177/0961463X211021298
Kirill Postoutenko, Olga Sabelfeld
This article aims to demonstrate that the transition from the mainstream narrative to the interactional history of concepts promises tangible benefits for scholars of social time in general and temporal comparisons in particular. It is shown that the traditionally close alignment of narration with the production of historical consciousness at various levels hinders the study of time as a semantic variable perpetually contested, amended and upheld across society. Alternatively, the references to time made in public settings, allowing for more or less instant reactions (turn-taking) as well as expression of dissenting opinions (stance-taking), offer a much more representative palette of temporal semantics and pragmatics in a given sociopolitical environment. In a particularly intriguing case, the essentially deliberative venue where contestation is supported by both institutional arrangements and political reasons (British House of Commons) is put to test under circumstances commonly known as ‘the post-war consensus’ – the unspoken convention directing opposing political parties to suspend stance-taking regarding the past actions of the government during WWII, its immediate aftermath and its future prospects. As a reliable indicator of this arrangement, the contestation of temporal comparisons between relevant pasts and futures is tested in oppositions reflecting party allegiances (Conservatives vs. Labour vs. Liberals) and executive functions (government vs. opposition) between 1946 and 1952. It is shown that, notwithstanding the prevalence of non-contested statements aimed at preserving interactional coherence and pragmatic functionality of the setting, the moderately active contestation of the adversary’s temporal comparisons in the House of Commons at that time helped all parties, albeit to a different degree, to shape their own political and institutional roles as well as to delegitimize their respective adversaries.
{"title":"Temporal comparisons, historical semantics of interaction and ‘post-war consensus’ in British Parliament: Studying time references in a deliberative environment","authors":"Kirill Postoutenko, Olga Sabelfeld","doi":"10.1177/0961463X211021298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X211021298","url":null,"abstract":"This article aims to demonstrate that the transition from the mainstream narrative to the interactional history of concepts promises tangible benefits for scholars of social time in general and temporal comparisons in particular. It is shown that the traditionally close alignment of narration with the production of historical consciousness at various levels hinders the study of time as a semantic variable perpetually contested, amended and upheld across society. Alternatively, the references to time made in public settings, allowing for more or less instant reactions (turn-taking) as well as expression of dissenting opinions (stance-taking), offer a much more representative palette of temporal semantics and pragmatics in a given sociopolitical environment. In a particularly intriguing case, the essentially deliberative venue where contestation is supported by both institutional arrangements and political reasons (British House of Commons) is put to test under circumstances commonly known as ‘the post-war consensus’ – the unspoken convention directing opposing political parties to suspend stance-taking regarding the past actions of the government during WWII, its immediate aftermath and its future prospects. As a reliable indicator of this arrangement, the contestation of temporal comparisons between relevant pasts and futures is tested in oppositions reflecting party allegiances (Conservatives vs. Labour vs. Liberals) and executive functions (government vs. opposition) between 1946 and 1952. It is shown that, notwithstanding the prevalence of non-contested statements aimed at preserving interactional coherence and pragmatic functionality of the setting, the moderately active contestation of the adversary’s temporal comparisons in the House of Commons at that time helped all parties, albeit to a different degree, to shape their own political and institutional roles as well as to delegitimize their respective adversaries.","PeriodicalId":47347,"journal":{"name":"Time & Society","volume":"30 1","pages":"598 - 618"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0961463X211021298","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41481490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-04DOI: 10.1177/0961463X211016183
W.K. Steinmetz
Comparisons across historical times can appear in various shapes. Apart from simple then/now contrasts, three basic modalities may be distinguished: (1) Comparisons that stress similarity and repeatability (“once again”), (2) comparisons that claim absolute novelty, if not incommensurability between present and past (“never before”), and (3) comparisons that suggest a time lag between two entities which, although synchronous in calendar time, appear nonsynchronous in other respects (“too late”/“not yet”/“far ahead”). Relying on a broad range of comparison-performing utterances by leading politicians and observers, this article will assess the conjunctures of those three modalities of temporal comparison in 19th- and 20th-century German politics. Prima facie, one might expect an increase in the use of novelty claims (“never before”) and comparisons of the “too late”-type in that period of frequent upheavals. By contrast, the “once again”-variant should be declining because it builds on the historia magistra vitae topos which, according to Reinhart Koselleck, was dissolved in the post-1789 age of revolution. However, there is abundant evidence to show that historical examples and analogies continued to play a significant role all through the 19th and 20th centuries, whereas allegations of absolute novelty or of being too late remained limited to situations of imminent crisis. Even though the examples presented in this article refer to Germany’s special case, it will be argued that the pattern is typical for Western modernity at large: Modern political rhetoric and action are characterized not by one dominant regime, but a copresence of all three—competing—modalities of temporal comparison.
{"title":"Once again—never before—too late: Competing modalities of temporal comparison in German politics (1790–1945)","authors":"W.K. Steinmetz","doi":"10.1177/0961463X211016183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X211016183","url":null,"abstract":"Comparisons across historical times can appear in various shapes. Apart from simple then/now contrasts, three basic modalities may be distinguished: (1) Comparisons that stress similarity and repeatability (“once again”), (2) comparisons that claim absolute novelty, if not incommensurability between present and past (“never before”), and (3) comparisons that suggest a time lag between two entities which, although synchronous in calendar time, appear nonsynchronous in other respects (“too late”/“not yet”/“far ahead”). Relying on a broad range of comparison-performing utterances by leading politicians and observers, this article will assess the conjunctures of those three modalities of temporal comparison in 19th- and 20th-century German politics. Prima facie, one might expect an increase in the use of novelty claims (“never before”) and comparisons of the “too late”-type in that period of frequent upheavals. By contrast, the “once again”-variant should be declining because it builds on the historia magistra vitae topos which, according to Reinhart Koselleck, was dissolved in the post-1789 age of revolution. However, there is abundant evidence to show that historical examples and analogies continued to play a significant role all through the 19th and 20th centuries, whereas allegations of absolute novelty or of being too late remained limited to situations of imminent crisis. Even though the examples presented in this article refer to Germany’s special case, it will be argued that the pattern is typical for Western modernity at large: Modern political rhetoric and action are characterized not by one dominant regime, but a copresence of all three—competing—modalities of temporal comparison.","PeriodicalId":47347,"journal":{"name":"Time & Society","volume":"30 1","pages":"536 - 558"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0961463X211016183","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48240892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-20DOI: 10.1177/0961463X211014801
Joseph R Tulasiewicz, E. Forsman
This article, drawn from an ethnography of a rural farming co-operative in the East of England, argues that the temporal experience of the digital is one of a-temporality rather than acceleration. In using the term a-temporality, the article is elaborating on a concept briefly discussed by Mark Fisher to denote an alienation from time, combining it with Natasha Dow Schull’s writings on casino capitalism. Schull suggests that Las Vegas capitalism has moved from streamlining time to deforming it, rendering it tensile and pliant. A similar temporal distortion is apparent in the community’s experience with digital devices. The article explores the relationships of coping the community members form with their devices, arguing that they utilize them to self-medicate emotional distress and in doing so open new ways of existing in time. In this way, the article makes sense of the fact that the group – environmentalists largely sceptical of other forms of technology – has adopted the digital so readily.
{"title":"Everything is old now: A-temporal experiences of the digital in a rural farming co-operative","authors":"Joseph R Tulasiewicz, E. Forsman","doi":"10.1177/0961463X211014801","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X211014801","url":null,"abstract":"This article, drawn from an ethnography of a rural farming co-operative in the East of England, argues that the temporal experience of the digital is one of a-temporality rather than acceleration. In using the term a-temporality, the article is elaborating on a concept briefly discussed by Mark Fisher to denote an alienation from time, combining it with Natasha Dow Schull’s writings on casino capitalism. Schull suggests that Las Vegas capitalism has moved from streamlining time to deforming it, rendering it tensile and pliant. A similar temporal distortion is apparent in the community’s experience with digital devices. The article explores the relationships of coping the community members form with their devices, arguing that they utilize them to self-medicate emotional distress and in doing so open new ways of existing in time. In this way, the article makes sense of the fact that the group – environmentalists largely sceptical of other forms of technology – has adopted the digital so readily.","PeriodicalId":47347,"journal":{"name":"Time & Society","volume":"31 1","pages":"88 - 109"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0961463X211014801","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46532862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-08DOI: 10.1177/0961463X211016781
R. L. Lee
Zygmunt Bauman addressed spatiotemporal compression as a critical aspect of the transition from solid to liquid modernity. In this transition, speed and flexibility came to define the conditions of social life which no longer relied on spatiotemporal separation as the basis of all power relations. But digitization of these conditions raises the question of whether the present phase of modernity depicts a resolidification of capital and power that exploits the fluidity of a densely intermediated world. By treating databases as the new localities of power, the digital operations inherent to their utility and productivity render the systemic nature of intermediation as solid as the power relations of the pre-digital era. The example of mass surveillance demonstrates the solidity of a new power derived from surreptitious data gathering and collation in populations attuned to intermediation as a way of life. A new mass culture is emerging through spaces of power that have reset speed in the service of datafication. This is not simply a culture of mobility and choice but one prefabricated and utilized for advancing the redesigned solidity of a digitized modernity.
{"title":"Time, space, and power in digital modernity: From liquid to solid control","authors":"R. L. Lee","doi":"10.1177/0961463X211016781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X211016781","url":null,"abstract":"Zygmunt Bauman addressed spatiotemporal compression as a critical aspect of the transition from solid to liquid modernity. In this transition, speed and flexibility came to define the conditions of social life which no longer relied on spatiotemporal separation as the basis of all power relations. But digitization of these conditions raises the question of whether the present phase of modernity depicts a resolidification of capital and power that exploits the fluidity of a densely intermediated world. By treating databases as the new localities of power, the digital operations inherent to their utility and productivity render the systemic nature of intermediation as solid as the power relations of the pre-digital era. The example of mass surveillance demonstrates the solidity of a new power derived from surreptitious data gathering and collation in populations attuned to intermediation as a way of life. A new mass culture is emerging through spaces of power that have reset speed in the service of datafication. This is not simply a culture of mobility and choice but one prefabricated and utilized for advancing the redesigned solidity of a digitized modernity.","PeriodicalId":47347,"journal":{"name":"Time & Society","volume":"31 1","pages":"69 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0961463X211016781","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45749830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-02DOI: 10.1177/0961463X211014804
Z. Simon
In the most general sense, the modern idea of history is a conceptual tool deployed in order to domesticate experienced novelty and expectations of the future. In Western modernity, the operation we usually call historicization has been nothing other than an operation of temporal domestication: the integration of experienced and expected novelty into a larger processual scheme we associate with modern historical time. Based on these theoretical considerations, this article has a dual objective. First, through an analysis of historical approaches to the Anthropocene—that exemplifies present-day perceived radical novelty—it attempts to identify the linguistic-conceptual means of temporal domestication through historical time. Second, it raises the question of the politics of historical time today by focusing on the evaluative aspects of temporal domestication in an age when the future increasingly appears a threat. As a brief conclusion, the article calls for broader recognition of what it calls a plurihistoricity of “historical” transitions, the co-existence of multiple kinds of transformation and change over time.
{"title":"Domesticating the future through history","authors":"Z. Simon","doi":"10.1177/0961463X211014804","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X211014804","url":null,"abstract":"In the most general sense, the modern idea of history is a conceptual tool deployed in order to domesticate experienced novelty and expectations of the future. In Western modernity, the operation we usually call historicization has been nothing other than an operation of temporal domestication: the integration of experienced and expected novelty into a larger processual scheme we associate with modern historical time. Based on these theoretical considerations, this article has a dual objective. First, through an analysis of historical approaches to the Anthropocene—that exemplifies present-day perceived radical novelty—it attempts to identify the linguistic-conceptual means of temporal domestication through historical time. Second, it raises the question of the politics of historical time today by focusing on the evaluative aspects of temporal domestication in an age when the future increasingly appears a threat. As a brief conclusion, the article calls for broader recognition of what it calls a plurihistoricity of “historical” transitions, the co-existence of multiple kinds of transformation and change over time.","PeriodicalId":47347,"journal":{"name":"Time & Society","volume":"30 1","pages":"494 - 516"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0961463X211014804","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46533884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-01DOI: 10.1177/0961463X21989858
K. Nairn, Joanna Kidman, K. R. Matthews, Carisa R. Showden, Amee Parker
Addressing past and present injustices in order to create more just futures is the central premise of most social movements. How activists conceptualise and relate to time affects 1 how they articulate their vision, the actions they take and how they imagine intergenerational justice. Two social movements for change are emblematic of different relationships with time: the struggle to resolve and repair past injustices against Indigenous peoples and the struggle to avert environmental disaster, which haunt the future of the planet. We report ethnographic research (interviews and participant observation) with young activists in these two social movements in New Zealand: Protect Ihumātao seeks to protect Indigenous land from a housing development, and Generation Zero is lobbying for a zero-carbon future. We argue that analysing activists’ articulations and sensations of time is fundamental to understanding the ways they see themselves in relation to other generations, their ethical imperatives for action and beliefs about how best to achieve social change. Protect Ihumātao participants spoke of time as though past, present and future were intertwined and attributed their responsibility to protect the land to past and future generations. Generation Zero participants spoke of time as a linear trajectory to a climate-altered future, often laying blame for the current crises on previous generations and attributing the responsibility for averting the crisis to younger generations. How activists conceptualise time and generational relations therefore has consequences for the attribution of responsibility for creating social change. Understanding and learning about temporal diversity across social movements is instructive for expanding our thinking about intergenerational responsibility which might inform ways of living more respectfully with the planet.
{"title":"Living in and out of time: Youth-led activism in Aotearoa New Zealand","authors":"K. Nairn, Joanna Kidman, K. R. Matthews, Carisa R. Showden, Amee Parker","doi":"10.1177/0961463X21989858","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X21989858","url":null,"abstract":"Addressing past and present injustices in order to create more just futures is the central premise of most social movements. How activists conceptualise and relate to time affects 1 how they articulate their vision, the actions they take and how they imagine intergenerational justice. Two social movements for change are emblematic of different relationships with time: the struggle to resolve and repair past injustices against Indigenous peoples and the struggle to avert environmental disaster, which haunt the future of the planet. We report ethnographic research (interviews and participant observation) with young activists in these two social movements in New Zealand: Protect Ihumātao seeks to protect Indigenous land from a housing development, and Generation Zero is lobbying for a zero-carbon future. We argue that analysing activists’ articulations and sensations of time is fundamental to understanding the ways they see themselves in relation to other generations, their ethical imperatives for action and beliefs about how best to achieve social change. Protect Ihumātao participants spoke of time as though past, present and future were intertwined and attributed their responsibility to protect the land to past and future generations. Generation Zero participants spoke of time as a linear trajectory to a climate-altered future, often laying blame for the current crises on previous generations and attributing the responsibility for averting the crisis to younger generations. How activists conceptualise time and generational relations therefore has consequences for the attribution of responsibility for creating social change. Understanding and learning about temporal diversity across social movements is instructive for expanding our thinking about intergenerational responsibility which might inform ways of living more respectfully with the planet.","PeriodicalId":47347,"journal":{"name":"Time & Society","volume":"30 1","pages":"247 - 269"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0961463X21989858","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49241216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-01DOI: 10.1177/0961463X20987814
P. Kubala, Tomáš Hoření Samec
This article focuses on the topic of the young adult’s cleft habitus influenced by a housing affordability crisis in the Czech Republic and examines how this situation affects the young adult’s relation to the imagination of a temporally structured life course and synchronization of life spheres (housing, family, and work). This article is based on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in the four cities most affected by the house and rent price increase. The general question addresses if and how social inequalities, sharpened by the current housing affordability crisis, affect the process of narrative life course coherence creation (the connection of past, present, and future) in relation to an orientation toward a vision of “the good life.” We furthermore complement the already existing ideal types of the young adult’s relation toward time—confident continuity and cautious contingency—with two other two types—cautious continuity and total contingency—defined on the basis of our data. We argue that the ability of young adults to envision a coherent future is related to the feeling of secured housing and that the idea of the good life is depicted to a large extent through the ideal of homeownership, although the precarity of the housing market makes homeownership harder to reach for those from unprivileged backgrounds.
{"title":"The pace of “the good life”: Connecting past, present, and future in the context of a housing affordability crisis","authors":"P. Kubala, Tomáš Hoření Samec","doi":"10.1177/0961463X20987814","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X20987814","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the topic of the young adult’s cleft habitus influenced by a housing affordability crisis in the Czech Republic and examines how this situation affects the young adult’s relation to the imagination of a temporally structured life course and synchronization of life spheres (housing, family, and work). This article is based on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in the four cities most affected by the house and rent price increase. The general question addresses if and how social inequalities, sharpened by the current housing affordability crisis, affect the process of narrative life course coherence creation (the connection of past, present, and future) in relation to an orientation toward a vision of “the good life.” We furthermore complement the already existing ideal types of the young adult’s relation toward time—confident continuity and cautious contingency—with two other two types—cautious continuity and total contingency—defined on the basis of our data. We argue that the ability of young adults to envision a coherent future is related to the feeling of secured housing and that the idea of the good life is depicted to a large extent through the ideal of homeownership, although the precarity of the housing market makes homeownership harder to reach for those from unprivileged backgrounds.","PeriodicalId":47347,"journal":{"name":"Time & Society","volume":"30 1","pages":"198 - 222"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0961463X20987814","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46902796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-01DOI: 10.1177/0961463X20987748
Louise Overby Nielsen, Sophie Danneris, Merete Monrad
This article analyses how long-term unemployed persons experience time during their unemployment trajectories. This article uses a combination of interviewing and participant drawings to study the experience of time passing during the unemployment trajectory. We focus on the experience of wait time and find that the wait experience varies with control: some clients experience temporal agency and others a loss of control over time. When the wait time is characterised by uncertainty and a loss of control over time, it reinforces an experience of stagnation in the unemployment trajectory and a feeling of being a temporal outsider, living a life on hold, in comparison to societal norms of a working life. For these clients, wait time adds to the burden of unemployment. For clients experiencing temporal agency, wait time is experienced as meaningful, even useful. These clients experience control over the wait time or that the wait time has a fortunate timing in relation to other things happening in the clients’ lives. Based on the analysis, temporal control is decisive for the long-term unemployed, and therefore, a focus on time is crucial both in research on social and employment services for vulnerable clients and in the practice field.
{"title":"Waiting and temporal control: The temporal experience of long-term unemployment","authors":"Louise Overby Nielsen, Sophie Danneris, Merete Monrad","doi":"10.1177/0961463X20987748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X20987748","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses how long-term unemployed persons experience time during their unemployment trajectories. This article uses a combination of interviewing and participant drawings to study the experience of time passing during the unemployment trajectory. We focus on the experience of wait time and find that the wait experience varies with control: some clients experience temporal agency and others a loss of control over time. When the wait time is characterised by uncertainty and a loss of control over time, it reinforces an experience of stagnation in the unemployment trajectory and a feeling of being a temporal outsider, living a life on hold, in comparison to societal norms of a working life. For these clients, wait time adds to the burden of unemployment. For clients experiencing temporal agency, wait time is experienced as meaningful, even useful. These clients experience control over the wait time or that the wait time has a fortunate timing in relation to other things happening in the clients’ lives. Based on the analysis, temporal control is decisive for the long-term unemployed, and therefore, a focus on time is crucial both in research on social and employment services for vulnerable clients and in the practice field.","PeriodicalId":47347,"journal":{"name":"Time & Society","volume":"30 1","pages":"176 - 197"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0961463X20987748","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42453324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-01DOI: 10.1177/0961463X20987965
A. Folkers
This article seeks to materialize social theories of modern temporalities. It proposes a tempo-material analysis of carbon resources like coal, oil, and gas to illuminate how fossil materialities both underpin and undermine modern temporalities and introduce the notion of fossil modernity to evoke an understanding of the modern composed of multiple conflicting modes of material temporality. Fossil resources (fossil fuels and petrochemical substances) drive the pace and progressive perspective of modernity. The residuals of these resources (CO2, plastic waste, and petrochemical toxins) confront societies with long-lasting ecological damage. Fossil fuels helped to produce the expectation of growth and endless possibility. Fossil residuals create a horizon of ecological liabilities in which past options have become future obligations. This renders the pretences of “modernization” understood as a process of constant renewal and innovation problematic. The article argues that modern societies cannot simply overcome their material–temporal predicaments through “decarbonization” because even after a shift to solar power, organic agriculture, and sustainable plastics, the fossil past will continue to influence, inform, and incite social operations. The article thus shows how different responses to the problems of fossil modernity need to go back to and emerge from the material residues of the past: this goes for bio-capitalist projects seeking to “recycle” the entropic temporality of fossil residuals as well as for environmental justice movements that decipher these residuals as indexes of social asymmetries and call for socio-ecological “redistribution.”
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