Abstract
There is a saying in prison that goes “do the time, don’t let the time do you.” To many inmates, it means they can either organize their time every day and stay in control or be crushed by the temporal coercion of prison. Doing time is an act of resilience and self-determination. Time Work: Studies of Temporal Agency, edited by Michael G. Flaherty, Lotte Meinert, and Anne Line Dalsgård, eloquently captures this idea in an eclectic and enthralling collection of ethnographic studies.
In the social sciences, time is often seen as a backdrop against which events unfold—people, institutions, and societies evolve through time. Time is also seen as a pace-giver: people wake up, work, and eat at predictable times to abide by dominant social norms. In other words, time in the social sciences often has a deterministic flavor. This cogent book, by contrast, is about how people shape their own time—how they fight back against temporal oppression, improve their lives, and create meaning. The book explores how we empower ourselves through the concept of time work, a practice by which “we attempt to control, manipulate, and customize our own temporal experience or that of others” (p. 13). In a sea of temporal determinism, Time Work brings agency back in.
How do people control and manipulate their time? At first blush, this question might evoke images of people trying to get organized, setting priorities straight, and using time management tools. But in Time Work, almost none of the chapters deal with time management as we commonly conceive it. And this is precisely where the book really shines—it reveals a wide array of motives that drive people to practice time work. There is much more to controlling time than wanting to be productive, efficient, and organized.
For instance, people can engage in time work as an act of resistance. One chapter describes how in Arviat, a small Inuit hamlet in Canada, indigenous people have historically had to adapt to western cultural ideals about time, such as living by a schedule and by the clock. To resist those ideals and preserve their group identity, people in Arviat practice “Inuit time” outside of work hours. As a form of time work, Inuit time consists in deliberately refusing to keep to a schedule, have regular bedtimes, or hold meetings at predefined times. Although these practices may look like unreliability to western eyes, they are in fact deliberate attempts to reaffirm Inuit identity and resist the encroachment of western culture. Similarly, another chapter shows how atheists in Kyrgyzstan resist increasingly dominant Muslim temporalities, such as daily prayers and talks about past ancestor spirits, by being disengaged while performing them. Time work, as several chapters reveal, is a powerful tool for the oppressed to fight back against oppressive and dominant forces.
People can also engage in time work to improve their well-being. One chapter follows people traumatized by the civil war in northern Uganda. Their trauma often results in PTSD, which the authors conceptualize as a time disturbance: images of the past continuously intrude on the present and disrupt normal routines. To alleviate their ailment, victims turn to repetitive prayers and rituals. These religious behaviors, as a form of time work, follow a specific sequence of activities at specific times. Their repetitiveness and regularity not only anchor PTSD-afflicted people into the present, but also offer a stable routine throughout the day that mitigates the temporal disturbance caused by PTSD.
In the same vein, the penultimate chapter follows the lives of young men in Niger who face a massive unemployment crisis. Being unemployed often comes with a temporal affliction—boredom—that happens when people feel they have nothing to do with their time or that their time has no purpose. To ease their plight, young Nigerians hold regular informal tea ceremonies in public spaces called fadas. These ceremonies afford not only conviviality and commensality, but also regular events and routine behaviors. As such, tea ceremonies are a form of time work that not only give young men something to do with their time and stave off boredom, but also give them something to look forward to.
Another important facet of time work is self-determination and regaining control of our lives. The chapter on people’s struggle with ADHD illustrates this point vividly. ADHD is problematic in great part because the tempo of those affected doesn’t always match the pace of work and society. For example, the DSM-5 lists “poor time management” as a symptom, which makes coordination with colleagues challenging. As a result, people with ADHD may feel like their minds and bodies are out of sync with society. To remedy their situation, some people turn to biological forms of time work, such as taking Ritalin and other medication to help them find a more “normal tempo.” Time work thus goes beyond social temporalities; it features biological and technological ones as well.
As another instance, one chapter opens with the story of a grown woman in Argentina who, through DNA testing, discovers that her parents are not her biological family. Her biological parents, she finds out, were among the 30,000 people who were violently abducted and murdered during the civil dictatorship in the late 1970s. DNA testing thus not only allows people to engage in forms of time work that weren’t possible until recently, but also enables them to rewrite their entire biography. Time work encompasses—indeed, transcends—entire lifetimes.
Time Work’s message is one of empowerment: time does not simply happen to us. We can develop resilience and self-determination by changing our experience of time. We can fight back against temporal oppression and domination, in ways subtle and drastic. We can, simply put, improve our temporal lot. Time Work is a refreshing book suffused with hope and a welcome antidote against temporal pessimism.
This book is also intelligently nuanced: the originator of the concept—Michael Flaherty—acknowledges the limits of time work. We don’t all have the same ability or opportunity to shape our time the way we please. The wealthy can have more time for themselves by hiring personal assistants, chauffeurs, and nannies; the poor can’t afford them. Minimum-wage jobs often come with wildly irregular work schedules that make work-life balance impossible; middle- and upper-class jobs typically offer predictable and flexible hours. Time is a powerful force, but that doesn’t mean it’s inescapable. As Flaherty puts it, time work is a challenging mixture of determinism and self-determination.
Time Work is well structured and beautifully written. As the afterword notes, the book almost reads like a novel, with captivating ethnographic stories on themes ranging from the mundane to the spiritual. The variety of cultures covered—from Canada to Brazil to Kyrgyzstan—attests to an important aspect of time work: it’s universal. We all need time, and we all need to work on our time.