The Textures of Time: Agency and Temporal Experience

The Textures of Time

Michael G. Flaherty

The Textures of Time Agency and Temporal Experience

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Philadelphia

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2011 by Temple University All rights reserved Published 2011 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Flaherty, Michael G. The textures of time : agency and temporal experience / Michael G. Flaherty. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1- 4399- 0262-2 (cloth : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1- 4399- 0263-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1- 4399- 0264- 6 (electronic) 1. Time perception. 2. Time perspective. 3. Time measurements. I. Title. BF468.F568 2011 153.7'53– dc22 2010018214 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

For Rachel

Contents

Acknowledgments 1 Making Time

ix 1

2 Duration

14

3 Frequency

36

4 Sequence

57

5 Timing

79

6 Allocation

98

7 Taking Time

115

8 The Ironies of Temporal Agency

131

Methodological Appendix Notes Index

151 155 173

Acknowledgments

ritten at the end but placed at the beginning, the acknowledgments exemplify our manipulation of time. Their location in the text misrepresents the actual sequence of experience when one is writing a book. An author is ambitious at the beginning but humble and grateful at the end. Many people have helped me with my research for this project as well as the publication of this book. First and foremost, I thank Clint Sanders for bringing this manuscript to the attention of Janet Francendese, Editor-inChief at Temple University Press. In turn, I thank Janet for passing the project on to Mick Gusinde-Duffy, the Senior Acquisitions Editor for sociology. Working with Mick has been delightful. I am grateful for the patient enthusiasm and sage advice with which he steered this project past every obstacle. Mick arranged for three reviews of this manuscript. Two of the reviewers chose to remain anonymous, but I thank them for their very helpful comments. The third reviewer, Dan Ryan, not only responded to Mick’s questions, but also provided ten pages of suggested revisions that have greatly enriched this book. Indeed, there are many places in the text where I have used his wording verbatim. I thank Dan for his extraordinary generosity and keen insight. Once again, Linda O’Bryant typed every word of this manuscript, from the first draft to the final revisions, catching and correcting many of my mistakes along the way. I am grateful for her assistance. In addition, I thank Lloyd Chapin for his support, especially the funds with which I hired my research assistants: Dianna Bass-Campolo, Betony Beddingfield, Carly Berdine, Meghann Carey,

W

x

Acknowledgments

Christine Fyrberg, Martina Lebreton, Lisa Mills, Kate Nangeroni, and Samantha Schwegmann. This project would have been impossible without their help. I also thank Leslie Wasson, Kristie Taylor, Kimberly Mallia, and Valencia Watkins for indispensable contributions to the data. I am grateful for valuable observations from the students in my seminar, Time and Society: Andrew Carlton, Matt Denzer, Timothy Fluharty, Djuan Fox, Susan Fuller, Jody Grutza, Andrew Harper, Krystal Kafka, Farah Mathres, Brendan McCluskey, Michael Mueller, Michelle Pavel, Joseph Roberts, Sidney Sherman-Rose, and Kevin Swearingen. Portions of this book have been previously published in slightly different form: “Making Time: Agency and the Construction of Temporal Experience,” Symbolic Interaction 25 (2002): 379–388, with permission of the University of California Press; “Time Work: Customizing Temporal Experience,” Social Psychology Quarterly 66 (2003): 17–33, with permission of the American Sociological Association. My thanks to Michael Katovich, editor of that special issue of Symbolic Interaction devoted to time, and Cecilia Ridgeway, editor of Social Psychology Quarterly.

1 Making Time

t is commonplace to observe that “time flies.” Paradoxically, it is no less familiar to find ourselves in circumstances where time passes slowly. Why do we experience variation in the perceived passage of time? This question concerns causality as well as the subjective side of temporality. Presumably, perceived duration is shaped by the interplay of self and situation, but how? Rarely have scholars in the social sciences addressed this question. For the most part, they have done so within a deterministic framework imported from the natural sciences. With this conceptual framework, we must assume that there is an antecedent cause (variation in one’s circumstances) that, in linear fashion, brings about a subsequent effect (variation in the perceived passage of time). The cause precedes the effect; the past determines the future. This is the temporal structure of determinism. Consider, for example, this journalistic account of a terrorist incident at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport:

I

The attackers raked the 820-ft.-long terminal with bullets, hitting people waiting for an El Al flight and others at nearby TWA and Pan Am counters. The men jumped up and down in a frenzy, screaming as they fired, and security guards shot back. “People were falling all over the place,” recalled Anna Girometta, who operates a gift shop near the coffee bar. “It seemed to go on forever.” Five minutes later, the carnage was over.1

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Chapter 1

Note the contrast between Girometta’s statement, “It seemed to go on forever,” and the reporter’s matter-of-fact observation that the incident actually lasted only five minutes. It is tempting to attribute this temporal divergence solely to the causal impact of sudden violence. When, however, temporal experience is examined more carefully, we begin to notice a great many anomalous cases— anomalous because they do not seem to fit comfortably within a deterministic framework. In fact, so numerous are these cases that they appear to rival the deterministic category for modal frequency. Witness, for example, the following excerpt from an interview with a twenty-year-old college student: When I’m out with my boyfriend, especially when we take walks on the beach, I try to keep his mind, as well as my own, off the end of the school year when we have to separate for the summer. I talk about present problems with classes, past times, anything but the future. I try to keep him laughing to forget about leaving. I try to make the time we spend together seem longer.2 This narrative is quite unlike the terrorist incident in Rome, but these otherwise divergent situations produce comparable distortion in temporal experience. Both Girometta and the student perceive time to pass slowly. Yet there is a crucial difference in the etiology of their respective experiences. Girometta’s circumstances are thrust upon a seemingly passive (indeed, reluctant) subject, whereas the student actively and purposefully constructs her circumstances. So often, we seem to be victims of temporality— our dreams “mocked to death by Time,” as Zora Neale Hurston put it.3 But just as frequently, we strive to control or manipulate the various dimensions of temporality. In the writings of Erving Goffman, “individuals attempt to buffer themselves from . . . deterministic demands that surround them.”4 How does our understanding of temporal experience change when we assume Goffman’s perspective? Our experience of time reflects desires as well as circumstances. By weaving our desires and circumstances together, we create much of what we experience as the textures of time. Yet the willful modification of our own temporal experience is often realized through subtle and guarded practices. Consequently, these practices have not been the subject of systematic inquiry, despite what they reveal about the relationship between self and society. Temporal creativity is often directed at resistance to the effort of others to impose themselves on our experience of time. They expect us to make time for this instead of that. They want us to do something more or less frequently,

Making Time

3

and they want us to do it now, not when we want to. The struggle for temporal autonomy is ongoing in nameless and innumerable engagements across the spectrum of social interaction. This book examines how people alter or customize various dimensions of their temporal experience and resist external sources of temporal constraint or structure. In effect, my informants ask themselves, “What kind of temporal experience do I want to have?” Then, having answered this question, they employ folk theories and practices (which I call “time work”) to bring into being circumstances that provoke the desired form of temporal experience. They have constructed their own circumstances and have done so, moreover, with the intention to modify their experience of time. Rather than be at the mercy of forces beyond their ken or control, these people exercise a measure of selfdetermination or agency.

Cause and Effect By raising the specter of intentionality, we can glimpse the alternation between yin and yang in the human experience of causality: sometimes things happen to us; sometimes we make things happen. I use the word “specter” knowingly because, ever since their inception, the social sciences have been haunted by the concept of self-determination. The controversy provoked by this concept is manifest as a simmering debate concerning one of the central and still-unsettled issues in the history of social thought. Moreover, this debate is noteworthy for fierce and uncompromising positions as well as the ridicule of opponents in ad hominem attacks. Undoubtedly, these characteristics are indicative of the fact that something fundamental is at stake: nothing less than the epistemological framework of the social sciences. John B. Watson was the champion of behaviorism—the dominant school in psychology during the 1920s and 1930s. As such, he rejected the relevance of mind, self, and other aspects of subjectivity. Claiming “that ‘consciousness’ is neither a definable nor a usable concept,” he asked, “Why don’t we make what we can observe the real field of psychology?” 5 For Watson, only one question drives scientific research: “Can I describe this bit of behavior I see in terms of ‘stimulus and response’?” 6 As he noted, Pavlov had rung a bell and a dog had salivated (despite the absence of food). The cause precedes the effect in time. This is the temporality of behaviorism and the stimulus-response sequence. Watson wanted to use this sequence as a model for the study of human behavior. He concluded that psychology need not concern itself with the “meaning” of human conduct because that word “has no scientific connotation.”7

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Meanwhile, George Herbert Mead was teaching an influential course, Social Psychology, at the University of Chicago, and he would begin his lectures in 1927 with scornful humor at Watson’s expense: There remained, however, the field of introspection, of experiences which are private and belong to the individual himself— experiences commonly called subjective. What was to be done with these? John B. Watson’s attitude was that of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland— “Off with their heads!”—there were no such things.8 Mead viewed Watson’s behaviorism as an ill-conceived form of determinism that left no room for essential features of human experience: consciousness, choice, and self-determination. Human beings do not respond immediately and unthinkingly to a prior stimulus in the manner of Pavlov’s dog. Rather, the individual interprets the situation and considers various responses to the stimulus in question. Instead of reacting mindlessly, human beings decide how to proceed, thereby acting on the basis of subjectively meaningful intentions. Moreover, since choice is exercised, Mead stressed that one’s response “is something that is more or less uncertain.”9 During the 1930s, two new antagonists entered the fray. They were vying with one another to defi ne the young discipline of sociology, so it is appropriate that their respective contributions can be found in a series of introductory and methods textbooks. The first of these books was published in 1931, the year Mead died, but its author, Robert MacIver, bluntly echoed his predecessor’s contempt for the behaviorists: They fail to perceive the essential difference, from the standpoint of causation, between a paper flying before the wind and a man flying from a pursuing crowd. The paper knows no fear and the wind no hate, but without fear and hate the man would not fly nor the crowd pursue.10 For MacIver, then, it was apparent that self-consciousness, emotions, and other subjective processes play a crucial role in the determination of human conduct. In contrast, like Watson, George Lundberg wanted to use the natural sciences as a model for his own discipline, so he insisted that “relevant data . . . are manifest in human behavior of any observable kind.”11 As for the elements of subjectivity–“thought, experience, feeling, judgment, choice, will, value, emotion, etc.”–Lundberg scoffed at their relevance by comparing them to a fictional substance once thought by primitive chemists to be essential in combustion: “These are the phlogiston of the social sciences.” 12 And, of course,

Making Time

5

when he wanted an example of similarly outdated thinking in sociology, he turned to MacIver’s writings: I do not declare MacIver’s analysis of the man and the crowd as false. I merely point out that possibly I could analyze the situation in a frame of reference not involving the words “fear” or “hate” but in operationally defined terms of such character that all qualified observers would independently make the same analysis and predict the behavior under the given circumstances.13 MacIver countered with the assertion that social scientists must strive to understand subjectivity in order to grasp the meaning of human conduct: “To the agent himself these subjective urges are important as conditions and explanations of his act.”14 His use of the word “agent” anticipated the further evolution of this debate. The dispute is not of merely historical interest; it is ongoing and, at times, no less acrimonious. Nearly fifty years after Mead’s death, his writings were seminal in the effort by Anthony Giddens to reconcile action and structure within a single theoretical framework. To that end, Giddens reconceptualizes selfdetermination as an integral aspect of human action, which he dubs “agency”: It is a necessary feature of action that, at any point in time, the agent “could have acted otherwise”: either positively in terms of attempted intervention in the process of “events in the world,” or negatively in terms of forbearance. The sense of “could have done otherwise” is obviously a difficult and complex one.15 Giddens does not cite MacIver’s earlier use of the word “agent,” although he seems to wield it in much the same way. But Giddens does acknowledge that this formulation establishes a challenging criterion for those who are more empirically oriented than he is. Indeed, we already have observed some ambiguity in the causal roots of our temporal experience. Nevertheless, like Mead, Giddens views choice as the driving force in social interaction, and this position suggests that human action is characterized by self-determination: “We may define action . . . as involving a ‘stream of actual or contemplated causal interventions . . . in the ongoing process of events-in-the-world.’ ”16 Thus, an individual is presumed to be the agent of his or her conduct. Like Mead and MacIver, Giddens has faced opposition from the other side in this debate. He has been pointedly criticized by Randall Collins for electing to integrate agency and structure rather than microlevel and macrolevel sociology. Collins contends that the latter distinction poses the question of

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Chapter 1

“whether one type of explanation takes priority over the other, or whether the two types [of equally deterministic analysis] can be integrated into a combined theory.”17 According to Collins, the distinction between agency and structure does not pose “an explanatory question but an ideological one” because this distinction represents nothing more than an effort “to show that human beings control their own destinies; it is a defence [sic] of free will.”18 Writing in 1992, Collins makes a threefold argument for dispensing with the concept of agency (thereby contributing to the enduring controversy). First, advocates for agency have misinterpreted microlevel sociology (especially the work of Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel) that, Collins insists, reveals the patterned behavior of social order, not an agentic free-for-all. Second, he refuses to accept political revolutions as evidence of agency because, “far from being miracles of indeterminism and free will, [they] are explicable by macro-social conditions which are already well understood.”19 Third, he denigrates the notion of self-determination by relegating it to the realm of “fantasy” and baseless rhetoric: “Giddens’ theory is limited by the ideological romanticism of agency.”20 With the vehemence that is typical of this dispute, Collins recommends that we “stop worrying about agency.”21 Quite the opposite has occurred. There has been considerable discussion on this topic in recent years, but the ensuing literature is characterized by ambiguity and further debate. Many sociologists are troubled by the consequent incoherence in our theoretical framework, but, unlike Collins, they call for repair rather than abandonment. Peter Callero argues that “any attempt to conceptualize social structure must ultimately confront the dilemma posed by the problem of agency,” but no one has managed to do that in persuasive fashion.22 In keeping with such proclamations, moreover, almost all of the recent writings on agency involve taxonomy and theory construction.23 As a result, our current conceptualization of agency is still criticized for being disembodied and “curiously abstract.”24 Clearly, this is a matter of some moment, but the crucial issues are empirical, not theoretical. We have failed to resolve this enduring controversy because we have not paid sustained and empirically grounded attention to routine agentic practices in everyday life. What we need is close, systematic observation of agency and, within the specific context of our efforts to customize temporal experience, that is the aim of this study.

Time Work From the beginnings of social psychology, it has been an article of faith that the self plays a large and active role in the determination of human experience. According to William James—pragmatist philosopher and author of a

Making Time

7

nineteenth-century introduction to what was still a new field, The Principles of Psychology—“My experience is what I agree to attend to.”25 This declaration is something of an overstatement but instructive nonetheless. He points out that, in general, I disregard those things which “have no interest for me.”26 In so doing, I exercise a measure of self-determination in the selection of that environment to which I will have to respond. Curiously, however, he does not apply this perspective to temporal experience in his chapter, “The Perception of Time.” For James, temporal experience is determined by one’s circumstances, not selective attention: a busy interval will seem to have passed quickly, while an empty tract of time “seems long in passing.”27 It would appear that the individual in question has no choice in the matter. A related disjuncture can be found in the writings of his protégé, George Herbert Mead, during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Unquestionably, time is the foremost issue in Mead’s intellectual agenda, and Barbara Adam, a British sociologist, is correct to assert that Mead’s analysis of temporality has implications for “the very foundations of social theory.”28 As we have seen, self-determination demands a different perspective on causality and temporality. The self is irrelevant if the past determines the future, but, argues Mead, environmental stimuli do not determine the individual’s response. Rather, he posits that any environment offers a potentially endless array of behavioral options. As German sociologist Hans Joas puts it, in opposition to the deterministic temporality of behaviorism, Mead’s social psychology assumes that one’s selective attention is “constitutive of the environment and not an epiphenomenon to the environment.”29 In his own words, Mead asserts that our capacity for self-consciousness makes for self-determination because it “enables the individual to test out implicitly the various possible completions of an already initiated act in advance of the actual completion of the act— and thus to choose for himself, on the basis of this testing, the one which it is most desirable to perform explicitly or carry into overt effect.”30 Like James, however, Mead does not consider the possibility that one can selectively attend to or otherwise modify the environment for the express purpose of customizing one’s temporal experience. Although Mead did not imagine the reflexive modification of temporal experience, his insight concerning self-determination has changed the way many of us think about the relationship between subject and object, knower and known. His pathfinding studies demonstrate that, more often than not, human behavior is self-consciously purposive. We intend specific outcomes to result from our conduct and, frequently, the object of those intentions is the self or subjective experience. Herbert Blumer (Mead’s most prominent student) advances this line of inquiry when he avows that “by virtue of possessing a self” the human being can be both subject and object, which makes

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possible “self-interaction.”31 This means that one must “construct and guide” one’s behavior “instead of merely releasing it in response to [environmental] factors.”32 The writings of Mead and Blumer suggest that self-consciousness plays a decisive role in what we experience as the textures of time. When one turns consciousness back on oneself, the self becomes both subject and object, both knower and known. That person can choose from among various responses to the situation at hand, not merely react in unthinking fashion to environmental stimuli. As the object of his or her own consciousness, one can select the kind of temporal experience one prefers. Then, having identified a particular type of temporal experience as the goal, the individual arranges circumstances such that they act back on him or her with the desired effect. In other words, an individual attempts to shape the personal experience of time obliquely by exerting control over self and situation. Related ideas can be found in the research by Howard Becker and his students. It is Becker who had the audacity to report that “some people take some drugs . . . because they want to get ‘high’ ”—not because extraneous factors (such as personality traits or poverty and the need for escapism) force them to do so.33 In contrast to conventional ideas about why people use drugs, we must view this behavior as an intentional effort to manipulate one’s own subjective experience. Likewise, prior to the research conducted by Clinton Sanders, tattoos were thought to be “caused” by psychiatric or interpersonal problems of maladjustment. Subsequent to his careful ethnographic studies, however, Sanders concludes that the great majority of those who purchase tattoos are “customizing the body” through “the exercise of choice” in agentic efforts at aesthetically driven self-decoration.34 Are there analogous efforts to customize temporal experience? If so, how prevalent are they, and what forms do they take? These are just a few of the questions this book addresses. Agency has become a pivotal component in the conceptual framework of contemporary social psychology. Much of this body of research deals with “control or regulation of the self”—that is, what Morris Rosenberg refers to as “agentive reflexivity.”35 It does not focus on time, per se, but this literature has heretofore unexamined implications for the etiology of temporal experience. Elizabeth Menaghan argues that “the individual is increasingly conceived as an active agent who may be more powerful in shaping his or her own trajectory and even in altering social arrangements than prior formulations have recognized.”36 A tragic example is the recent phenomenon of “suicide by cop.” Individuals who want to die but cannot bring themselves to do what is necessary sometimes threaten police officers in an intentional effort to provoke the officers to do the killing for them. Here, we see an individual set in motion

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events that are designed to loop back on this same individual. In a far different context, Dawn Robinson and Lynn Smith-Lovin observe that people engage in “selective interaction as a strategy for identity maintenance.”37 Their findings suggest that, more often than not, one chooses to interact with those who confirm one’s self-image. These studies reveal a causal circularity. One attempts to modify the situation in an effort to modulate the contour of one’s own experience. David Heise makes this loop of self-determination more explicit when he states that “people try to control experiences,” but his work concerns emotional, not temporal, experience.38 Etiology is the study of causes, origins, or reasons. When we bring this line of analysis to bear on our experience of time, we ask questions about its causation, about why we have a particular form of temporal experience. Is it due to “determinism”—the causal impact of situated factors beyond our control, such as those that emanate from nature and social organization? Or is it a product of “self-determination”—the individual choosing to arrange circumstances such that they act back upon him or her to make for a desired form of temporal experience? There is a fundamental difference in the etiology of homicide and suicide. Is temporal experience more analogous to murder (where the outcome is imposed on the individual) or suicide by cop (where the individual arranges and desires the outcome)? What role, if any, does self-determination play in the etiology of temporal experience? No one has asked this question, but several scholars have tried to connect time and agency, thereby reestablishing a theoretical linkage that had been neglected since Mead’s initial breakthrough. Giddens calls for “the incorporation of temporality into the understanding of human agency,” and Glen Elder views this petition as part of “a general conceptual trend that has made time, context, and process more salient dimensions of theory and analysis.”39 Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische have asserted that the “agentic dimension of social action can only be captured in its full complexity . . . if it is analytically situated within the flow of time.” 40 Drawing explicitly from Mead’s lectures, they “reconceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process.” 41 Given their strictly theoretical agenda, however, these scholars make no effort to examine this relationship empirically. Andrew Pickering has studied the routine work of natural scientists and documented the emergence of agency within the “real time of practice.” 42 To put it another way, he examines how scientists display agency in the context of their laboratory-based research. There is, for instance, the imagination and assembly of “a new kind of machine . . . that” they “hope will display certain powers.”43 The design and manufacture of scientific technology certainly represents a kind of willful intervention. Nonetheless, while his empirically grounded inquiry links time and agency, it has nothing to do with the application of

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agency to time itself (i.e., intentional effort to customize one’s own temporal experience). Much the same can be said of the literature on the sociology of time. This field has been greatly enriched by Eviatar Zerubavel’s research on the social construction and social organization of temporality.44 His writings explore the standardization of time as well as struggles to overthrow existing standards.45 As such, the emphasis is on collective efforts to establish or modify temporal systems for practical or ideological reasons. My own research represents the social psychology of variation in the perceived passage of time.46 In previous studies, I have shown that the perceived duration of an interval of time reflects the density of information processing occasioned by one’s immediate circumstances. Time is perceived to pass slowly when the density of information processing is high; time is perceived to be roughly synchronized with clocks and calendars when the density of information processing is moderate; and time is perceived to have passed quickly when the density of information processing is low. Put differently, variation in one’s perceived passage of time is caused by variation in the nature of one’s situation. With Zerubavel, we have a macrolevel analysis of the formulation and adoption of temporal systems. With my previous research, we have microlevel studies of temporal determinism. Neither of these lines of inquiry tell us how individuals control or manipulate their own experience of time. Brief sightings of such effort can be found in various studies that are chiefly concerned with other matters. During his fieldwork in Algeria, Pierre Bourdieu witnesses the agentic manipulation of a temporal dimension of gift exchange and vengeance: But even the most strictly ritualized exchanges, in which all the moments of the action, and their unfolding, are rigorously foreseen, have room for strategies: the agents remain in command of the interval between the obligatory moments and can therefore act on their opponents by playing with the tempo of the exchange.47 Within a very different setting, William Corsaro observes that “repetition prolongs routines, allowing children to savor the shared meaning of the activity.” 48 In contrast, Martha Copp notes that workers “made time seem to pass faster” through the use of “simple jokes and play.” 49 Angus Vail reports parallel forms of temporal elitism and one-upmanship within the otherwise divergent art worlds of tattooing and opera. For example, a devotee of Wagnerian opera can go one up on a fellow enthusiast by claiming attendance at more “Ring” cycles. In similar fashion, “fine-art tattoo collectors discuss their collections in terms of hours spent getting, and traveling to get, tattooed.” 50 Finally, Michael Bull

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alerts us to the use of personal stereos by employees intent on reappropriating some of their time: In these daily strategies of management, time is also repossessed and made “their own.” Commuters going to and from work extend ownership of their time through the use of their personal stereo[s] and often report that time becomes more “productive” and “pleasurable” for them in doing so.51 These authors glimpse something tangential to their own interests, but it is the focus of this study. We need a concept that sensitizes us to these and kindred ways in which we customize temporal experience. By “time work” I refer to intrapersonal and interpersonal effort directed toward provoking or preventing various temporal experiences.52 This concept implicates the agentic micromanagement of one’s own involvement with self and situation. Time work is the self-selected cause of one’s temporal experience, but it has not received systematic empirical scrutiny. As we have seen, the literature on agency has not come to terms with temporality, and the literature on temporality neglects agency, but time work integrates these largely separate bodies of research.

Questions and Ambitions Does agency exist? And if so, does it matter? The study of time work may clarify the still uncertain relationship between determinism and selfdetermination. Therefore, this study was prompted by the following question: To what extent and in what ways do individuals purposefully construct lines of activity or social situations in order to create or inhibit diverse forms of temporal experience? There is a tendency for people to assume that time is somehow “out there,” cosmic, coercive, unchanging, and unchangeable. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, as we will see, their own practices belie this assumption. A related myth, this one promulgated by the media, is that the public is victimized by a temporal regime over which it has no control. We must clarify the self’s contribution to the textures of temporal experience, but parallel confusion reigns in the behavioral sciences. Social psychology conceives of agency as an exercise of will, the expression of personal choice, the source of novelty and improvisation in human conduct. Yet the predominant conceptual trope for agency—that of “work”— connotes duty, compulsion, enforcement, veiled (and unveiled) coercion. This conceptual genealogy—that is, the use of “work” as a metaphor for agency—begins

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with Erving Goffman’s essay, “On Face-Work.” 53 But if agentic practices are shadows of human freedom, why conceptualize them in terms of necessity? And if the forms of social interaction are obligatory, why conceive of them as agentic? We are left with troubling incoherence, but careful examination of our efforts to modify or manipulate temporal experience may enable us to reconcile these seemingly contradictory images of time and agency. Time is a multidimensional phenomenon. Not surprisingly, then, our efforts to modulate temporal experience are heterogeneous but not endlessly so. Common features in my data track related forms of attention to particular dimensions of time, thereby serving as the basis for a classification of these practices into several broad themes that represent different types of time work. To begin with, there are efforts to influence perceived “duration”; that is, many respondents report trying to make an interval seem longer or shorter than its objective length as measured by the clock or calendar. Other respondents focus on the manipulation of “frequency” by deciding how often something happens per standard temporal unit, thereby exercising control over the rate at which they experience it. Every event transpires within a temporal “sequence”; that is, some things precede it while others follow. Hence, a number of respondents try to customize the order or succession (first, second, third, etc.) of their activities or experiences. It is also possible to seek the optimal “timing” of an event, which involves choosing when something should happen (for example, deciding what day of the week is best for a certain activity or experience). In addition, there are efforts to determine the “allocation” of time. Many of us recognize that, unless we set an hour or day aside, there may be no time left for purely personal experiences, once our various duties have been discharged. And some respondents admit “taking time” for themselves while they are ostensibly “on the clock” at work. To be sure, these are analytical categories, but they are empirically grounded in forms of common parlance that mark different ways of “doing time.” As such, this terminology reveals a spectrum of intentions or motives on the part of people in varied circumstances. What is more, these dimensions of time work are clearly distinguishable from one another. Timing concerns when something happens—not how long it seems to take (duration), how often it occurs (frequency), what precedes or follows it (sequence), or whether it happens at all (allocation). Making time for something (allocation) does not mean that it happens with any specific regularity (frequency) nor at any particular hour of the day (timing); it may be something that occurs “every now and then.” Conversely, one may exercise control over when to have a meeting (timing) yet have little or no say in what transpires during that interval (allocation). Selecting the best day for a certain activity or experience (timing) may have nothing to do with what happens on the day before or the

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day after (sequence) but simply may reflect the fact that one has fewer obligations at the end of the week. The decision to set time aside for something (allocation) need not concern antecedent or subsequent events (sequence). And stealing time while at work is not quite the same thing as allocating one’s own time to disparate activities or experiences. The goal is to examine closely one family of agentic practices, forms of time work in everyday life, but there remains the issue of how we should approach this topic. Peggy Thoits has called for research that is based upon “detailed qualitative accounts of intentionality and agency.”54 In accord with her recommendation, my data consist of first-person narratives that describe how individuals engage in time work.55 Hundreds of people from all walks of life tell us about the inventive ways in which they customize temporal experience. Their modest stories have significant implications for matters of some consequence in sociological theory. Each of the following six chapters focuses on a particular form of time work. We take these topics up in descending order of their portion of the data: duration, frequency, sequence, timing, allocation, and taking time. In the concluding chapter, we consider the ironic place of these agentic practices in the causal dynamics of human conduct and experience.

2 Duration

n Shakespeare’s comedy, As You Like It, Rosalind gives Orlando an extensive lecture on our experience of duration. “And why not the swift foot of Time?” he asks.1 She replies by itemizing several categories of variation in perceived duration: “Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.”2 Then Orlando prompts Rosalind through the balance of her recitation:

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Orl. I prithee, who doth he trot withal? Ros. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized: if the interim be but a se’nnight, Time’s pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven year. Orl. Who ambles Time withal? Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath not the gout, for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain, the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury; these Time ambles withal. Orl. Who doth he gallop withal? Ros. With a thief to the gallows, for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there. Orl. Who stays it still withal?

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Ros. With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term and then they perceive not how Time moves.3 Through Rosalind’s incisive voice, Shakespeare avows that variation in the perceived passage of time merely shadows variation in one’s circumstances. Despite the shrewd eloquence of Rosalind’s speech, there is reason to believe that it represents a naive view of our experience of duration. It may be true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. Like William James, Shakespeare has no appreciation for the fact that we are not always victims of circumstances where time is concerned. On the contrary, we often seize the reins in an effort to guide the situation toward a desirable form of temporal experience. With just as much eloquence as Shakespeare, and more economy, Samuel Beckett captures this agentic stance toward duration in his play, Waiting for Godot: Vladimir: That passed the time. Estragon: It would have passed in any case. Vladimir: Yes, but not so rapidly.4 Beckett’s characters make time pass quickly. Under different conditions, they might have opted to make it pass slowly. In this chapter, we examine agentic efforts to modify the experience of duration. Our data concern the amount of time that seems to elapse during a given interval—the elastic time of lived duration, not the standard temporal units of clocks and calendars. There is variation in the perceived passage of time, and from Shakespeare’s deterministic standpoint, one’s circumstances govern one’s experience of duration. Yet the evidence indicates that we would be hard pressed to find someone who, in passive fashion, surrenders to the temporal dictates of the situation. In short, as Beckett suggests, we commonly seek to exercise some control over how time “feels.”5

Acceleration Time work functions as a temporal lathe with which to modify the contour of one’s personal experience. If our circumstances bring about (or can be anticipated to bring about) the undesired perception that time is passing slowly, we “act” in such a way that it seems to accelerate.6 Regrettably, it would appear that people in the United States frequently find themselves in settings of this type, and, when mining for such data, we find that bored students provide a rich vein of ore. Their agentic practices are guided by folk theories of one kind or another, and a fundamental principle of these theories is that the

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perceived passage of time slows if you pay attention to time itself. A young man invokes that principle in the excerpt below: I don’t look at my watch during class. When I do look at it, class seems to take forever. When I don’t look at it, class goes a lot faster. “A watched pot never boils.” In an effort to avoid thinking about time itself, those who take a more activist stance rely on the tried-and-true methods of interpersonal distraction. A twenty-year-old woman provides the following account: When the professor is babbling on about a math proof we don’t need to know about and never will, it seems like time drags. My friend, James, and I have had the professor for the entire year and have given up trying to pay attention when we don’t understand. To help make time pass, I will make faces, hand gestures, noises under my breath, and we write notes to each other— sometimes about [the professor], the class, or stuff in general. In par ticular, I will write T-15, meaning it is fi fteen minutes before the end of class, and count down every minute after that. I will do everything in my power to make James want to laugh so hard he can’t hold it in. Sometimes I will write him an e-mail, since everyone has computers at our desks in the lab. It makes time pass that would be unbearable otherwise. Here, time work is manifest as something akin to a furtive micro-insurgency. Temporal experience is at issue, but as Erving Goffman puts it, “The deviations that have been considered all deny in some way the domination of the individual by the social occasion in which he finds himself.”7 Still, the risk associated with class disruption leads other students to focus on intrapersonal techniques that are less overt but no less effective. “Usually, I would just go to sleep,” says an eighteen-year-old male. Sleeping is a transitional category. The student in question collapses time into a seemingly shorter interval through explicit withdrawal from the situation but without noisy insurrection. Unwilling to leave physically, some students take small mental excursions. A young man admits, “I look at people [and] think of places I’d rather be or what I’d rather be doing.” Instead of imagining possibilities, a young woman makes use of her memories: “I write letters to my friends when I want time to go by faster, because it makes me think of the fun times I’ve had when I’ve been with them. And as the saying goes, ‘time flies when you’re having

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fun.’ It also helps me take my mind off the clock.”8 Of course, within the context of a class, any form of writing or doodling exploits note-taking as a version of what Goffman calls an “involvement shield” for the impropriety of inattentiveness.9 An eighteen-year-old male offers this example: The situation would occur in European History each morning, which is not my favorite subject. Instead of trying to follow the lecture and take notes, I would often draw in my sketchbook instead. At fi rst when I was drawing, my concentration would be half on my picture and half on my teacher, making sure I didn’t get caught and called on. But after I would get a skeleton of a picture started, I focused more and more on it and less and less on the teacher. I would work on a small portion of the picture and pay a lot of attention to detail so that I was oblivious to my surroundings. Several times, I would notice the passage of time only when the bell rang at the end of class.10 Whereas some forms of time work are hackneyed, others evince a remarkable capacity for creativity that, sadly, is seldom brought to bear on the class itself. Two female students describe the following variations: I’ll draw a circle some place on my paper and start filling it in, like pie pieces, as time goes by. For some reason, this helps me focus more on the speaker, and I also do not want to look at my watch as much because the more I look the littler the piece I fill in will be. It always seems better if I fill in a larger piece compared to a little sliver. Time just seems to go by much faster when I do this. When I was in high school, I used to write out the seconds on my notebook so class would seem like it was going by quicker, but I could never get the exact second; I was always off. It actually did make time go by quicker because I was challenged by this and spent my class time concentrating on this, rather than the boring class. These frank narratives display surreptitious and consequently unheralded innovation that is, nonetheless, a wellspring of pride, personal efficacy, and bragging rights. A few students engage in time work that is more appropriate to the occasion, if only grudgingly so. Autonomously, they summon a semblance of involvement that is neither genuinely provoked by the class itself nor motivated by

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a desire for academic success but is, rather, meant to modify their experience of duration in an otherwise tedious encounter. The excerpts below, both from young women, exemplify this clever adaptation: I am usually extremely tired during our Wednesday morning Western Heritage class, perhaps because it is the middle of the week. Therefore, the class goes by very slowly, and I am constantly searching for new techniques to help quickly pass the time. Note-taking has proven to be the most successful of these. I try to jot down almost everything that the professor says— especially those tidbits of information which I find particularly interesting. Concentrate on every word that’s being said; watch every word come out of his mouth. Focus on writing each word down; try to listen so carefully that I can almost hear him inside my head. Never look at the clock. Concentrate so hard that I don’t have time to be bored. It makes a segment of time that usually feels drawn out and boring go by slightly faster, because there’s no time to realize how slow time is going when you focus hard on something. There is a ritualistic quality to these activities, but it would not be quite right to argue that the students are merely going through the motions inasmuch as real attention is fabricated, even if its true purpose is not in keeping with the spirit of the occasion. And students are not the only ones who pursue time work in the classroom. At least some teachers collaborate with students in a concerted effort to avoid the experience of protracted duration. Two high school teachers share the following details: My kids usually tell me that these periods drag on for them, because they don’t like to read, so I bring in some quiet classical or soothing music, and play it softly while they read. I thought it might be a little distracting, but they actually get a decent amount of reading done and don’t seem to think the class is too long. The music seems to help them make the time go faster. Usually, my kids don’t want to be here, and they get bored easily, so I take all the clocks out of my room so they can’t look at the time. If they have a watch on, I ask them to remove it. This keeps them from concentrating on the time and wondering how much time is left. I also provide crayons and paper, which seems silly for older kids, but

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when I see them drifting or becoming bored I let them draw while they talk. The deal is they have to keep the conversation going while they color. It works, too. I’ve never had a kid complain about how long a session is once it gets going. Usually, they’re surprised it went so quickly. Clearly, time work can be directed at one’s own temporal experience or that of others. The classroom is typical of many social settings where participants pursue interlocking forms of time work. Athletic practices, for instance, exhibit much the same dynamic. An eighteen-year-old female adheres to a familiar principle: “When I’m at a sports practice, I only let myself look at my watch after a certain amount of time has passed. It helps me . . . feel as if time is passing quicker.” And, like teachers, a thirty-seven-year-old coach realizes that he does or does not facilitate the time work of his players: I think depending on how intense my coaching is or whether the players are having fun determines how I influence their perceived passage of time. Sometimes they experience practice as passing quickly and sometimes slowly. I feel that time passes much quicker when I am intense; the players get into practice and have fun competing and succeeding. After these practices, I have heard players commenting to each other that practice sped by. Other times, when I am not intense and the players are just running laps for conditioning, they say practice seems to drag on forever. A thirty-four-year-old female sales coordinator evinces similar self-consciousness in her desire to avoid tedium on the part of potential clients: “I make my presentations colorful and fun so time passes faster for me and for the listener, too.” Throughout this study, it will be apparent that self and other represent two fundamental vectors for time work. Put differently, temporal agency can be applied to the modification of one’s own experience or that of others. These vectors are typically segregated, but the sales coordinator combines them; she not only wants to customize her own perceived duration but that of her potential clients, as well. With them, she wants to feel that their time together has passed quickly. Through her own socialization and biographical experience, she has accumulated a stock of knowledge that serves as the foundation for a folk theory concerning the manipulation of perceived duration. She knows what to do and what not to do. Her presentation must be “colorful and fun,” not dull and boring.

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She was not born with this knowledge. Some of it is derived from systematic instruction, the rest from haphazard experience. She has given presentations and witnessed them. Some of these presentations seemed to go by quickly while others dragged on interminably. She has paid attention to the ways in which these presentations differed, such that they had divergent effects on the perceived passage of time. The application of this abstract knowledge to a particular setting requires that she imagine or remember herself on the receiving end of a performance like the one she now designs. This is what George Herbert Mead intended with his concept, “taking the role of the other.” 11 The sales coordinator takes the role of the other in the planning and implementation of circumstances that are meant to be perceived as having passed quickly. As Mead would have it, the situation one conjures must “arouse in one’s self what it arouses in the other individual.” 12 The sales coordinator projects her anticipated experience of time onto the other and retrospectively confirms (or fails to confirm) a working hypothesis of temporal intersubjectivity by attending to empirical indicators of engrossment on the part of her audience. In his essay, “Making Music Together,” Alfred Schutz points out that this lay form of empiricism is optimized in faceto-face settings by “the reciprocal sharing of the Other’s flux of experiences in inner time, by living through a vivid present together, by experiencing this togetherness as a ‘We.’ ”13 This interactive agency creates the potential for “temporal synchronization.” As with the sales coordinator and her potential clients, musicians who perform together must “take into account what the other” is doing.14 In the case of musicians, they must simultaneously attend to the musical score as well as how the other musicians are interpreting that score. They accomplish harmony (i.e., temporal intersubjectivity) by “gearing into the outer world” of their shared performance.15 One’s own inner time consciousness must be geared into that of one’s fellow performers. Again, this is a temporal working hypothesis, and it must be ongoingly confirmed by the empirical indicators that, together, constitute their performance. We are dealing with a very general phenomenon: the deliberate synchronization of temporal experience. Indeed, Schutz argued that “we find the same features in marching together, dancing together, making love together, or making music together.”16 The degree of synchronization varies, however, with cultural norms that dictate whatever volume of mutual involvement is deemed appropriate on disparate occasions. Elaborating on Schutz’s insight, research by Murray Davis marks one end of the continuum: Erotic time must be synchronized more closely than everyday time. Each participant must continually try to harmonize his or her personal

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sexual rhythm with the partner’s, during both the active periods and their interludes.17 At the other end of the continuum, we find occasions where participants pay little attention to each other, and their temporal experience need not be tightly synchronized—for example, a husband who rather reluctantly accompanies his wife while she is shopping. Observations from classrooms, practice fields, and business offices suggest that we are apt to find efforts to accelerate the perceived passage of time wherever attendance is enforced. There are plenty of exceptions, such as workers who try to ignore a looming deadline and scholars who lose track of time during fascinating inquiries, but hastening the end of one’s labor seems to be the modal form of time work in shops, offices, factories, and other places of employment. It is not that employees must endure unpleasant circumstances, per se. Many do, of course, but others “labor” in comfortable surroundings with people whose demeanor is less objectionable than that of friends or relatives. Yet, like students, most of these employees would rather be elsewhere and as quickly as possible. If they cannot leave quickly, then at least they want to feel that the requisite amount of time is passing quickly. Hence, it is crucial to stay busy, as a thirty-one-year-old female temp worker tells us: My job entails . . . extensive file clerk duties, all of which are, for the most part, boring. To help pass the time in an eight-hour day, I usually work extremely fast . . . and become engrossed in that task. As a result, I lose track of the hours because I am so focused. . . . Working so fast takes up all of my attention, because I don’t want to make any mistakes. I fall into sort of a trance and usually come out of it when there is a break or lunch. Multitasking is an effective alternative to engrossment with a single activity, according to a twenty-two-year-old veterinarian assistant, but she points out that this approach can backfire: At work, I’ll try to do many things at once, and that makes time fly by. Unless I get it done real early because then I have that “Oh, I gotta wait,” you know what I’m saying? She has run out of work to do, which is a pervasive problem for the selfmanagement of temporal experience in the American workplace. Staying

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busy is not typically an option for a twenty-six-year-old hotel desk clerk, so he resorts to techniques honed during his days as a student: I am supposed to be working, but my work sometimes means just standing there waiting for work to come up. It’s mad boring usually. I try to daydream a lot to pass the time. I’ll sit there and think about a hot girl I met, or what I’m going to do for the weekend, or basically anything to keep from thinking I’m bored, I’m bored, I’m bored. Sometimes I’ll think of just crazy, random stuff, anything but the lack of work to do. Indeed, owing to an inadequate volume of available work, there is a desperate undercurrent to many of these narratives, most marked in the comments of a twenty-year-old male cashier: “I sometimes do other people’s jobs while at work to stay busy and make time go faster.” Employees need a certain amount of work in order to stave off boredom and the sensation of protracted duration, but there is not enough work to go around in many places of employment.18 Like students, employees must not pay attention to time itself if they want to feel that their hours at work have passed quickly. Moreover, they can manipulate perceived duration by eschewing interruptions in the flow of activity. A nineteen-year-old woman combines these strategies in an effort to compress the experience of an eight-hour shift at a large retail outlet: If I want to make time go by faster, I will not allow myself to look at a clock while at work or to take even a little break to stretch my legs or go to the restroom until after lunch because then the morning seems to fly right by. Other employees achieve temporal compression (i.e., the perception that time has passed quickly) by exploiting opportunities for sociability while at work. A thirty-seven-year-old beautician provides the following testimony: Something I love about my job is the constant communication that I have with my customers. I am always talking to them, usually about their hair, social, even private lives. Most of them are regular customers, so I have built a good relationship with all of them. I consider them my friends. This aspect of my work makes time fly. Similarly, a twenty-year-old woman observes that “when the restaurant is not busy, hostesses and servers have to roll silverware. This is a repetitive . . . job,

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but the time goes by much faster when we talk than when we sit and roll silverware in silence.” Whether the context is one of paid labor or simply chores at home, a prevalent type of temporal agency involves the transformation of work into play. This intriguing alchemy is clear evidence of self-determination inasmuch as the individual employs the arts of improvisation for the express purpose of modifying the perceived passage of time. Temporal compression is the upshot, according to a male, thirty-year-old school bus driver: Shoveling snow seems like it takes forever because it’s cold outside and it takes a lot of energy to accomplish. My children usually help the time seem to go by faster because I get to play with them while I shovel. I throw a little snow on them and watch them laugh and try to throw some back. . . . As we work our way down the driveway, we play a game that is similar to tag. I tag them with snow, and they tag each other and myself. This makes it seem like less of a chore and more of playtime with the kids, which makes time fly by. Kindred, if less gentle, sport is reported by Ben Hamper in his autobiographical account of working as a riveter on an automobile assembly line: I got together with Doug, Eddie, Dick, and Jerry and we created this grand diversion that we called Rivet Hockey. Rivet Hockey could best be described as a combination of foosball, soccer, the Civil War, and every Charles Bronson movie made after 1972. It was total mayhem, a Neanderthal free-for-all that was both violent and one hell of a lot of fun. The game was simple. Position a rivet on the floor, scope out an opposing linemate, and kick the rivet as hard as possible toward the linemate’s foot, ankle, or shin. In Rivet Hockey, pain was the payoff. To connect on a direct hit to a tender tibia, to exact blood through an opponent’s pant leg, was equivalent to kicking a fifty-yard field goal in the Rose Bowl.19 Hamper makes their motivation explicit: “Our only adversary was Father Time. And by slammin’ rivets up against each other’s shins, we were only out to jump that bastard and maim him something silly.”20 It would be easy to dismiss this game as disruptive horseplay were it not for the fact that this bit of diversion and others like it buffer assembly line workers from what Hamper refers to as “the death march of the minute hand.”21 In manifold circumstances, human beings wield the weapons of creativity against the forces of time.

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Many of us feel trapped in school, on the practice field, and at places of employment. We may feel hemmed in by our chores at home. Even church is not exempt from temporal agency, as noted by a nineteen-year-old male: I want time to go by quicker because I get bored in church listening to the priest lecture. . . . To achieve time advancement, I focus on people in the audience and pick out certain characteristics about the people. For example, old ladies with yellow sweaters and purple pants. I also look at the murals on the walls. I try to pick out anything that is interesting or weird and then think about it. I daydream and . . . plan the rest of my day. Obviously, a great deal is going on (mentally, at least) that has nothing to do with the saving of one’s soul. It would appear that time work is a more or less furtive facet of innumerable social settings. Travel to and from these sites is equally problematic for the perceived passage of time. Not only do we confront ennui upon arrival, but we are bored on the way. In fact, travel represents one of the largest categories concerning efforts to customize our experience of duration.22 Long road trips pose a special challenge. Like this inventive young woman, we must avoid paying attention to time itself: “Me and my brother were driving to Atlanta, so we covered up the clock with tape.” A young man employs a repertoire of related techniques to bring about temporal compression on the drive home from college: I listen to the radio, take note of traffic patterns (driving with a pack for a while, then alone, then working into another pack), and count exit signs along the way. By counting exit signs, rather than time between signs, it seems to go by quicker. Instead of fifteen minutes here and twenty-two minutes there, and so on, it makes the distances between exits seem more uniform, and that makes time seem to flow more steadily. There are multiple variations on the personal construction of cognitive focus. For a young man, this requires “intentionally driving behind another car in order to follow them,” whereas a young woman uses the velocity of her vehicle to affect the velocity of time: “I speed to get places faster. I know that I probably won’t get to my destination much faster, but the feel of my speed makes me think I’ll arrive sooner, making time go by faster.” Artificially generating cognitive focus is not the only answer, however. If someone else is driving, sleep offers an alternative path to temporal compression: “On long road trips

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during basketball season, taking naps on the bus along with the rest of the team makes time seem to go by much faster.” Time work is not unique to driving great distances past monotonous terrain. Commuters may travel only across town, and the perceptual environment may be quite complex, but they are no less intent on exercising some control over their experience of duration. Despite the obvious hazards, for instance, a cell phone enables this twenty-four-year-old woman to engage in distracting conversation during what would otherwise be a solitary endeavor: I drive home from work every day from Manhattan to Brooklyn during rush hour, which takes an extremely long time. So every day I call my best friend at home, and we talk the whole time. It makes my drive go by so quickly, sometimes I don’t even realize I am almost home. You’d think we would get bored of each other by now, but it seems we always have something to say. My two-hour drive seems much shorter because I busy myself talking about things I enjoy and care about.23 Another young woman purposefully varies her routine: “I try driving to places different ways because . . . I don’t want to be where I’m going and, I don’t know, driving is just a boring task. It makes it more interesting, and it doesn’t seem so slow.” Thus, time work is not provoked by the objective length of one’s trip. A red light can suffice: I normally turn the radio volume up so that I can jive to funky acid jazz. I also look around frantically and pick my nose a lot. Then I plan ahead to the day’s events. What do I have to accomplish? When do I need to do it? The result is that time seems to contract—it speeds up—and the light turns green. We must conclude that any noticeable interval can accommodate temporal agency. It is worth noting, once again, that time work encompasses interpersonal as well as intrapersonal efforts. Moreover, these efforts can be organized into a stepwise plan: Conversation with a passenger makes time go fastest, but if there’s nothing to talk about time goes even slower. In that case, I have a set of CDs I play entirely and in order. If this fails, I try to play games with the passenger using road signs or license plates. . . . Although this often kills time, it’s my last resort.

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Unquestionably, drivers devote a lot of thought to temporal agency, but this is no less true of those, like a twenty-six-year-old waiter, who are flying: I often set personal goals to accomplish during the flight. I usually take a book, be it a novel or a book of crossword puzzles, and give myself a set deadline to be finished with a certain amount of pages by the end of the flight. By doing this, I try to focus all my energy on getting a task done so that I won’t think about being trapped in the air with nowhere to go. . . . I feel as if doing these activities makes the flight go a lot faster. Some of these techniques are learned from friends and loved ones; others are developed through one’s own trial and error. And, of course, whole industries have emerged around commodities that are especially helpful for killing time. For many of us, travel is little more than a subset of waiting. It is a temporal barrier between us and our destinations—the time it takes to realize our desires. We are not prepared to see it as something to appreciate on its own terms. Indeed, as a people, we are uncomfortable with empty intervals of time. When we have to wait, time’s fate hangs in the balance: some try to save it; others try to kill it. Either way, a young man expresses one of the cardinal ironies in our temporal culture: “I feel like I have to do something when I don’t have anything to do.” The exigencies of daily life make for delay at nearly every turn. A seventyone-year-old housewife must postpone breakfast for medical reasons, prompting diligent effort at the self-regulation of temporal experience: Every morning for the past three years, I have had to take a pill that requires me to remain in an upright position, no going back to bed, with nothing to eat or drink other than water for thirty minutes. Thirty minutes can be a long time, especially when one would love a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. I will have to continue this routine for the rest of my life. Fortunately, I am at home. My husband is retired and sleeps later than I do, so I am alone and can choose to do what I want to make the thirty minutes seem to go by faster. I vary what I do, as each day presents some unfinished business. I might do household chores. I might write letters or checks. If I am feeling indulgent and into a very good book, I might read. Or, like a twenty-one-year-old male, we may find ourselves filling the otherwise “empty” intervals that stretch between what we have and what we want: “To allow for time before a movie to speed up, I usually clean my apartment.

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If I don’t do anything prior to the movie, that time seems long.” In contrast to his reliance on a single method, a young woman waiting for her date to arrive produces temporal compression through a flurry of activity: I make time go faster by occupying myself as much as possible. I will watch TV, but if I am aware of myself being antsy then it’s not working, so I go find something else to do. I reapply make-up, fi x my hair again, play with the radio—listening to a song I like. The next thing I know, time has passed, but it’s still not time to be picked up, so I’ll talk to my mom, try the TV again—go in circles basically— and soon enough my ride is here. A thirty-three-year-old unemployed mother paints the same picture on a larger canvas: Because I am usually alone during the day, I try to keep myself occupied to pass the time. To help time appear to pass more quickly, I water the garden, mow the lawn, clean a room in the house, or run some errands. . . . If I didn’t have these activities to get me through the day before my kids come home, then time would seem to drag. In short, however useful— even necessary—such activities may be, one variant involves killing time while the individual waits for something to happen, and the following excerpts give us an inkling of how finely drawn such effort can be: During commercials, those two or three minutes can really stretch out. If I’m too lazy to do something that can be accomplished within three minutes, I usually flip through the channels. The conditioner that I use needs to be in my hair for two minutes in order to work as it’s intended to. While I am waiting, I wash my body with soap. . . . These two minutes would feel much longer if I were just standing there.24 It is not uncommon to find us helping others deal with waiting or boredom. Not only do we kill time ourselves, we serve as accomplices, as well. In the following excerpt, one young woman keeps another company during the moments before a fateful revelation: “My friend thought she might be pregnant, so I waited with her while she took the test. That one-minute wait was

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going to seem like an eternity for her, so I was there to make it go by quicker.” With the perceived passage of time, little sisters present a challenge of a different sort: When our parents are off to work, she wakes up earlier than me and tries to keep herself busy. But when she finds herself being bored, which happens most often, she wakes me up and, after freshening up, I try to keep her busy. We play cards, boardgames, computer games; she usually wins and that makes her happy. Time passes quickly and my parents return. Likewise, a benevolent godmother (and forty-two-year-old travel agent)— whose godson is suffering through a “long and boring” semester at college— flies him to her place in Colorado where he “can experience a little bit of change which helps him feel that time passes faster.” With others, we jointly manage our experience of duration by employing the plentiful accoutrements of distraction. The size of the interval in question displays enormous range. Time work can be directed at very small intervals, as with the pregnancy test above, but it is not unusual to discover efforts to modify the perceived passage of time across the span of large temporal units. “If I want the day to pass quickly,” a twenty-one-year-old salesclerk tells us, “I will do something I really enjoy like reading a good book or seeing a movie.” In addition, a nineteen-year-old student shows us that familiar principles of distraction continue to apply as we move up the scale of magnitude: I try not to think about it. I have a week left, and I try to go about my daily life as usual. I go to class, study, exercise, anything so I do not think about the time. I’ve realized the less amount of time I think about time, the faster it goes by. Also, I try and plan a lot of activities to last the whole day. A fellow student is more ambitious but less proficient: “I want the time to pass quickly from now to graduation in 96 days, but I have yet to find an effective way to make it go faster.” His plaintive response highlights the noteworthy fact that some people do not know how to modify the perceived passage of time—although, as we will see, this type of incompetence is much more prevalent among those who are trying to slow it down rather than speed it up. In any event, it would be a mistake to attribute such inadequacy to the size of the interval, as demonstrated by the following excerpt:

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This summer I was away from my boyfriend. To make the time go by until I saw him again, I took on four jobs. This way, I was so busy and had so many schedules to keep that time seemed to go by faster. I had been counting down the days until I would see him with a calendar. Being busy took my mind off of him and distracted me from thinking about him. It did seem to make the time pass faster. Several dimensions of temporal experience are visible in the foregoing data. How do they differ from one another? We can begin to formulate a rudimentary typology. Those who kill time commit temporal suicide; the mortal moments are their own. Those who rush time stack minutes on top of each other in a feat of temporal architecture. Those who withdraw from time douse the flame of temporal self-consciousness. Those who hide time blind themselves to its elapsing moments. Those who fill time decorate their temporal dominions with distractions and amusements. Those who save time hope to accrue a temporal endowment from the loose change of minutes and hours. Those who transform time use agentic alchemy to turn otherwise leaden moments into gold. Students and athletes strive to generate temporal compression during class and practice, respectively. Employees do whatever they can to perceive their time at work as having passed quickly. We engage in temporal agency during religious ser vices and while doing chores at home. We try to accelerate the lived duration of travel and delay of any kind. Indeed, we kill time (even during our “leisure” hours) whenever we are forced to wait for anything. Moreover, teachers collaborate with students, coaches with athletes, and probably to a lesser extent, employers with employees. Friends and loved ones come to the aid of other individuals in need of time work. And no one seems terribly alarmed by the fact that, at the end of it all, we have hurried through our lives as quickly as possible. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that despite its prevalence, some people are unable or unwilling to accomplish temporal compression. A student cites the following example: “I am waiting, not always patiently, for my pizza. To make the time fly quicker, I may watch TV, listen to music, talk to some friends, and yet somehow it still seems like an eternity.” In a similar vein, a social worker laments, “I have yet to find an effective way to make it go faster.” We also must remember that one person’s obligation is another’s self-actualization, which means that two or more individuals in the same circumstances may experience the passage of time in radically different ways.25 As a case in point, it took nearly an hour for two visiting scholars to find a parking place in Miami’s South Beach neighborhood on a crowded Saturday night, and during this interval, the female driver is described by her male companion as “completely

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calm” (“in full Zen mode,” to use her own words) while he is “absolutely seething” because he “can’t believe that it could take so long to park.” Time work is not infallible. Given the nature of his situation, the young man waiting for a pizza employs the standard repertoire, but to no avail. He wants time to pass quickly before sating his hunger, but nothing can divert his attention from the protracted duration he endures only because he creates it. He does not permit himself to be distracted by television, music, or friends. Unwittingly, then, he sabotages the effectiveness of his own time work (and thereby magnifies the wait) by concentrating on his empty stomach and the passage of time itself. He pays selective attention to the environment, as we always do, but to the wrong elements on this occasion. With his failure to deflect frustration, we glimpse the impatience of youth. Likewise, the two visiting scholars pay selective attention to different aspects of their shared environment (i.e., Miami’s South Beach). How can their reaction to the same setting be so divergent? “Knowledge is socially distributed,” states Alfred Schutz.26 People from different social locations learn (and know) different things. It follows that the relevant skills are not randomly distributed across sociological categories, such as age, gender, and class. Unlike her male companion, the female half of this couple has mastered certain techniques of time work. She knows how to cultivate patience by diverting her attention away from time itself. Her knowledge, which he lacks, is referenced by the slang, “in full Zen mode.” The machineries of time work are collectively available to the members of a society, but this knowledge is socially distributed, not universal.

Deceleration In contrast, there are those who wish to prolong their temporal experience within a particular interval of time. They long for the feeling of protracted duration because, typically, they find themselves in (or anticipate) pleasurable circumstances. Unfortunately, it would appear that producing this experience is not a cultural forte among our respondents. Almost invariably, efforts to slow the perceived passage of time involve temporal aesthetics and personal desires, not the pragmatic concern with productivity that is so prominent in our cultural traditions. As a result, individuals must discover or improvise stratagems on their own behalf. The time work an individual is prepared to pursue reflects, among other things, the values and practices of his or her society. By and large, a society is an aggregate effort to realize a specific collective identity. No society can embrace all potential mores and folkways, as the anthropologist Ruth Benedict taught us long ago:

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The great arc along which all the possible human behaviours are distributed is far too immense and too full of contradictions for any one culture to utilize even any considerable portion of it. Selection is the first requirement.27 Consequently, the components of a given culture tend to be more or less integrated with each other, thereby forming a logical system— one, moreover, that favors or does not favor particular types of time work. Efforts to slow the perceived passage of time comprise less than 15 percent of the data on duration. Here, too, we are more likely to find people who admit an inability to perform the time work in question. In the words of one student, “I can think of times when it goes fast, but I can’t think of how to slow it down.” Another student tells us about making a mostly unsuccessful effort and speaks of it wistfully, as one might describe a precious fantasy: I recall, back in January of this year, I was trying to spend as much time as I could with a very good friend who was leaving for London at the end of the month. We both tried to manipulate the time we had left by hanging out whenever possible and staying up late. However, looking back now, I don’t feel that was very effective, and I wish I could have made time pass even slower than it did. Her wish is echoed by this poignant letter to an advice columnist from a young mother: As I sit here trying to put together the goody bags for my baby’s first birthday, I am becoming more and more of a wreck! It’s going by too fast. Any advice on how I can slow down time? It’s a real shame how fast life flies by.28 The columnist borrows from Henry David Thoreau in her reply: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”29 What she really means is focus attention on the present moment—advice that could have come from our respondents. In an effort to prolong their experience of pleasurable circumstances, our respondents have developed cognitive and behavioral recipes for what we can call the “savoring complex.” Without realizing it (in most cases, at least), their recipes invoke a classic admonition of Zen Buddhism: “Be here now.”30 For example, a fifty-five-year-old psychologist relates her approach to moderating the perceived passage of time while on vacation: “I try to slow down my breathing, visually take in my surroundings, be aware of being in the present moment, be grateful for this time to be peaceful and relaxed, and enjoy my

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surroundings or my activity.” Her comments run parallel to the words of a young woman who tells us how to savor a weekend: I always try to make the good days last a little longer by spacing the things I’m going to do out so that there’s always something waiting to be done. I’ll also try to make the days seem longer by making it a point to stop in the middle of it and think about what I am doing and what I still have left to do, and for a while at least, put time on hold. Whereas those who want to accelerate the perceived passage of time imagine or remember other, more desirable circumstances, those who wish to prolong their experience of duration concentrate on the here-and-now of their immediate situation. The savoring complex can be facilitated by various mnemonic devices, such as photographs and other mementos as well as rituals of one kind or another. There are, for instance, people who begin and end each day with prayers of gratitude. Practitioners of meditation have long understood the usefulness of a mantra for concentrating one’s attention, but there is the problem of keeping a mantra in mind despite our many worries and distractions. Prior to joining the Army, an American soldier had this tattoo put on his arm: “Remember, every day is a gift from God, that’s why it’s called the present.”31 Subsequent to being wounded in Iraq, it has become a mantra for his efforts to cherish each moment of life. His tattoo combines the memento and the mantra—two of the mnemonic devices we employ in the savoring complex. There is an unmistakably aesthetic emphasis in the savoring complex.32 One wants to linger within a particular experience—to luxuriate in protracted duration. This self-indulgence is epitomized by rapturous comments from a forty-eight-year-old massage therapist: Time is irrelevant when I am wrapped up in my playing. I don’t feel time. There is no past, no future; it’s the perfect moment of peace. When I play the crystal bowls, time slows down and I am locked into a place where time stands still. This helps me to relax and enjoy nature while I play and escape from the modern world.33 Less spiritual pastimes can have kindred effects. In the game of golf, for example, something of the same mystique can be cultivated during the elongated moments of a critical shot: Looking back, you could say that was the one shot that made or broke that round. When the shot presents itself, my level of concentration

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rises as I try to raise my level of play. My focus is on nothing else. . . . My mind races trying to think of ways to pull this shot off—how hard to hit the shot and what club to use. . . . Once the club has been chosen and my mind is made up on how to hit the shot, everything slows down. I go through my normal pre-shot routine trying to maintain concentration. I step up to the ball and now I’m ready to hit the shot. The swing itself goes at normal speed, but as the ball leaves the clubface everything becomes like slow motion. Arguably, there are aesthetic qualities at issue when one wants to speed the perceived passage of time, but they are less apparent because they have to do with hurrying past something that is repugnant rather than lingering over something we relish. Erving Goffman points out that games are meant to transport the individual to a different realm of being by generating a special level of cognitive involvement.34 Thus, games are fun to play. It is also possible, however, to agentically activate the savoring complex under conditions that are not conducive to the requisite concentration. As the narrator of the following excerpt demonstrates, one can savor less than ideal circumstances by initiating an almost perverse mental commitment to be here now: What I do when time is flying by and I’m having a good time is try to slow the moment down and concentrate on all the details to engrave them in my mind. . . . One day I was standing in line at my high school cafeteria. It was a long line. As I was standing there, I suddenly realized how much time I had spent in that one room, and most of the time I hadn’t even noticed anything about the place. So I decided to concentrate on every detail of the room. I narrowed my focus to the ceiling which looked like the ghostly white, foamy roof of a cave. The lights were large squares that hung from four skinny poles. I noticed the multi-colored tables, the fake wood grain, the large windows with shelves for potted plants, and where the trash cans were located. These remarks suggest that nearly any conditions can be savored if we “concentrate on every detail” of our surroundings— an observation that corroborates the importance of selective attention in the writings of William James and George Herbert Mead.35 It is a short step, moreover, from simply marshaling one’s attentional resources to employing consciousness-altering substances in an effort to facilitate that process. There are multiple reasons for smoking marijuana, but one

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of them, according to a twenty-four-year-old restaurant manager, is prolonging the perceived duration of his breaks: My experience of time, when I am smoking marijuana, seems to go by slower. I usually overestimate how long we have been smoking. For example, let’s say after smoking two joints, I think that we have been out back longer than we really had been. Sometimes I think that we have been out there for 45 minutes, but when I look at a clock only 20 minutes or so have gone by.36 In contrast, the effects of alcohol on temporal experience are more complicated and less predictable. As Norman Denzin puts it, “Alcohol distorts the feelings of time. It speeds up time and then slows it down.”37 A nineteen-yearold female says, “It goes by faster because you’re not quite aware of what’s going on; it’s almost as though it was a dream when you wake up the next morning.” Obviously, she endorses only part of Denzin’s statement, probably because she has not endured the kind of suffering that reverses alcohol’s impact on temporal experience. There is, finally, another approach to slowing the perceived passage of time—that of procrastination. Here, the individual does not actually experience protracted duration, but by engaging in various activities, postpones some disagreeable eventuality. In a couple of cases, respondents describe efforts to put off getting down to the business of schoolwork. “I find tons of things to occupy myself,” admits a twenty-one-year-old female; “I go to the mailboxes at least once . . . talk with friends, do my nails, watch TV, clean, anything to avoid studying and using my time wisely.” A nineteen-year-old male refers to it as “a clever way of tricking myself,” but our respondents also practice a form of temporal deception on others by attempting to prolong time with boyfriends through a strategy of calculated delay. As one young woman puts it, by watching a particular show on TV, that is “one hour longer I could stay.” And if she cooks a meal, then she “can’t leave until it’s prepared, we eat, and the dishes are done.”

Velocity and Manipulation Much of how time feels—its “texture”—is an artifact of human effort. When time is passing too slowly, we speed it up; and (less frequently) when time is passing too quickly, we slow it down. With duration, temporal aesthetics are at issue, not “time management” in the narrow way that term is misunderstood these days.38 Agency is in evidence, and it is oriented toward mastering the contingencies of temporal experience.

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The variety of settings represented in the data suggests that there is almost no situation free of efforts to control or manipulate one’s perceived passage of time. It would appear that people from all walks of life are vigilant and creative in the use of personal or situated resources, and they take the initiative to customize their experience of duration. What is more, their efforts often display enthusiasm, inventiveness, versatility, a sense of self-efficacy, and pride (even when these activities are inappropriate for the occasion). Some of their efforts are behavioral and overt, but much of their time work involves subjective processes, such as selective attention and interpretation. These efforts frequently concern the taken-for-granted minutiae of everyday life, so it is easy to see how this conduct can escape the notice of respondents and researchers alike. Their efforts may involve doing something (e.g., filling in slices of a temporal pie chart) or not doing something (e.g., looking at one’s watch), and there is certainly no end of things for them to do. They read, listen to music, exercise, check their mail, watch television or in-flight movies, eat, drink, take drugs, play games, engage in conversation, notice what other customers are purchasing, count exit signs on the highway, and pursue an infinite number of other activities in order to alter the perceived passage of time. Indeed, these data suggest that a great deal of our conduct is directed toward this endeavor. We seek to accelerate the perceived passage of time when we find ourselves in (or anticipate) undesirable circumstances and decelerate the perceived passage of time when we find ourselves in (or anticipate the end of) circumstances we enjoy or wish to savor. It is tempting to conclude that there is a third category where we do not intervene, but, of course, such forbearance is itself a choice. We affect our experience of duration even if only by abdicating responsibility for it. There are certainly more efforts at acceleration than deceleration, at least in our society, but it would be difficult if not impossible to enumerate instances of forbearance. If we are always acting agentically, then, by the same token, we are always managing our experience of time, albeit with varying degrees of self-consciousness. In other words, our mental and behavioral choices always have implications for the perceived passage of time, whether we intend them or not. And if we are not manipulating duration, as ensuing chapters demonstrate, it is often because we are managing a different facet of temporal experience.

3 Frequency

ow often does something happen? This question is always posed against the backdrop of a system of time reckoning. The earth completes one rotation every twenty-four hours, and the clock on my mantle chimes every fifteen minutes. But human activities rarely exhibit the regularities we find in nature and machinery.1 For example, Edward O. Laumann and his colleagues report that the frequency of sexual intercourse among married couples varies across the following scale: not at all (1.3 percent), a few times per year (12.8 percent), a few times per month (42.5 percent), two to three times a week (36.1 percent), and four or more times a week (7.3 percent).2 Arguably, variation in the rate of sexual intercourse among married couples reflects a complicated mixture of determinism and self-determination. In the previous chapter, we looked at variation in the perceived passage of time, but lived duration is not the only dimension of temporal experience subjected to agentic practices. Here, our concern is the frequency of events and experiences— another dimension of time that human beings attempt to manage. From the standpoint of self-determination, therefore, we can ask very different questions: How often is something allowed to happen? And how often do we make something happen? In other words, people routinely and knowingly seek to control or customize the rate at which  they experience various activities. We do not leave the frequency at  which events occur to chance or natural rhythms, nor do we acquiesce easily when various forms of authority attempt to dictate the assorted frequencies in our lives.

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We will canvass several analytical themes in the data. First, there is the fact that people modulate the rate or rhythm of their own conduct as well as that of others. These efforts often involve self-actualization realized, ironically, as agentically guided self-restraint. Second, there is variation in the control or customizing of frequency. Our respondents describe inventive strategies for increasing, maintaining, or reducing the rate at which they engage in various activities. It is worth noting that some seek to create or sustain routines, whereas others attempt to avoid or disrupt routines. Third, as with each dimension of time work, we must consider those who are incapable of managing temporal experience. Fourth, we will see that there is an important relationship between time work and self-efficacy.

Modulating Frequency Human beings assess the frequency of specific forms of behavior or experience within an elaborate social context of factors that compete for their attention and allegiance. We are, then, constantly adjusting frequencies to changing circumstances as well as other needs and desires. A young woman who is dedicated to standard norms of appearance must sometimes modify the routine frequency of personal grooming for the sake of punctuality, a very different temporal norm: “If I’m running late [in the morning], I move faster; I don’t shave if I need to take a quick shower.” Likewise, a seventy-three-year-old grandmother and retired nurse adjusts the frequency of one chore to the variable demands of other pursuits: I do the cooking, so I decide how often we eat out. Some weeks I am very busy, and I don’t necessarily want to cook a big meal three times a day. Then we’ll usually go out for a few dinners a week. Other times, I have more time and energy and we eat out less often. Her assertive temporal agency may well be experienced as temporal determinism by her spouse—a specific instance of a general theme in our analysis. In turn, he may respond with time work of his own, carefully nudging his spouse toward cooking more or less frequently (depending, perhaps, on her skills in the kitchen). Again, we see determinism and self-determination intertwined in a circular chain of causal processes. Many of our cherished goals are represented by the rate at which we engage in various activities. For instance, this young man is determined to improve as a musician: “To maintain a consistent frequency of daily practice, at a set time of about 1:00 p.m., I will try to balance other commitments—usually homework which I will either do beforehand or put off until later.” Typically,

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one strives to bring disparate frequencies into harmony, thereby making the music of our lives. Scholars who reject agency view it as a conceptual stalking horse for selfdetermination. They misinterpret the conceptualization of agency as absolute freedom from any and all social forces. Thus, according to its critics, agency is an ideological fantasy in contrast with the sociological realism of duty or obligation, conditioned by one’s social location. When we examine actual behavior, however, what we observe is the agentic capacity (and necessity) to choose from among conflicting identities or obligations that have equally social origins.3 Indeed, contrary to programmatic stereotypes, our data exhibit considerable evidence of agentic self-restraint where frequency is at issue. In a college dorm, for example, there are always those who call upon the individual to abandon his or her studies for the sake of an ever-recurring party. How often should one accept such invitations? When the workload is low and the mood is right, I drink with my friends. But if I have a lot of work, I will not drink that much or even at all. (twenty-year-old male) Every day there is someone who wants to go out drinking. I like to drink with my friends, and I call them all as well on nights I can go out, but I have to limit myself to nights that it is appropriate to me. (twenty-three-year-old male) I control how often I drink, usually when I have to. . . . The amount depends on what else is going on. (twenty-year-old female) These excerpts display resistance to the causal trajectory of the situation. What is more, these observations (and others like them) suggest that agentic practices and even a kind of “self-actualization” can take the form of self-restraint.4 Which things should I do more frequently, and which less? One must select from competing demands on one’s time. To do more of this is to do less of that. These decisions are not made with utter autonomy by the individual in question. Social groups and organizations establish “temporal norms” that call for quite specific rates of compliance. We inhabit an environment of temporal norms that vie for our attention and allegiance. Moreover, they are often incompatible with each other. It is the frequency of participation that “determines” one’s identity in the eyes of the community as a grind or a party animal, but that frequency is chosen through a process of self-determination—that is, through time work directed at respective frequencies. There are “temporal reference groups” and, tacitly or explicitly, we refer to their norms or expectations

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regarding how often we should indulge in certain forms of behavior. Thus, temporal conformity is no less agentic than is temporal deviance, but temporal agency is shaped by social forces.

Increasing Frequency It is possible, then, to influence how often things happen. Variations on this theme include those people who are trying to increase the frequency of certain activities or experiences. For a twenty-one-year-old woman, it is the rate at which she exercises: To motivate myself . . . sometimes I’ll use a [W]alkman, run with a partner, or say to myself, “Yo—just do it!” I feel it’s important to make time for physical activity. Over time, I’ve increased frequency in that now I run every day. In some cases, we observe the indirect manipulation of self as one creates or selects circumstances precisely because they call for behavior one would like to exhibit but for which one lacks the will to do so without external demands. In short, frequency can have important implications for one’s identity. After all, writers write: I have the free will to sit down at any time to write. Unfortunately, this does not occur on my own, mostly because I have come to rely on one of two things to lead me to write. The first I call “inspiration.” It could be a mood, an event which sends my creative wheels spinning, or something from my past suddenly seeming more significant than it once did. The other way in which I sit down to write is when I have a creative writing assignment due. Though I do not set the dates on which my writing is due, I do force myself to take creative writing classes so that I will write more often. (nineteen-year-old male) His strategy exemplifies the causal loop of temporal agency. Those who espouse sociological determinism seem to have something like a game of pocket billiards in mind: you hit the cue ball and, in turn, it knocks the eight ball into a pocket. The data from this study display a very different pattern. Over and over again, time work is manifest as a causal loop. One arranges circumstances to which one must then respond and, ultimately, this response entails the modification of one’s own temporal experience. In the previous excerpt, the young man writes more often; that is the effect, but what is the cause? It would be absurd to say that the increased frequency of his

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writing is “caused” by assignments in courses he does not have to take. He takes creative writing courses knowing that, by doing so, he brings about a par ticular set of external demands on his time. In a sense, these demands were chosen from a universe of possibilities, precisely because they would loop back to alter his temporal experience in a specific and wished-for way. These demands function as a tool with which to increase the rate of his writing— activity that is central to his identity. It is a loop of causality because, by taking these courses, he constructs a new set of environmental provocations that subsequently influence his own conduct. In other instances, we see an effort to maximize a particular frequency. This optimization may have an instrumental motive; it may be driven by material want, as with a young girl who tries “to work as frequently as possible to make as much money as possible.” Or it may have an expressive character, as when a twenty-eight-year-old medical student feels authorized to give “his opinion” and “advice” on any subject he and his friends discuss. Many people maximize the frequency of recreational pastimes, such as the young woman who declares, “I try to go to the beach as often as I can.” More often, however, the individual seeks to increase one rate in response to increases in another rate. In such cases, temporal agency contributes to “entrainment” where one rhythm is linked to another.5 The following excerpts illustrate this pattern: I often find myself making a conscious decision about when I choose to smoke marijuana. The times I choose are directly related to the amount of stress I am experiencing. Times are generally immediately following stressful events, such as class, tests, and meetings. (twentyyear-old male) Usually, I go running when I need a break from schoolwork, and it’s the only time to really be alone to think or think about nothing. It is a way to keep me awake and energized. The more I have to do . . . the more frequently I try to run. If I am stressed in any way, I go running. (nineteen-year-old female) In these excerpts, there is a positive relationship between stress and compensatory behavior. The more there is of one, the more there is of the other. It is tempting, of course, to chalk these cases up as simple examples of cause and effect, inasmuch as both of these individuals invoke “stress” as the precipitating factor. To do so, however, we must ignore the inconvenient fact that the same cause produces diametrical effects. Here, temporal agency dissembles determinism, but closer inspection of the data reveals a measure of preference

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and the shadow of self-determination. Put differently, the cause (stress) is and must be refracted through a self that agentically chooses the effect (marijuana in the former, running in the latter). Either of these individuals “could have acted otherwise,” as Giddens would have it.6 There are, as well, people who seek to increase one thing in an effort to decrease another. It is worth noting that these cases display an inverse form of entrainment. Two lines of activity are linked, but one is meant to inhibit the other. A forty-five-year-old financial manager provides the following example: When I’m under a lot of stress at work or if I’m just bored at home, I will unconsciously start to bite my fingernails. I know that this is a “bad” habit, so I try to keep myself from doing it so often. The best solution I have found to keep myself from biting my nails is to eat sunflower seeds. Now, when I am at home working, I will keep a bag of sunflower seeds on my desk so that I can eat them when I feel the need to bite my nails. This . . . allows me to control how frequently I bite them. The individual in question self-consciously counterbalances one habit for another in an attempt to manage the rate of undesirable conduct or experience. A thirty-two-year-old kindergarten teacher offers elaboration: I play [my guitar] to help me relax and learn new songs or polish old ones for the children. I do this every day; otherwise, I feel lots of tension, and that leads to stressfulness when the family comes home. I don’t, however, play on the weekends because those are two days when . . . I don’t have the stress from work. Monica Seff and her colleagues corroborate the salient point that, where human conduct is at issue, the cause of one’s behavior is filtered through the “mediating effects of self-concept.”7 Time work is an application of this principle. To choose a frequency is to choose a level of skill and, thereby, an identity as someone with that proficiency. All types of time work have interpersonal as well as intrapersonal variations. Thus, it is not uncommon to find that others choose to do what we choose to do. The upshot is that they are carried along into our rate of activity. As a young man observes, this rhythmic influence may bring about lasting changes in frequency: When I mix my records, I do it in my living room. So, whoever is in the living room has to listen to the techno music I play. These people

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probably would not listen to techno in their spare time. But, usually, they end up liking the music I play and appreciating what I do. This effect is not necessarily intended, but is understood to be a by-product of one’s own commitment. Kindred processes are innumerable. On the other hand, a sizable portion of the data is devoted to increasing one thing in an effort to decrease another. For a fi fty-five-year-old grandmother, this process entails keeping her spouse too busy to think about food: I purposely prevent my husband from eating in between meals so that he loses weight and his body adapts to a routine. So I posted reminders on the fridge and pantry door to remind him not to snack in between meals and to resist his hunger. Now we divide daily chores and activities to keep him busy in between meals which distracts his mind from any lingering hunger. A similar dynamic can be observed in the well-meaning interventions of a twenty-three-year-old administrative assistant whose efforts are directed at inhibiting a different version of overindulgence: My boyfriend used to drink a lot in college, almost to the point of being an alcoholic, and he gets very aggressive and impulsive when he drinks. . . . I try to come up with ideas and activities for us to do that don’t involve alcohol. It’s hard, but I do control how often he drinks. It is but a short step from this type of time work to exercising related control over the frequency of one’s own participation. An eighteen-year-old male offers the following example: I leave campus to separate myself from the “partying” attitudes of my friends on the weekend by doing other things off campus. I arrange to get an automobile from one of my friends and then try to get a group of us “non-drinkers” and do more recreational things—things that we will actually remember and talk about the next day without any regrets. The cooperation of the other person is also in question. When the other does not anticipate or recognize our desires, we can increase the frequency of our own actions in order to increase the frequency of theirs. Moreover, we

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can do so for good or bad reasons, which brings us to the twin forms of goading and corruption: Because it’s a long distance relationship and we both have such busy schedules, I find that I often have to be the one to remind him that we need time for one another and the relationship itself. I will remind him by verbalizing it; sometimes subtle, while other times it may be direct. Or I will remind him by sending a little card or note—whatever it takes. (twenty-two-year-old female) I use emotions to influence how often my mother gives me money. I will call her when I know that she is in a sympathetic or good mood. I tell her how I am struggling and that my brother has it on easy street, and two days later a check will be in the mail. (twenty-one-year-old female) I walk into my friends’ room and smoke. It makes them all want to smoke, too. We all end up smoking because of me. So I influence how often we smoke. (nineteen-year-old female) My friend has a night class that she hates going to. She wanted to go to the mall but said she had to go to class because she needed to give class notes back to a friend. While at dinner, I explained to her that missing the class is not the end of the world and that she could give the notes back to her friend at another time. After saying “you know you want to skip class” about 20 times, she finally decided to skip class and we went to the mall. (twenty-two-year-old female) These excerpts display the strategic manipulation of frequency to affect the rate of another’s behavior.8 All of these individuals are young women, so it may be tempting to attribute such conduct to their gender. In the next section, however, we see men doing much the same thing.

Maintaining Frequency The tidal recurrence of human activity is a prominent feature of social order. Like the traffic on our roads, all manner of conduct and experience ebbs and flows at regular intervals. Indeed, so many human endeavors exhibit a routine rhythm, that it is easy to overlook the decisive role we play in establishing and maintaining these rates. Nevertheless, close attention to agentic practices in

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everyday life reveals the self-conscious effort sustaining frequencies that are neither natural nor inevitable. In the following excerpt, for instance, a twenty-nine-year-old insurance salesman dictates the frequency with which he sees his girlfriend: I work all week and I like to have the nights to myself to do my work and rest. My girlfriend would like to see me more often, but when she’s around I can’t concentrate. So I tell her she can only come over on the weekends, which she doesn’t really like, but it has to be that way so I can get my work done. I’d like to see her more often, too, but it’s more convenient this way. He wants to ration the time he spends with his girlfriend, not maximize it. By the same token, however, his success in maintaining the rate at which they socialize marks her failure to increase it. The realization of one’s temporal desires is not simply a matter of will. On the contrary, success or failure at temporal agency often turns on relative resources and personal efficacy. In our interviews, a number of people elected to tell us how they maintain the frequency with which they go to school and work. It is easy to take this form of self-regulation for granted now, but E. P. Thompson has shown that this seemingly simple practice met with widespread and vigorous resistance during the early days of the industrial revolution, when it was imposed on a population not long removed from the less regimented rhythms of agricultural life.9 There is a sense, then, in which “going to school every day” (as a young man puts it) is an accomplishment— one that is achieved with the aid of planning and technology. A young woman says, “I set my alarm clock each night before I go to bed and, therefore, I’m controlling what time I will wake up each morning.” Likewise, a young man must think about how often to arrange for assistance: I do my best to plan a day ahead . . . the times that I will be riding [my bike] and the materials that I will need with me. If the things I need are too large to be transported on a bike, then I need to contact friends and have them provide transportation. It takes a great deal of forethought . . . making sure I’m prepared to stay somewhere other than home sometimes in order to save a trip. Showing up regularly for work and school may be viewed as necessary, but it is certainly not sufficient. The maintenance of a physically fit body is increasingly another field of responsibility.10 Hence, one must exercise at a certain frequency. With some pride, an eighteen-year-old female reports, “I

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go to the gym five days a week.” In like manner, we are expected to uphold multiple standards, many of which are assessed in terms of the rate or frequency at which something occurs.11 There is, consequently, an unmistakable self-assurance in the following declaration from a young woman: “I know how many clothes I have—shorts, jeans, work uniforms—so I know that doing laundry every two weeks will ensure that I don’t run out of clean clothes, and if I can’t do laundry that day I have a few extras.” Familial responsibilities also can be represented by certain frequencies, as in the case of benevolent advice from an older brother: I personally intercede on my sisters’ lives from a security standpoint. Having them both being younger, and knowing how guys act, I try to keep them out of situations that may make them feel awkward. Such issues as dating and parties where everything is new to them. I try to tell them what I went through, and they tend to see my examples as the way to go. Although I am trying to give them alternatives in the way they do things, it ends up being a very influential lecture where what I say is what they end up doing. These phone calls happen about two to four times a week. Responses of this type reveal agentic complicity in temporal regimentation. It is easy to overlook such practices, but, in so doing, we misconstrue human conduct as a mindless product of social norms.12 Temporal agency is not restricted to duty or obligation, however. Efforts to maintain frequencies associated with one’s own comfort or indulgence are equally common. These efforts range from prosaic intimacy to illicit entertainment. For one young man, this involves rather careful attention to how often he satisfies a preference for a par ticular kind of undergarment: “If I do not gauge when to wear one or the other correctly, I will run out of boxer shorts. Then I am faced with wearing briefs, and I hate briefs.” Another young man attempts to remain in a mind-altered state (making him somewhat difficult to interview): “I try to get stoned at least eleven times a week because it’s fun. I’m stoned now; I can’t think.” Instrumental and expressive motives for the maintenance of frequency can be intertwined, as when a forty-seven-year-old dance instructor eats regularly with her colleagues: Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I go to lunch with a few coworkers. We go out to lunch on these three days because it is usually Friday that the lessons are taught, and Monday and Wednesday we can brainstorm ideas for lessons or just shoot the breeze and have a

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good time. On occasion, we need to come up with an idea for a performance, and we will brainstorm ideas at lunch and then be able to practice those ideas later that night. This could easily be done any other day, but having them spaced out as they are allows each of us time to figure out dance moves to incorporate into the music or figure out what would be best to teach on Friday. Georg Simmel defined sociability as “the play-form of association.”13 The conversations described in the excerpt above concern shooting the breeze as well as choreography. Simmel argues that “in sociability talking is an end in itself,” but alloys with instrumental elements are probably more common than the pure form.14 Whatever the precise assay may be, measured participation in such conversations modulates the frequency of sociability. Duration is intrinsically experiential, whereas frequency has a behavioral connotation. Not surprisingly, then, a larger proportion of the frequency data is interpersonal, as opposed to the intrapersonal emphasis we saw in the previous chapter. With these instances, one person’s agency is experienced as another person’s determinism. This ambiguity is especially prevalent among the middle-aged subjects in our sample (who are, of course, likely to find themselves in positions of power and responsibility). Thus, a number of them described efforts to control various rates of their children’s behavior. For example, a twenty-seven-year-old automobile mechanic tries to impose some restraint on his child’s diet: My daughter is a sweetaholic. She loves candy. She already has one cavity, and we think one of her teeth is rotting. So we have to regulate her candy eating now. I don’t really like her eating that much sugar anyway. But she always wants it. I have to tell her “no” often. It becomes a fight sometimes. I control how often she eats candy and drinks soda. Similarly, a thirty-two-year-old teacher limits the frequency with which her children go shopping: I control how often my kids buy things. I control their wants and needs, which are toys. Without me, my kids can’t get these [things]. I only buy them when I have extra money and I feel like giving. Parents must also ensure the regular occurrence of appropriate behavior. A forty-seven-year-old woman provides a case in point: “As their mother, it is my job to make sure they take a regular shower, do their homework before

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they watch TV, etcetera.” Her efforts parallel those of a fifty-two-year-old father who determines how often “my youngest son should feed and care for his pets.” Frequency is not only an achievement with children (and a fundamental feature of their socialization), but also with adults of every stripe. With the clipped diction of one accustomed to authority, the forty-four-year-old manager of a post office mentions employee resistance to regulations concerning the frequency with which they do things: Clock-in/clock-out is noted in the database. Computer programs [provide] directions for what to do, when, how often. . . . Repetition. Check list. If not, people have a tendency not to do them. And when they fall into this pattern, then they won’t have to use the list anymore. Clarify expectations in writing. Don’t assume they can do it through osmosis. Train them, so as to have no confusion. Related dynamics are ubiquitous in the scheduled goings-on of diverse groups and social organizations. Typically, someone is responsible for establishing and maintaining the group’s rhythm of activity—the managed pulse of social interaction: I make up the cheerleading schedule and contact the other squad members to inform them about the specific times and locations of practice. We meet at least four times a week at various times and different rooms. This is the way that I control how often we practice. Likewise, a forty-eight-year-old lawyer assumes the annual responsibility of organizing a golfing excursion for fifteen of his male friends: “If I did not set up this trip every year, then none of these people would be in Jekyll Island on vacation at this time.” The same role can be played in dyadic relationships. As a young woman puts it, “I influence how often we talk because I call him.” In the absence of authority, an individual may resort to well-meaning harassment directed toward the maintenance of particular frequencies. This pattern is pervasive among young men who lift weights together: “I instigate by saying you’re small and you have a big belly. Then they go work out with me.” Male roommates furnish a variation on the same theme: One of my two roommates is a slob. He always has his desk filled with books, notebooks, paper, candy wrappers, and other stuff that keeps the room looking very dirty. He never cleans up by his own free will. So the other roommate and me insult him all the time and explain to

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him all the things we do to keep the room clean and how he never cooperates. We bother him until he finally is tired of all the nagging and cleans up. This female version of instigation places greater emphasis on modeling positive behavior: I am the most motivated when it comes to school work, and when my boyfriend is sleeping at my house, which is every day, he takes the cue from me. By me doing my work every night, he sees what has to be done and he has no choice but to do the same and study. There is a little bit of competition even because he does not want to feel like I am better than him and doing something for myself that he is not. If I wasn’t in his life, he would not study as much as he does and would not care as much. Outright persuasion is an alternative, as enacted by this young woman: I ask my friends to go for a walk. If they say no, I ask why not. If it’s because of studying, I don’t pursue it. If it’s just laziness, I try to convince them by saying it’s healthy or exciting—at least more exciting than sitting in a room. This usually works. From such willful ephemera, we fashion the enduring frequencies in our lives.

Reducing Frequency There are so many things we are not supposed to do. Tacitly or explicitly, we are told to refrain from these activities by representatives of our culture, our organizations, and those with whom we share relationships of one kind or another. In some cases, however, we are permitted a certain number of lapses, depending on the behavior at issue. Only a single instance is required to establish one’s identity as a sexual predator, for example, but one is allowed an unspecified number of traffic citations without the resulting record affecting one’s identity so long as they do not occur with alarming frequency. Moreover, the socially defined point at which there is alarm varies over time with changing circumstances. Formerly, any marijuana use precluded a career in law enforcement, whereas these days, most police departments only reject applicants who admit to using marijuana within the last six months. In short, certain things should not happen very often. If they do, there is prima facie evidence that one is not the person one had hoped to be. The

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Puritan attitude toward sin provides a paradigm. In the older Catholic system, one’s fate is not preordained because there is no precise number of sins for which one cannot be forgiven. A flurry of sinfulness can put one’s soul in jeopardy, but this predicament is not irrevocable; it can arise and be rectified any number of times. With the Puritan doctrine of predestination, however, we have the assumption that each individual is one of the elect or one of the damned.15 Which is it? Only God knows one’s fate, so the individual is reduced to searching his or her own conduct for signs that point toward one destiny or the other. Not surprisingly, Kai Erikson observes among the Puritans an “anxious preoccupation with sin.”16 Presumably, the frequency of sinfulness serves as a clue to one’s fate. The Puritans are instructive because their assessment of frequency as an indicator of identity has widespread application in our own era. People anticipate the potential for unwelcome frequencies and try to minimize them. The frequencies in question are unwelcome because they are not in keeping with the person one is striving to be. Again, the self figures as a source of motivation (for suppression of prospective activity in this case), which corroborates the theory formulated by Viktor Gecas.17 He postulates three ways in which the self serves as a goal that shapes the choices an individual makes during social interaction. The first is self-esteem; one wants to have a positive view of oneself. It follows that one should abstain from activity that is deemed unbecoming of the kind of person one aspires to be. The second is self-efficacy; one wants “to perceive oneself as a causal agent in the environment,” not powerless and merely reactive to environmental stimuli.18 It follows that refraining from certain activities can mark one’s independence from environmental provocations. The third is authenticity; one wants to feel genuine in the claims made to particular identities. It follows that one should abstain from activities that would discredit such claims. Gecas does not examine the implications of his theory for temporal experience, but the overarching logic links identity and frequency: if I am going to be this kind of person, then I should not engage in that kind of behavior— at least not very often. A wealth of data from this study addresses the temporal meanings of self-restraint. We can begin with those who are trying to suppress the frequency of noxious or unwelcome experiences. For two young women, this entails the conscientious cultivation of what Erving Goffman called “avoidance relationships”: I control how often I visit my ex-boyfriend. [I] limit it to maybe talking every other day. I try not to talk to him too much because I don’t want to feel like we are going to get back together. If I see him too much, then I will be really sad that we are not together.

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I call home when I get out of class—just before Dad gets home for lunch—and avoid calling on weekends. I am avoiding contact with my father. This is because the two of us do not get along. We are constantly battling, and no war is ever finished. He is home for lunch weekdays and home on any given day after 5:00 and all day on weekends. These data hint that the avoidance process can be more agentic and less ritualistic than Goffman suggests.19 There are equally deliberate efforts to reduce the frequency of many other experiences. For instance, a fifty-four-year-old comptroller attempts to minimize the amount of time she spends commuting: Since traffic usually is quite bad during rush hour, and gas prices are relatively high in Sweden, I try to limit the number of times I drive the car to work. I usually only drive it when the weather is really bad or when I have to run errands after work. Likewise, a young woman demonstrates that we need not be fatalistic about the frequency of our mundane chores: I choose to wear a certain sweatshirt whenever I feel cold. I wear this sweatshirt until I feel it is dirty. I do this so I won’t have to wash all my sweatshirts all the time. This gives me the satisfaction of not having to do laundry. Yet, just as often, avoidance shields one from seductive forms of behavior, as in the case of another young woman: The television is only turned on when I am planning to watch something, rather than leaving it on all the time. I fi nd that if the television is left on, I may sit down for periods of time and surf through the channels when I should be using my time more constructively. Clearly, avoidance dynamics are multifaceted as well as prevalent. In the interpersonal version, we have one person acting as something of a brake on the rate of another’s behavior or experience: My boyfriend is 27. He enjoys going to bars on weekends with his friends, which is when I go to see him. Because I am underage, he

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cannot just go to any bar all the time. I slow down the frequency of his bar attendance because I can’t get into all the bars. A weary roommate can have the same effect: “If I didn’t influence her decisions to go out, she would do it every night.” Both of these women acknowledge their impact but express no regret. The strategic subtext in the foregoing excerpts anticipates an explicitly manipulative stance in other interviews. Thus, a cunning individual may seek to reduce frequency for self, thereby increasing it for others. A feckless young man offers the following example: We usually take the dog out around 4:30 [p.m.] and that is the time when I usually try to stay away from home so I don’t have to walk the dog. When . . . my mom and dad are not home, I try to come up with a good excuse for leaving the house. If my parents are working and the phone rings, I will try to get my brother to pick up the phone. The reason is not that I don’t like our dog; sometimes I even like walking him. I just don’t like taking him out when it is freezing outside and I  have no one to talk to. Another reason is that I want to have my brother walk him because I know he hates it more than I do. If my parents are home, I try to leave to go to an important meeting or something like that. Mostly, my parents take the dog out, but if one of them is sick, then I really try to stay away. There is one problem and that is that recently my brother has started to develop the same kind of plan. A young woman employs a similar strategy with the telephone: “By not calling them, they’ll call me more often.” In an earlier excerpt, a young woman described her efforts to minimize the unpleasant experience of seeing an ex-boyfriend. There is, too, the more intriguing and uniquely human possibility that we may look upon enjoyable conduct or experience as “bad for us”— at least beyond a par ticular frequency: I specifically will not go places where I know he is at because I don’t want him to think I’m some obsessed crazy girl who can’t get enough of him. So I will usually switch my plans or the order of them so I won’t end up seeing him at certain places when we don’t plan to meet. For example, I knew my boyfriend was going to the weight room at 3:45 and my friends wanted to lift weights at 4:30, so I intentionally

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wasted time getting ready, talked to my friends and told them we had to wait until like 5:00 because my boyfriend had left my room right before he lifted. This person moderates the frequency of a desirable experience, albeit to manage her identity in the eyes of an unwitting boyfriend. Still another young woman provides an intrapersonal variation on this theme of self-restraint: I smoke, and I know that it is bad for me, so I try to smoke only six cigarettes a day. I control this by smoking a cigarette after each meal, which makes three. The rest I sort of decide to smoke during the day. If I am going to go out that night, I’d rather keep them for then. . . . I do not hide my cigarettes; I mentally train myself to only smoke the six cigarettes I had previously planned. Howard Becker observed a related process in his study of marijuana users.20 When their use of marijuana progressed “to the point of becoming regular and systematic,” some of them would begin to fear that they were addicted. These individuals would engage in self-tests (by reducing the frequency of an enjoyable experience) in order to reassure themselves of their capacity for self-determination: In view of his increased and regularized consumption of the drug, the user is not sure that he is really able to control it, that he has not perhaps become the slave of a vicious habit. Tests are made—use is given up and the consequences awaited—and when nothing untoward occurs, the user is able to draw the conclusion that there is nothing to fear. Furthermore, according to Becker, it is possible to use marijuana so frequently that one ceases to perceive the desired effects (principally, contrast with ordinary experience). As a result, one may reduce the rate of consumption with the intention of renewing one’s satisfaction: In those few cases in which an individual uses marihuana in such quantities that he is always high, he is apt to feel the drug has no effect on him, since the essential element of a noticeable difference between feeling high and feeling normal is missing. In such a situation, use is likely to be given up completely, but temporarily, in order that the user may once again be able to perceive the difference.21

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This remarkable dynamic is not unique to drug users, but rather appears to be a general feature of time work. Indeed, it represents a rich and diverse vein of data having to do with the rate and quality of our involvement in multiple endeavors. Instead of overdoing cherished activities to the point of diminishing the satisfaction derived from them, a person will purposefully reduce the frequency of participation with an eye toward improving or refreshing the experience. As this young man admits, even a game can be played too often: If I practice every day and do the same thing over and over again, I am going to get bored and disinterested. The same thing happens to Andrew if he plays too much golf. . . . So, the way we get over this is by limiting the amount of practice and times we play. The hard part about this is to determine the amount of time we should actually play or practice. It is a very thin line, and each individual needs to learn how much they can handle and still stay fresh. . . . The opposite happens if I haven’t played in a while. I can’t wait to get out and play a ton of golf. The comments of a fifty-one-year-old millwright show us that this process is not restricted to youth: “Even though this is a set path that I follow nearly every time I ride, I still look forward to the trip because it’s not an everyday event. . . . I ride every other day so I don’t get bored by just riding my bike, and the experience of riding with my wife is still interesting to do.” Nor is it exclusive to only one gender, as demonstrated by a young woman who restrains the frequency of her horseback riding: “I started getting very cold to the whole sport. The horse became a machine, and my love for the animal became null and void. As I began to realize that it was because of the amount of time I spent with the animal, I decided to spend less time there.” Her words are echoed by a thirty-oneyear-old male who is employed as an assistant manager in a store: “I only go once a week and on Sundays because I don’t want to ever get tired of swing dancing and overdo it by going two or three times a week.” This therapy is selfprescribed for the sake of preserving all manner of entertainments: If I watch Letterman every night, then it gets routine, and I probably won’t watch for a very long time. Then the show becomes interesting again and I’ll look forward to watching it. The same goes for listening to certain songs, reading certain kinds of books, conversations, movies, etcetera. (twenty-two-year-old male) Self-denial loops back on the individual as self-actualization. Doing without is wielded self-consciously as a tool. Exploiting a circular causality, these subjects

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refrain from something temporarily in order to stave off overfamiliarity, thereby renewing their enjoyment of the activity in question. We need not permit natural or social periodicities to dictate our experience of frequency. There is, then, a measure of self-determination in this fundamental dimension of human temporality.

Failure to Manage Frequency Despite the prevalence of time work, there are those who cannot practice temporal agency. They are few in number, but their disability is instructive, as it reminds us that we are dealing with learned capacities for self-efficacy. Moreover, we can reveal a different side of agency by examining some cases where it is frustrated. Some individuals do not know how to manage the frequency of their activities or experiences. Typically, this condition is marked by a kind of fatalism: When I get up in the morning, I feel that I should divide up my time for studying. I usually decide not to do this because I am afraid I will get bored with a set schedule of tasks for the day. Another reason I don’t do this is because I know that, if I have a set time, I will get interrupted during it by friends in the dorm. I just do my work whenever I have free time during the day. (twenty-one-year-old male) I usually select a few chapters to read before I resume studying again. However, I usually get so involved in the book that I go way past what I intended to read. I love reading so much that I consider it to be way more important and educational than a majority of my studies— even cheesy romance novels. (nineteen-year-old female) The first of these two respondents alleges that he cannot avoid boredom with a schedule or having that schedule interrupted by his friends. The second asserts that she cannot resist engrossment with her romance novels. In both of these dubious claims, we see complicity with one’s circumstances—not true determinism. Others are successful, but only under certain conditions, which indicates that time work is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon: I don’t always seem to have that much control over some things involving frequency. I mean sometimes I do, like watching Wings every night with my roommate. But other things have restrictions and limitations out of my control. . . . I don’t have control over such frequent

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things as gross food in the caf’ or the amount of reading for my classes. (twenty-two-year-old female) Just say no! I tell my friends that I have an early class, and I cannot drink tonight. . . . Most of the time they leave me alone when I say this, but sometimes they keep on asking me and eventually I give in. When this happens, I do not make my 8:00 a.m. class. This has happened a few times. (nineteen-year-old male) These excerpts document the fact that social interaction confronts us with a tangled skein of determinism and self-determination. Clearly, we must acknowledge gradations of temporal agency. As we saw in the preceding chapter, some people do not know how to control their experience of duration— especially to slow the perceived passage of time. Here, we see other people who do not know how to modify the frequencies with which they engage in various forms of activity. This will be a recurrent theme, and it raises the question of whether there is something we want to call “temporal intelligence.” In recent years, social scientists have realized that intelligence is multidimensional—that someone who is skilled at taking standardized tests, for example, may not be nearly as skilled at the interpretation of emotional expressions. Similarly, it would appear that some people are more skillful (and others less so) at balancing competing demands on their time. Those who are skilled at this type of time work are able to integrate disparate frequencies into a well-balanced whole, while others do some things far too frequently or infrequently, thereby filling their lives with strife and turmoil. More than their quality of life may be at stake. Angela O’Rand and Robert Ellis have shown that social class is associated with certain temporal perspectives. Their findings suggest that “lower-class youth . . . have a more circumscribed notion of future time than youth from the middle class and their outlook on the future is less systematically ordered.”22 A highly developed orientation toward the future is conducive to the planning and prudence that make for status attainment. As a topic for future research, it is worth asking if temporal intelligence contributes to the reproduction of social inequality.

Frequency and Self-Efficacy It is possible, then, to customize how often things occur. One can modify the rate of one’s own conduct or that of others, and our motives may be noble or base. Either way, these efforts vary across a spectrum of objectives; the individual may want to increase, maintain, or decrease a particular frequency.

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Indeed, each of us resembles the conductor of an orchestra, demanding a bit more from this instrument and a bit less from that one. This dynamic and ongoing agency shapes the tempo of our various experiences. There is some irony in the fact that a number of responses concern how one limits the frequency of desirable, even necessary activities. Typically, however, individuals make efforts at self-control despite sexual attraction, peer pressure, and addiction. Contrary to current stereotypes, most of our younger subjects recognize the need for self-restraint within an interpersonal context where there is almost always someone willing to do almost anything with you. Once again, we see willful resistance to the causal trajectory of immediate circumstances. One might dismiss these responses as familiar forms of determinism: young people, away from home for the first time, resisting the temptations of one social context in the name of values imparted in a previous but equally social context. Yet it is difficult to apply that reasoning to other instances, where one’s modulation of frequency has more to do with self-satisfaction than it does with social responsibility. In his extensive survey of social psychology, Viktor Gecas finds that multiple theorists view self-efficacy as “a fundamental human need and a basic element in one’s sense of self.” 23 The data we have examined in this chapter confirm this perspective. As Gecas would put it, they exhibit “the themes of agency, personal control, and perceived competence.”24 Moreover, the excerpts in this chapter suggest that self-efficacy is the mainspring for those agentic practices that involve mastery and modification of the tempo in one’s activities. With Michael Schwalbe, Gecas asserts that self-determination “can be brought into our empirical studies.”25 The prosaic practices that customize disparate frequencies in our lives open an empirical window on “the experience of self as a causal agent.”26

4 Sequence

ur environment confronts us with natural sequences. The seasons follow one another without regard for our enthusiasm. The phases of the moon are not subject to our desires. The fruit is not ripe; then it is ripe; then it is overripe. To those of nature, society adds organizationally imposed sequences, such as the progression from third grade to fourth grade to fifth grade in elementary school. Stepwise promotions at work provide another example. Not surprisingly, one form of temporal agency involves our efforts to resist or circumvent the apparent inevitability of such sequences. Refrigeration postpones or prolongs the edible stage of fruit, and a tropical vacation in the dead of winter offers at least temporary respite from the season. Similarly, home schooling enables parents to sidestep much of the standard progression in our educational systems, and certain employees have the talent or connections to leap over the usual steps in one’s career. In addition to resistance, time work is directed at the social construction of sequence—the predominant form in our data and the focus of our analysis. Whether you are landing Allied Forces on the beaches of Normandy or just trying to get your own family to the beach, there is an intricate micromanagement of the order in which things are done. You must do this before that (it seems), especially if you wish to be efficient in your use of time. The briefest sequences consist of only two steps, but they can be much more elaborate. Consider a personal example. When making iced tea, the thing that takes the longest time is bringing the water to a boil, so I start by filling the kettle with water, putting it on the stove, and lighting a flame in that burner.

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Usually, I have to adjust the flame, at least slightly. While the water is heating, I get four tea bags, clip them together with a clothes pin (so their paper tags are not dragged into the water), and hang the tea bags in a large measuring bowl. Then I get a small measuring cup and put a tablespoon of sugar in it as well as some water. Of course, I have to find the sugar and tablespoon first. Once the water in the kettle comes to a boil, I pour it over the tea bags in the measuring bowl and set a timer for four minutes. After a minute or so (for the sake of rough simultaneity), I put the small measuring cup into the microwave and bring that water to the boil as a sugar solution. When the timer rings, I remove the tea bags, throw them into the garbage, add the sugar solution, and, using a spoon, give the tea a clockwise stir. Once it has cooled, I pour the tea into a carafe and put it into the refrigerator. Yet the foregoing sequence is incomplete. It is preceded by another succession of thought and behavior intertwined with determinism and selfdetermination. I must have or anticipate the desire to brew tea, shop for and buy tea, bring tea home and store it, and, having run out of tea, I must take the initiative to make more of it. This line of analysis can be extended indefinitely in either direction. There is, for example, some cleaning up to do afterward, and we can ask how I learned to brew tea in the first place. With their concept, “time embeddedness,” J. David Lewis and Andrew Weigert refer to “the fact that all social acts are temporally fitted inside of larger social acts.”1 The moments of human conduct are nested such that there is a “temporal progression of embedded actions.”2 To one extent or another, the resulting concatenation is shaped by natural or social forces, but the sequence of events is rarely left to chance, even in the smallest details of our conduct. On the contrary, it is evident that sequence is another managed and customized dimension of human temporal experience.3 A cross-cultural social psychology is implicated by Erving Goffman’s assertion that, “underneath their differences in culture, people everywhere are the same” because “societies everywhere . . . must mobilize their members as self-regulating participants in social encounters.” 4 An awareness of sequence is intrinsic to human self-consciousness—the looping of consciousness back on one’s own existence and continuity against the backdrop of perceived changes in oneself and one’s environment. Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann appear to be thinking along these lines when they argue that “every individual is conscious of an inner flow of time.”5 Like Goffman, they presume the workings of social psychological principles that transcend cultural boundaries—including those that concern temporal norms and systems of time reckoning. An equally universal theory of temporal agency can be derived from this social psychology, and the formulation of that theory animates this project.

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By virtue of self-consciousness and social recognition, the individual achieves a persistent sense of identity. It is from the standpoint of that identity that one perceives change and sequence in self and setting. I was hungry but now am sated. The leaf was green but now is red. The first (self-consciously perceived) event precedes the second, which precedes the third, and so forth. Vyvyan Evans observes that as events progress in consecutive order (fi rst, second, third, etc.), time is marked as a “subjective aspect of experience.” 6 It follows that all sequences are inherently temporal because they are embedded within our stream of consciousness, and as such, they are perceived in terms of the fundamental tenses of time: past, present, and future. But why leave it at that? Why resign oneself to the mere perception of sequence? Once an individual is self-consciously aware of sequence, it is but a short step to the self-directed modification of sequence for the sake of one’s own temporal desires. An individual who is accustomed to “forging a line of conduct,” as Herbert Blumer puts it, will quickly realize that his or her circumstances can be arranged such that, subsequently, time will be experienced in a certain way.7 The same processes of self-interaction provide the foundation for our efforts to customize sequence as well as other dimensions of temporal experience. Like all forms of agency, time work is derived from our self-consciousness.

A Day in the Life Allen Bluedorn observes that “all strategies for engaging life’s activities fall along a continuum known as polychronicity, a continuum describing the extent to which people engage themselves in two or more activities simultaneously.”8 At one end of this continuum, where we cannot or will not engage in multitasking, individuals must establish the sequence of their ensuing conduct. For our respondents, each day provides multiple opportunities to control or manipulate the progression of events. They awaken to sequences of their own construction, tackle their ensuing responsibilities in idiosyncratic order, and end the day with successive bedtime rituals they have designed themselves. Many of those we interviewed described consecutive habits of personal hygiene and grooming in the morning, making it one of the largest categories in our data. Typically, as with the nineteen-year-old author of the following excerpt, they not only endorse a par ticular sequence but swear allegiance to it: When I get up, I start by taking a shower. In the shower, I brush my teeth, wash my face, shampoo my hair, then shave. . . . When I get

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out of the shower, I pick out what I’m wearing for the day and get dressed. I then blow-dry my hair and put on my makeup. I always get ready in this exact order. If I skip something like blow-drying my hair, I don’t feel complete. This person takes a willful stand in the face of a potentially bewildering array of behavioral options. Here, we have a microscopic version of what Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger refer to, with apt irony, as “the invention of tradition.” 9 She may not “feel complete” if she skips a step, but other interviews reveal the arbitrariness of her commitment. In these interviews, subjects either express allegiance to a different (though no less effective) sequence or admit to greater flexibility than she does. In the statement below, for example, another young woman acknowledges the discretionary order of the same activities: If I wake up at 9:00 a.m., I can shower, go to breakfast, and then come back and brush my teeth with enough time to make it to class. But if I get up at 9:30 a.m., then there is another girl in the shower, and I have to go to breakfast first, come back and brush my teeth, and then take a shower. An individual may declare the need for a “specific order,” but the evidence suggests that the sequence is more elective than she realizes. Temporal agency is often unrecognized, even by its practitioners. This young woman’s statement shows us that we must always agentically allow for the contingencies of interpersonal relations— contingencies brought about by the agentic desires of others with whom we interact. Concretely, this may mean that one’s intended sequence (take a shower, eat breakfast, brush teeth, go to class) is altered by the presence of someone else in the shower. If she awakens later than usual, then she must, in effect, queue up behind a segment of someone else’s sequence, and this may require a modification of her own preferred sequence (eat breakfast, brush teeth, and take a shower only if there is still enough time before class). In short, our time work is ordinarily bracketed by “temporal tolerances.” There is the intended path, but we are prepared to take a detour when need be. The critics of agency misrepresent it as an assertion that the individual is free to do whatever he or she wants. This is a straw man with no basis in the actualities of human conduct. Herbert Blumer observes that “as participants take account of each other’s ongoing acts, they have to arrest, reorganize, or adjust their own intentions, wishes, feelings, and attitudes . . . for the situation being formed by the acts of others.”10 Unlike the critics of agency, his

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conception of social interaction assumes provisional decisions that, in succession, govern the immediate properties of the encounter and render its outcome uncertain. The individual’s temporal agency is never exercised in a vacuum. Social interaction can make for the collision of contrary agendas, and various aspects of the physical setting may blunt or deflect one’s temporal desires. Consequently, there is no guarantee that, having elected to pursue a particular form of time work, one will succeed, nor is it strictly a dichotomous matter of success or failure. Typically, there is more than one option for realizing roughly the same temporal experience, with these options arrayed along a continuum of agentic desirability. Having engaged in personal hygiene and grooming, our subjects are ready to dress themselves—a sequence that is no less agentic. In this quotation, a young man shares some of the elaborate reasoning behind his own progression: I pick out shorts or pants first because I have less selection and can then find a shirt easier that matches. Then I have even less of a selection of shoes, so I pick those out after that. And I only have three necklaces I ever wear, so that’s what I pick out last. This sequence makes it easier for me to get dressed in the morning because I don’t end up having to change my shirt to match the pants or change the necklace or anything. Our efforts to customize consecutive experience can become quite ornate. Indeed, for the young woman who has devised the following system, it would seem that something more than mere efficiency is at issue: I wear the first shirt in the closet and then move it to the back. This way, there will be variety instead of repeating the shirt in two days. This also allows for repeating the shirt every fourteen to seventeen days. If a certain shirt is first, and I really don’t want to wear it, I’ll wear it anyway because it’s in order. Shirts are ordered in a particular way: T-shirts, shirts with buttons and no collar, polo shirts. I alternate daily from which type of shirt, beginning with the T-shirts. If a T-shirt is worn, it will be put at the back of the T-shirt section, and the next day, a shirt with no collar will be worn. Why direct such elaborate attention to temporal aspects of one’s gendered appearance? The complex systems described in the preceding excerpts display the exquisite sensitivity evinced by Garfinkel’s intersexed subject, Agnes, and his analysis of her predicament sheds some light on the managed relationship between time and gender.

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More than anything else, Agnes wanted to be accepted as a “normal female,” and Garfinkel asserts that the careful manipulation of time was intrinsic to her efforts: It is not sufficient to say that Agnes’ situations are played out over time, nor is it at all sufficient to regard this time as clock time. There is as well the “inner time” of recollection, remembrance, anticipation, expectancy.11 Agnes was quite sensitive to the fact that she needed a particular past in order to realize a particular future. Consequently, Garfinkel gives extensive consideration to the ways that passing as female involves temporal awareness and the manipulation of time. Agnes did not passively accept what the social environment offered as responses to her physical condition. On the contrary, Garfinkel observes that “her sex was for her a matter of willful election between available alternatives.”12 This endeavor was fraught with complications, however, not the least of which were the tenses of time. Thus, Garfinkel makes it clear that Agnes was no less willful concerning her temporality: Time played a peculiar role in constituting for Agnes the significance of her present situation. With regard to the past, we have seen the prominence with which she historicised, making for herself and presenting us with a socially acceptable biography [i.e., one that ignored the inconvenient fact that she was raised as a boy until puberty]. . . . On the side of future events, one is struck by the prevalence with which her expectations were expectations of the timing in the fall of events.13 Garfinkel demonstrates that “work had to be done”—work consisting of the “active and deliberate management of her appearances before others.”14 He concludes that “normal sexuality is accomplished through witnessable displays of talk and conduct.”15 His findings suggest that normal temporality is no less accomplished through deliberate efforts to control or manage various dimensions of time. But before we proceed to further theoretical development, let us return to the subjects of this study and their manipulation of sequence. Having dressed themselves, one way or another, they must commute to their places of employment. This mundane task presents another fleeting opportunity for temporal agency because more than geometry figures in the selection of one’s route. “I have to be at work by 5:00 a.m.,” says the twenty-one-year-old em-

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ployee of a car rental agency, “so I leave at 4:45. I then decide which way to go. I usually go I-275, but sometimes I get tired of going that way, so I go by 34th Street.” When he “decide[s] which way to go,” sequence is altered for the sake of novelty rather than efficiency. As another young man puts it, “planning is a way of manipulating time.” More choices confront the individual once he or she arrives at work. What should be done fi rst? Second? Third? A twenty-two-year-old employee at a plastics testing laboratory begins by making “a things-to-do list” for herself. “Prioritizing” is the essence of this enterprise, but it is apparent that priorities can be just as improvisational as other aspects of social interaction. A twenty-four-year-old man who makes his living from refurbishing boats admits to some discretion concerning sequence: “I or ganize my day depending on where the jobs are at and the weather.” Likewise, the twentyyear-old salesclerk in a small shop embodies indeterminism by accepting the unpredictable proximity of her chores: “I go into the store and do whatever is closest to me first and then, when I think of what else needs to be done, I go on to that, and if there’s something near that that needs to be done, I do that.” Certain workers acknowledge and take pride in their ability to display self-determination even while operating within a microstructure of restrictive attention and expectations. Their confident attitude is epitomized by this twenty-six-year-old woman: When I am waitressing, I have to make sure everyone gets what they want in a reasonable amount of time. The sequencing of my actions is very important. For example, if I have four tables to wait on and they all sat down at different times, I must decide if I should put in the food order for table 37 before I get the drinks for table 38. I might also have to decide if I should print out the check for table 40 or get menus for table 39. The order in which I do these things can make a happy customer or an unhappy customer. Repeatedly, she “must decide” what to do next against the backdrop of customer sensitivity to an uncertain queue. The resulting conduct is something akin to doing an improvisational dance through the teeth of meshing gears. These are the enduring polarities of social psychology: an individual striving to uphold social norms while preserving a sense of self-determination and dignity, and doing so by means of a performance that is at once extemporaneous and self-serving but clever and even delightful to witness. Is it any wonder, then, that so many of our subjects relate their tales of temporal agency with the pardonable conceit of those who dance for a living?

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In contrast, other employees abstain from choice at work, choosing instead to embrace habituation. The irony is intriguing. Presumably, their consecutive conduct had agentic origins, but now they elect to position their successive activity along a continuum between rationalized and ritualistic behavior. We have the following instance from a forty-two-year-old man who is the head of a security office: When I get to work I always do the same things in a specific order. I put my lunch away, tidy up my area, look over the night crew’s reports, and then begin to start my own paperwork for the day. Lastly, I call all the offices and ask if they need me for anything and if everything was done properly from the night before. No one really has to do this, but . . . it makes sense to me. I clean up before I sit down to do my work because I can’t work in a dirty area. I check the night crew’s work before I begin my own in case of mistakes—although most of the other guys either don’t check their work or do it later in the day. I do it first so I can begin my day with a fresh start. Clearly, he recognizes arbitrary qualities in this sequence, but that does not undermine his commitment. Not all of our subjects were quite so forthright. In the excerpt below, from an interview with a fifty-four-year-old television producer, there is no hint of temporal agency despite the fact that she offered it to us as a variation on the theme of personal control over the progression of events: Each week, I prepare five community-calendar spots. I write these spots on Wednesdays to allow time for the production process that follows. Once my scripts and graphic requests are distributed, the following things occur: audiotracks are cut and mixed with music; graphics are added and combined with the music/voice bed; master control then dumps them into the server on pre-assigned numbers. Those numbers are logged so that the spots run where they are supposed to, rotating so that all spots run in all newscasts during the week. Initially depicted as the sequence, this litany was revealed to be a sequence upon further questioning. With her use of passive voice, however, willfulness masquerades as necessity, and we have a variant of reification in a minor key.16 According to Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, “habitualization carries with it the important psychological gain that choices are narrowed.”17

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The management of sequence reduces anxiety about what to do next. It makes for a cognitive economy. Still, they add that successive arrangements of this sort remain vulnerable to “deliberate intervention” by the individual in question because “the possibility of changing them or even abolishing them remains at hand in consciousness.”18 Yet a person may “know” that a par ticular order is discretionary, even capricious, but be adept at evoking dedication to it, as exemplified by this sixty-three-year-old hospice nurse: To have a social life and prevent work burn-out, I must discipline myself each day of the weekend in particular. . . . By alternating between paperwork and cleaning, I can be certain that everything will get done so that I can enjoy my night out. The fi rst thing I do after I wake up and shower is to organize all of my paperwork into separate piles. Once that is done, then I . . . get all of the cleaning supplies I will need for that day’s work. I then sit down and fill out paperwork for one patient; this usually takes approximately thirty minutes. To relax my hand and eyes, I then pick a room in my condo and only clean one part of it (i.e., only dust it, or sweep it, or scrub it). I only do one of these so that I don’t feel bogged down by it. I go back and do another set of paperwork followed by another bout of cleaning. I do this until either all of my work is done for that day or it is 5:00 p.m. After that, I feel free to relax or do whatever I want to do before I go out that night. Alternation is a sequence she has fashioned from competing demands on her time. There is nothing inevitable about it. She has her reasons, of course, but if reasons were enough, she would not have to “discipline” herself, she would not have to use “must” in her opening statement. These invented traditions help us see the circularity of causal processes in our experience of time. What we repeatedly observe is temporal agency creating its own (always provisional) structure that, in turn, loops back to constrain the same agentic self from which it originates but with some compensatory benefit. Empirically, this dynamic is manifest in the frequency with which our subjects claim that they “must” do things in a particular order. The need for self-discipline is, indeed, the shadow of temporal agency. Further evidence for temporal agency can be found in widespread efforts to control or at least influence the sequences of others— especially our employees, students, and children. Typically, the parameters of these efforts are duties associated with one’s role, whereas the precise method and order are left to one’s own discretion. In any event, it is noteworthy that so many of us celebrate self-determination in our own lives but attempt to manage sequence

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in the lives of others. This represents one of the fundamental faultlines in interpersonal relations, as those on the receiving end of such time work are apt to resist it.19 Instruction concerning the proper order of one’s activities is a universal component of temporal socialization. Sequence is no less imposed on the (otherwise incoherent) experience of a child than is language and a schedule for eating and sleeping.20 Hence, once they get home, the children of a thirtyfive-year-old paralegal continue to learn about the priorities in their family: “I make sure they eat a snack and do their homework. Then we eat dinner and they have to clean their rooms. Then, only when everything is done, can they watch TV.” Schools reinforce the value in appropriate progression. For young children, this is typically a tacit dimension of an opaque program. Note, for instance, the repeated use of “next” in the following excerpt from our interview with a twenty-one-year-old preschool teacher: “I assist the children in reading or playing games. If the kids look lost or unmotivated, I ask what is next in their plan or try to help motivate them for their next activity.” As they grow older, however, children frequently find that sequence is regimented in more explicit fashion. “I insist the students do their work in this order,” asserts a fifty-year-old high school teacher. The graduates of our educational system are, then, superbly prepared for employers who strive to dictate the sequence of their work.21 Given layers of bureaucratic organization, this form of temporal agency is often exercised through intermediaries. In the words of a forty-six-year-old factory executive: “I make up a schedule the day before and give it to the foreman, who sees that the work is completed.” Similar, albeit less precise, impact is apparent in this response from a fifty-five-year-old college administrator: On particular projects, I usually leave the sequence to the individual. I tend to influence more the priority of staff’s work rather than the sequence in getting work done. By influencing priority, however, one does influence the order of another’s workday. Duties are implicated, but the actual sequence of work may not be appreciably less elective than the decisions that initiate and circumscribe it.22 Moreover, as a twenty-six-year-old customer ser vice representative points out, “A phone call from my boss can change my schedule [but] my sequence influences other people, too.” Through his equivocal statement, we can glimpse an elaborate daisy chain of opposing social forces. It is worth noting that some of our subjects use the words “sequence” and “schedule” synonymously— especially in narratives that concern paid employment, where one’s schedule is often a formal, bureaucratically ar-

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ranged sequence. Both inside and outside of that context, however, time work is much more likely to be directed at the assembly of sequences that have little or nothing to do with clocks or calendars. Schedules, then, are a subset of sequences. After finishing work for the day, our subjects are at liberty to devise sequences that involve exercise or leisure pursuits of one kind or another. A twenty-four-year-old software engineer is characteristically terse: “Get up in the morning at 8:00; eat breakfast; go to work at 9:00; work out at 6:30.” In contrast, a younger man is garrulous when describing his favored pastime: From the very beginning, I manipulate the order of events. Initially, clay is cut to size and “wedged” to evaluate any disconformities that may reside in this part of mother earth. The clay which I use is actually mixed by my very own hands. The consistency of my concoction plays an active role in the per formance of my materials. . . . I prepare my work area—bucket of water, tools, clay, etcetera—turn on a relaxing radio station, and I am ready to go. My hands wrap around the clay and it has begun. The spinning of the wheel sends my mind into an immediate state of trance. Once the clay is centered, I am ready to open up the ball and begin to shape. . . . My friend the sponge helps my calloused fingers smooth the clay to perfection. The clay is happy and rubs against my tools, which massage its sandy body. I am lost in creation. The cylinder which I have created now begins to take shape, first slightly fatter around the middle as my fingers stroke the inner sanctum of my piece. The more pressure I put, the rounder the belly becomes. Soon entering its third trimester; it’s almost due. Finishing touches are made, actions which end up as distinctions and define this creation as my own. From mixing the clay to “wedging” it, from assembling the mise-en-place to shaping an inchoate vessel, the consecutive order of this whole world is in his hands. It is a recreational (and, not coincidentally, enjoyable) undertaking that embodies temporal agency. Finally, our subjects are tired and ready for bed, but their efforts to control or customize the order of events are undiminished. In many cases, they have formulated sequential bedtime rituals to which they display great dedication. The following example is from an interview with a twenty-four-yearold student: If the bed is not made before I go to bed or the room is not cleaned, I’m not able to get a good night’s sleep. If my desk is messy, I need to

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clean books, if there are any, and stack them neatly. If there are things lying around on the floor—books, clothes—they have to go on the shelves and in the closet. If the room is dusty, I dust it every time before I go to bed. On [some] days, I’m in a rush until late at night, and I’m not able to do my bed at any time. So I make my bed actually before I go into it on those busy days, which can be one minute before I go to sleep. We could ask why she bothers to make her bed just before getting into it, but that would be missing the point. And, of course, this sequence is not as unavoidable as she makes it seem. Consider, for instance, the similarities and crucial difference between the preceding excerpt and one taken from an interview with a twenty-year-old male: “I usually start cleaning my room with my bed first, then couch, chair, and then vacuum. If it is later in the evening when I decide to clean my room, I will not do my bed because I will sleep in it soon, but I will continue to do everything else.” Instead of a ritualistic sequence, we have an inclination toward a particular succession with a fallback routine.

Interaction One can work on sequence alone, as we witnessed in the preceding section, but our efforts to modify the order of events are frequently interactive. These efforts take the form of advice, persuasion, negotiation, and strategy. Not uncommonly, we believe that learning the “correct” sequence is crucial for knowing how to do something, even when the recommended succession is only one of several options. As a nineteen-year-old tutor puts it, “Because many mathematics or chemistry problems can be solved independent of the order of operations, the person who learns from me will usually repeat the sequence that I taught, rather than change the order.” In other instances, however, we realize that multiple sequences are possible, so we solicit advice from each other concerning the ideal path. A twenty-one-year-old student offers the following example: Underclassmen approach me about class selection within my major. They ask me in which order I took my classes and if I had any regrets about the order in which I took my classes. They ask me to suggest an order in which they should take their classes. Mainly, I make some general suggestions, like take all general courses first and the more major-specific courses later. His advice modifies the temporal sequence of their educational experience.

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While it is analytically possible to separate various dimensions of intervention, concrete instances often present a mélange of agentic practices. Thus, one’s efforts to prevent a twenty-two-year-old brother from drinking and driving begin with assessment and then progress to persuasion, negotiation, and strategy—all within the span of a single encounter: The way I influence the sequence of my brother’s activities is by first evaluating just how intoxicated he really is. Then I reason with him, when possible, about the right thing to do, and then give him his options of what he can do for the night, none of which involve him driving home. Then, finally, the line is drawn and the keys are taken. Other occasions put persuasion in the spotlight, as when a forty-seven-yearold factory foreman must assure his workers that a particular sequence of activity is necessary: As leader of a team, I set the order in which they do the tasks. I talk to them and convince them to see the logic—a coaching opportunity— mentoring, arguing, or talking. I try to show them that for these practices to be effective, they must follow an order. You can’t be a good teacher if you don’t have control over your own emotional management. Whether at drunken parties or sober meetings, it is easy to find parallel examples of persuasion. When, therefore, we negotiate with others concerning the ensuing sequence of events, we bring a deliberate and agentic attention to bear on this facet of temporal experience. The negotiation of sequence is quite varied but typically embedded within mundane interpersonal decisions. What will we do first? A young man acknowledges willfulness and self-interest: “We were going to the mall to go shopping for Christmas, and I changed the order of stores to the ones that I wanted to go to for myself first.” In contrast, two other young men discuss their mutual interests and arrive at a consensual plan: A friend of mine wanted to watch an important game on TV. He suggested that we study before the game. I said I was unable to do this. He also proposed we get something to eat after we were finished studying. I told him that it was fine for him to watch the game as long as we could pick up something to eat after the game. After that, we would study for our midterm. This way, when the game ended around

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10:00 p.m., there would still be many places open where we could get food. Another variation involves the avoidance of potential conflict by randomizing the sequence. A young man provides this example: Usually, when I go out with my wife and friends, we always end up disagreeing whether to eat first or go do whatever it is we want to first. So we decided to flip a coin every time we venture out; heads is always dinner first, and tails is always the event first. This prevents us from wasting time arguing or deciding where to go. Everything is left to the flip of a coin. All time reckoning was localized in each community until the nineteenth century. This was not problematic due to limitations on travel and communication. With the development of railroads and the telegraph, however, it became necessary to standardize time reckoning. Thus, in 1884, twenty-five nations sent representatives to the International Meridian Conference, where they adopted twenty-four time zones with the prime meridian at Greenwich, England. These historical events, masterfully examined by Eviatar Zerubavel, provide a classic example of the social construction of a temporal system.23 Nothing so grand as the standardization of time zones or selection of a prime meridian is at stake in the humble excerpts that serve as my data. The reach of their implications is merely local and ephemeral. Just the same, they demonstrate that the negotiation of temporal matters is not the exclusive province of international conferences. With the negotiation of sequence, we have the potential for an “open awareness context” in which each participant “is aware of the other’s true identity and his own identity in the eyes of the other.”24 Instead of negotiating in an aboveboard manner, however, we can work surreptitiously toward our own temporal ends. With narrowly selfish goals, we deploy interpersonal strategies in our efforts to customize the subsequent order of events. Such deviousness makes for a “closed awareness context” where one person “does not know either the other’s identity or the other’s view of his identity.”25 Perhaps the simplest of these strategies ensure that one will be first to use certain facilities. Hence, with an unintended pun, a twenty-one-year-old female admits, “I used the weight machine, making my friend wait.” Similarly, a twenty-year-old male assumes a deterministic stance: “When I use the bathroom or shower, I cause others to do other things while they wait, or use the other [less convenient] bathroom.” Yet there are also instances where the goal is not to be first but to avoid being last.

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In the following example, a twenty-year-old woman who is chronically slow in preparing to go out ransoms her friend’s property for more time: “We’re getting ready to party, and I don’t want to leave by myself or make an entrance by myself, so I steal [and hide] my roommate’s cigarettes as a measure to ensure that she won’t leave without me.” By devising and deploying a stratagem of this sort, the individual not only achieves practical interests concerning the sequence of events, but also arrives at an integrated sense of both self-determination and determinism.

Principles The contrived qualities of sequence are most evident in clearly idiosyncratic habits that, despite their discretionary and constructed origins, have hardened into unquestioned principles. There is, for instance, this excerpt from our interview with a nineteen-year-old woman: I will normally eat any extras first, such as fruits or vegetables. Then I will eat the main food, like the meat or whatever. After that, I will eat the bread and then I finish my drink. And when I am eating, I eat all of something before starting to eat something else. As you might imagine, she finds salads especially vexing. Moreover, it is noteworthy that she admits to this habit unapologetically. A kindred attitude is apparent in the response from a twenty-five-year-old teacher, for whom temporal succession has erotic implications: It’s kind of funny, but I make my boyfriend undress in a certain way. He always has to take off his tie first. Then his shirt, then his shoes and socks and pants. I like for him to do it this way because I like to see his chest. And I like to watch him take off his pants last because it’s a good view for me. He almost always undresses like this for me; otherwise I get kind of mad. He likes to take off his shoes and socks first, but I like those to be third. He does this to keep me happy.26 In both cases, we are presented with bald-faced and willful assertions. Tacitly, at least, these women declare, “This is the order in which I want things done.” Their candid statements express unabashedly agentic desires, but we must acknowledge that their desires have antecedents. Some of these antecedents involve private trial and error, while others are primarily social in origin. The individuals in question were born into ongoing cultural systems that favor

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certain types of temporal experience over others. Even these cultural preferences, however, can only be actualized through the individual’s temporal desires and time work. So, the individual can demand a particular sequence with little or no explanation, but that is the exception and not the rule. Typically, one is ready to offer an “account” for the preferred order of events by invoking principles that govern one’s behavior.27 We can begin with the presumed privileges of taking the initiative in courtship. As a twenty-three-year-old man puts it, “When you take someone out on a date, you get to decide what happens fi rst, second, third, etcetera.” Given cultural tendencies, however, most of these principles are based upon logic and efficiency. What is more, socialization brings about intergenerational adherence to such principles, as we can see in this excerpt from a twenty-one-year-old male: From the experiences that I had on going on vacations with my dad, I like to make a list of all the things I want to do in order. I put at the top of the list the less likely places [at Universal Studios] where people would go, so at almost the end of the day, I can ride on attractions that are more likely to be full at the beginning of the day. In other words, starting from the end. He will tell you that this principle is tried and true. Other subjects simply assume that the validity of their sequential practices is obvious on the face of it. Their offhand descriptions refer to principles that, as far as they are concerned, require little or no explanation. When pressed, however, their responses suggest that their ordering of events is the only sensible way to do the activity in question. For example, a twenty-oneyear-old female makes a nominal appeal to common sense: “Just seems the most logical way to get ready in the morning.” The same principle is implicit in this statement from another young woman: “I eat what is hot or warm and can get cold first and the rest second, third, etcetera. Like a toasted bagel with melted butter, then cereal with milk, then fruit.” A third young woman tacks toward practicality in her justification: I have the same routine every time I take a shower, because I feel it is more effective. First, I wash myself with soap. Then I shave—my underarms first and then my legs. Then I wash my hair. Then I wash my body with body wash, and then I wash my face. I wash my face last because my skin dries out, and I want to be able to put lotion on. I wash my hair near the end so it is ready for me to do when I get out of the shower, and [I use] the body wash after I shave so that my skin

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is soft. Everything has an order because I feel there is a reasoning for the order I do it in. A kindred concern for efficiency is evident in the following excerpt from our interview with a twenty-year-old male: Sometimes I have a few things to do while I’m out of the house, such as mailing a letter, getting a book from the Library, going to class, and then going to lunch. I try to mail my letter on the way to my class. Then, after class, I will stop by the Library, which is on the way to the cafeteria, and pick up my book. I will then proceed to lunch and go home. I’ve made one trip to class and back, but in between I’ve accomplished three errands. . . . This has saved me time by not having to come home in between each task. These detailed narratives suggest that considerable foresight is brought to bear upon our agentic design of temporal sequences. However, since we were not present when these “traditions” were initiated, we cannot dismiss the possibility that these statements offer only post hoc rationalizations. The data concerning sequence frequently display ritualistic qualities— indeed, more so than other forms of time work. As with a magical incantation, proper temporal order is often considered essential for the desired outcome. In the case of a thirty-six-year-old dental assistant, the payoff for his methodical attention to sequence is success at staging a particular occasion: I play poker with my buddies every Friday night. Around 9:00 p.m., I head downstairs and flip the cover of the table over so the felt side faces upward. Then I get out the poker chips and divide them up according to who will be coming to play. I grab the cards from the shelf beside the table and lay them in the center underneath the poker light that hangs down. Once everyone has arrived, I collect the $20 from each person and put it in the money pot. Drinks are passed around, the chips are handed to the players, and I grab the cards, shuffle them, and deal. After the game is over and a winner is determined, I hand over the money to the winner. Then the chips get put away according to their respective values and the cards get put back on the shelf. Or the reward for routinizing the sequence of one’s behavior may be a prudent degree of experience that enables one to anticipate and evade potential problems. As a young runner puts it, “By doing the same route every night, I

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know how to pace myself. This way, I know how hard to run without hurting myself.” Knowledge is one thing; memory another. Thus, an important variation on the same theme involves the routinization of sequence to avoid forgetting any steps in one’s successive conduct. That goal is clearly expressed when a forty-one-year-old construction foreman recounts careful attention to his progressive preparation for running: The sequence is when I stretch. I always stretch my arms first, starting with my shoulders and working down to my wrists. Then I move onto my legs beginning with my hips and going to my ankles. Then I stretch my back and abs. I could go in any order, but since this is routine, if I deviate from it, I could forget a muscle and injure myself. He “could go in any order,” but from myriad possibilities, he has selected one, thereby producing a unique sequence in his temporal experience. His selfconscious commitment to repetition affirms the theoretically crucial observation that agency often aims to preserve, not alter, the status quo.28 Likewise, for a seventy-three-year-old retired photographer, the mnemonic function of agentically sticking to a routine sequence represents a strategy for resisting the ravages of time: Fifteen years ago I bought a sailboat. From the beginning, I developed a regular routine for getting the boat ready to sail and for putting the boat up. These habits have helped me as I have gotten older. I now find it can be quite confusing to have guests, particularly those that insist on helping when they do not know what to do. So that after everyone is off the boat, I have to take time to go through the routine to make sure I have done all that I should. For example, when we dock, I tie the boat up tight to the pier so the passengers can get off safely. It is very important that I re-adjust the lines before leaving the boat so it will ride up and down with the changing tide. Forgetting this can be disastrous. Yet the mnemonic function of agentic sequences is not the exclusive concern of the middle-aged and elderly, as is evident in the following excerpt from our interview with a twenty-one-year-old female: I will do things in a specific order: get up, go to the bathroom, take a shower—wash hair, wash body, shave, wash face— dry off, put hair up in turban (to dry it), get dressed, put contacts in, brush hair, brush

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teeth, deodorant, makeup, and then off to breakfast. I do this so I don’t forget to do something. With the agentic routinization of sequence, we see the maintenance of memory. Perhaps the most fundamental principles represent divergent modes of prioritizing. When agency is brought to bear on sequence, one must decide what to do first. Should I begin with the difficult and more important things, or the easy and less important things? This is a telling question. For each individual, the choice may seem obvious, but one’s decision is, in fact, purely subjective and stylistic—thereby giving us a glimpse of self-determination in the temporal ordering of events. A twenty-year-old woman articulates the predominant style: I study subjects in order of importance. Chemistry is the most important to me, so it always comes first. Also, it is the hardest class, so I have to study more. Then comes microbiology because it is the next [most] difficult. A nineteen-year-old male echoes her perspective and adds the underlying logic: “I always start with the hardest assignment and finish with the easiest because, I say, after this I won’t have very much to do.” This logic is applicable to any number of tasks, from Christmas shopping to exercise: I always go into the mall with a game plan of first mom and family gifts. They are the most expensive, so I should get them out of the way early. Then friends, and then acquaintances. (twenty-two-yearold male) I do the exercises I like the least first, then save the easier exercises for the end of the workout. The exercises I do first usually require more strength and endurance, which I have at the beginning of the routine. (twenty-two-year-old male) Moreover, in their study of the management of time among medical residents, William Yoels and Jeffrey Clair find the same principle espoused by one of their harried subjects: I guess my technique is to try to just remember to deal with only one thing at a time. To try to maybe make a list mentally or even on paper

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of what things I have to do. And then just write them in the order that they need to be done, with the most pressing things first.29 Arguably, nothing illuminates willfulness with greater clarity than a selfdetermined preference for starting with one’s least pleasurable chores: I always do the thing I don’t want to do first. (nineteen-year-old male) I always do things I don’t like first. (twenty-year-old female) In these laconic but striking declarations, agency is evident as self-directed negativity. But it is a restricted agency— an agency exercised within the classic sociological confines of constrained choices. Inside the statement, “I always do the thing I don’t want to do first,” is unspoken acknowledgment that it is selected from a set of things “I have to do.” The agentic feature of doing the difficult and more important things first is brought into sharp relief by persons who advocate an equally reasonable but contradictory perspective. They elect to do the easy and less important things first. With equivalent satisfaction and success, they arrange the sequence of their activities in reverse order. There seems to be fewer of them, but they are no less articulate when offering a rationale for their choice. This sequence can be justified on the basis of nothing more than personal preference, as when a fifty-two-year-old clinical research supervisor describes her Saturdays: “Usually Charles [her boyfriend] wants to get errands done first, but I like to do some fun stuff, like go to the flea market first, so sometimes he just has to wait.” Likewise, a twenty-two-year-old male asserts, “I prefer to do small, simple tasks first.” Other respondents, in contrast, are at pains to identify the advantages that accrue from this preference: When doing my homework assignments, I try to complete my easiest assignments first in the effort to have more time for complicated assignments. I have a set period of time to complete my homework, and I use this tactic to have enough time to finish everything. My easier assignments take less time and, with this in mind, I usually complete them faster than normal. This gives me more time to spend on harder assignments. (twenty-year-old female) When I’m at work, my boss leaves me a list of things that must get done before closing if she will not be there. I read over the list, and I tend to do the simplest tasks first, mostly because it makes me feel like I got more accomplished. The more tasks crossed out on the

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list . . . the more refreshed I feel when I dive into the larger tasks. When doing larger tasks, I don’t have to worry that there is something left undone. (eighteen-year-old female) The way that I influence the sequence of time is by setting up my practice routine in a way that lets me do the fun stuff first so I am in a positive state of mind when I work on harder things, like putting. (twenty-two-year-old male) Generally speaking, the advantages of this style flow from the self’s manipulation of self by assuming the dual role of performer and audience.30 Yet this was also true for those who profess to do the harder and more important things first. Clearly, neither style of prioritizing is intrinsically better than the other. In either case, we witness a causal loop of self-determination as one exercises preferences in the shaping of one’s own temporal experience. There is, finally, a to-the-self relevance in the principles that guide our management of sequence. Subjectively, our commitment to these principles transcends the seemingly utilitarian calculus of efficiency, which is rarely more than a cover story for temporal agency.

Randomization and Novelty Most of the data we have examined in the preceding sections concerns the establishment and maintenance of routine sequences— albeit of idiosyncratic and intentional design. Still, we must bear in mind that self-determination can run in the opposite direction, too, toward the randomization of one’s successive experiences. A young man offers helpful contrast with the previous emphasis, therefore, when he describes his approach to dressing in the morning: “My clothes are not already chosen; I just close my eyes and pick something at no particular time.” Likewise, another young man randomizes sequence for the express purpose of cultivating uncertainty in his life: I don’t do the same things each morning. For instance, I don’t take a shower each morning as soon as I wake up. Some days, I don’t wear my contacts. I don’t always go to my mailbox. Doing this allows these activities to gain a certain novelty, because I try to be spontaneous when I do them. I may take a shower at noon, after dinner, or right before bed. Or I might not take a shower that day. Visiting my mailbox is more fun (and dangerous) if I haven’t been there for a while. I  also do this with phone calls to my parents—try to make them unexpected.

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As with frequency, then, it is clear that some people manipulate sequence in a deliberate effort to introduce temporal variety in their lives. Sequence can be imposed on us by others or by the very nature of our activities. Nonetheless, there is ample evidence to support the assertion that sequence is often another constructed aspect of temporal experience.

5 Timing

ultiple sources of ancient wisdom extol the virtues associated with appropriate timing. The most famous, of course, is Ecclesiastes 3:1: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” The Chinese sage, Lao-Tzu, offers narrow but related advice: “Work when it’s time.”1 Astrology is well known for putting great store on the timing of one’s birth. In addition, Ben Franklin provides familiar instruction concerning the ascetic timing that makes for worldly success: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”2 With all these venerable aphorisms, it is not surprising that so much of our behavior arises from careful consideration of its timing. Jennifer Saranow observes that there is an engagement season: “About 40 percent of the weddings taking place next year will follow engagements that began between the . . . Thanksgiving holiday and Valentine’s Day.”3 These newly engaged couples must decide on “the desired time of year” for their weddings, and despite having twelve months from which to choose, their choices cluster disproportionately during the summer.4 In short, timing is typically a crucial issue for those who are planning a celebration. Yet we find equivalent attention to timing in a host of less savory circumstances. In his groundbreaking study of suicide, Emile Durkheim discovers seasonal, monthly, daily, and hourly variations.5 The Federal Bureau of Investigation reports that violent crime peaks consistently during July.6 Likewise, Elijah Anderson notes that there is rhythmic timing to inner-city violence: “In the morning and early afternoon, the surrounding neighborhood is peaceful

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enough, but in the evening the danger level rises. Especially on weekends, tensions spill over, drug deals go bad, fights materialize seemingly out of nowhere, and the emergency room becomes a hub of activity.” 7 In a very different setting, Murray Melbin has shown that sociotemporal rhythms can be found where one least expects them: “Patients in a small private mental hospital behave crazily far more often on weekdays than they do on evenings and weekends.”8 His research revealed that the timing of their misbehavior coincided with the presence during weekdays of clinicians who are interested in, and tolerant of, symptoms they view as clues to proper therapy. The significance of timing is ubiquitous in social interaction. William Reese and Michael Katovich point out that we assess timing when distinguishing normal behavior from its deviant forms, as indicated by the wry slogan, “beer, the breakfast of champions.”9 Timing also is crucial in comedy, especially with the telling of a joke.10 Indeed, Johnny Carson had a pillow in his living room that was inscribed with what he viewed as the most basic principle of humor: “It’s all in the timing.” However, variation in timing can be a matter of life or death, too. Research by David Magid and his colleagues demonstrates that there are right and wrong times for a heart attack: “Patients presenting during off-hours had significantly higher in-hospital mortality than patients presenting during regular hours.”11 What is timing? We say that natural or social processes determine “when” something occurs, but this abstraction merits closer inspection. In essence, timing involves locating events and actions in the ongoing flow of temporal experience. Should it occur now or then? As time streams past the focal point of our self-conscious awareness, this question assumes a spatial form: Should it occur here or there? With this revised wording, we consider the ideal location for an event in the prevailing stream of temporal experience. Should I ask my girlfriend to marry me on New Year’s Eve or Valentine’s Day? Should I mow the grass on Friday afternoon or wait until Saturday morning? Whether the issue is momentous or mundane, the favored temporal space probably is occupied by something else. Doing “this” means not doing “that,” so one must choose where to put the event in question. Our management of timing nearly always requires displacing one thing for another. As a result, “this” follows “that” in our temporal experience. If I elect to propose on Valentine’s Day, we already will have celebrated New Year’s Eve. The further implication, then, is that timing is the basis for our agentic efforts to control or customize sequence. Nature dictates the timing of certain events, irrespective of our wishes. A young girl can become pregnant once she begins to ovulate, regardless of whether she is psychologically prepared or socially encouraged to do so. At the other end of this continuum, there is a woman who ceases to ovulate at a

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point in time over which she has no control. It is between these natural limits that we find the agentic practices of time work—for example, a couple who selects the timing of their pregnancy. The birth rate in China rose dramatically during 2007—the Year of the Pig in their zodiac, which is associated with great wealth.12 In Beijing alone, there were 50,000 more births than in the previous year, an increase of 42 percent. The birth rate in Beijing dropped by one-third during the Year of the Sheep, which began in 2003, because Chinese people believe children born under that sign will have unhappy lives. This variation in the birth rate is a product of time work. Society and social organizations try to dictate the timing of certain events. Our presidential elections are held on the fi rst Tuesday in November (for reasons that reflect the social rhythms of nineteenth-century America). Your library book must be returned by a specified date, and classes at the college begin on a particular day. Tickets for the concert (which will sell out quickly) go on sale at a specific time on a specific day. But the fact that these so-called deadlines are humanly constructed and arbitrary is made evident by how “temporally pliable” they are. There are absentee ballots if the first Tuesday in November is inconvenient. The library book can be renewed or one can elect to pay a small fine for keeping it past the due date. An absence on the first day of class can be excused with a plausible (if often insincere) excuse. Later, that same student can take an “incomplete” in a course for which he or she did not finish the work. And if one cannot wait in line for tickets to the concert, perhaps a friend can be persuaded to do so instead. On the one hand, efforts at temporal determinism serve as a springboard for counterefforts at temporal agency. On the other hand, agentic efforts at time work can be imposed on others in a semblance of temporal determinism. The physician who chooses not to see patients on Wednesday afternoons thereby removes that time slot from the array of options otherwise available for appointments. Likewise, my agency in choosing a time for a sociable gathering becomes an attempt at temporal determinism for those who are invited, but, of course, they can react agentically by electing to arrive “fashionably late.” The student who works at the circulation desk can agentically express a thimbleful of alienation from this role by failing to respond promptly when a professor walks up with books to check out. The resulting delay is small, but pointed and annoying. When, finally, the student deigns to look up from texting his or her friend and languorously extends a hand with which to receive the books from the professor, it is the latter’s turn to interject a bit of “temporal gamesmanship” by agentically withholding the books for an equally pointed moment. These themes recur throughout this study. Temporal determinism and self-determination are intertwined in a great circular chain of causal processes.

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In a world that never seems to pause, a world increasingly characterized by the numbers 24/7/365, one might think that the timing of an action does not matter much, but, in fact, timing is often a critical dimension of human temporality. Moreover, although nature and society dictate when many things happen, we do employ agentic practices in an effort to exert some control over the timing of various events. Countless facets of one’s sense of efficacy fall under this rubric, an important cache of self-actualization.

The Best Time When is the best time for a par ticular activity or experience? This decision is fraught with considerations even on the most pedestrian occasions. The individual must think about and choose the preferred temporal opening in his or her schedule. “Delayed reaction is necessary to intelligent conduct,” according to George Herbert Mead.13 Why? Because it “makes possible the exercise of . . . reflective choice in the acceptance of that one among these possible alternative responses which is to be carried into overt effect.”14 And, of course, “reflective choice” is the seat of self-determination. Thus, agentic practices shape the timing of all characteristically human endeavors. Timing is especially salient for residential college students who may be dealing with their first taste of communal living arrangements: Whenever I have homework to do or a test to study for, I make sure that I do my work in my room directly after class because I know that is the best time for me to learn. If I don’t study right after class, then I won’t do as well on a test. (nineteen-year-old female) I manipulate my time in a way that I can get the best results. For example, I know I do not do my best studying in the early evening. I have to wait until the dorm and dormmates calm down. And there is a piece of self-discipline involved. I need to study between 9:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. to achieve the best results. If I attempt to study earlier, I get too distracted. (nineteen-year-old male) Both of these persons “know” when to study. With that word, they tacitly and fleetingly invoke past experience as an explanation for their current practices. This is not a linguistic ploy. They choose times for their school work, but prior trial and error leads them to anticipate that their respective choices are the  most likely (albeit divergent) paths toward success. Their sense of self-determination in the present is prefigured by the operation of determinism in the past.

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Determinism and self-determination are equally interwoven when the timing of various leisure pursuits is adapted to extraneous contingencies. A thirty-three-year-old actor and triathlete chooses the mornings for his swimming practices “to get them over with before it gets too hot.” Similarly, time and temperature (as well as other factors) are taken into account by a thirtyseven-year-old automobile mechanic: I practice my swing moves with my partner every night after 8:00 p.m. We either practice in my backyard or at Gulfport. We practice in the evenings to avoid the hot sun so we can practice a little longer. Also, in the evenings there are chances for us to go to the Gulfport swing venue to practice on a dance floor with a greater variety of music. We don’t do it on the weekends so that we can recover from the week’s practice and to take our minds off of everything else. For a fifty-year-old accounting clerk, the timing of her activity is explicitly compensatory: I sew in the evening so I can calm myself and let all the tensions go from the daytime. During this time, all of the busy parts of my day are put out of my mind allowing me to sleep better at night. This also allows my mind to come back to a restful state, which relaxes me. This is a great time for me to unwind after a day at work. A kindred type of temporal adaptation is depicted by a twenty-two-year-old waitress: There are different rates for long distance calls at different times. I make an effort to only call my out-of-town friends during the day if it is an absolute necessity. Generally speaking, I call them during the evening; the later the better because the rates are cheaper. In each of these cases, we can say that the individual chooses a particular time, but only in anticipation of circumstances that would have punished the selection of alternate times. Put differently, the individual could change the timing of these activities, but only if he or she were willing to be too hot, too tense, or charged too much. In such instances, then, agency seems to function during the given chain of events as a decisive moment that is structured by the contingencies associated with a limited set of temporal opportunities. Related decisions govern the timing of our chores. Folk wisdom tells us that we can save money by avoiding the grocery store when we are hungry,

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but an eighteen-year-old woman has other reasons for being more specific with the optimal time for visiting the market: “I try to eat around 5:00 p.m. and then go grocery shopping around 7:00 p.m. That way, the store isn’t crowded and I’m not hungry so I won’t buy junk foods.” Likewise, one can clean the house on any day, at any time, but a forty-one-year-old sales clerk is not random with her housekeeping: “I clean on Saturday morning to get it over and done with so I can enjoy the weekend. I never clean during the week partly because I have no time then, but partly because I just want to relax after work and cleaning is the last thing on my mind.” A thirty-six-year-old clerk provides a male variation on the same theme: “I cut the grass just before dusk . . . because it’s cooler out.” Agency is no less relevant to the timing of our breaks from work. There is, for example, the classic coffee break at the midpoint of the morning or the afternoon. Still, as in the case of this nineteen-year-old female, you can prepare for work by beginning with the break: “We get coffee in the morning to get a jump start on the day. The caffeine gives me a pick-me-up.” In contrast, a forty-seven-year-old business woman abstains from coffee at breakfast: I usually start work in the office at 9:00 a.m. My husband and I work together in our own company. I do all the paperwork and answer phones and do bookwork for many partnerships we have. Although I like doing the finances, it does get tedious sometimes and most afternoons I feel the need for a cup of caffeine. I do not drink caffeine in the morning so one cup in the afternoon wakes me up. In addition, agentic divergence of this sort is evident at the collective level of governmental policies. For many years, laws have mandated breaks for longhaul truckers and commercial airline pilots, but until 2003, it was neither illegal nor unusual for medical residents to work thirty-six-hour shifts and 100 to 120 hours per week— often to the point of exhaustion.15

Choosing When To “The time has come,” we might say, as if on its own initiative. But it is frequently the case that we have made it come—that various forms of effort (some quite intentional, others less so) make it seem propitious now, even necessary, that we proceed with the task at hand. Tacitly or explicitly, an inestimable number of other moments were deemed unworthy. Timing inherently reflects choice and predilection. Having determined when one would like to do or experience something, one acts agentically to

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make it so. Rarely do these decisions rise to the occasion of Caesar crossing the Rubicon, but if much of the data seems undistinguished, this merely confirms the notable supposition that agency can be found in myriad small considerations as well as large. For a young man, it may be a simple matter of when to wash himself: “I go in the shower at 11:00 a.m. because I hate getting up early to take a shower before my 9:30 class.” A young woman is diligent about doing her work “during the week so I can go home on the weekend.” Similarly, another young woman has established the optimal time for her hobby: “I try to get all my work done in the morning to practice windsurfing every day after class around 1:00 p.m.” That others are unwilling to organize their time in this fashion highlights the dynamic relationship between punctuality and procrastination.16 The crux of the matter becomes evident if we turn our attention to what Garfinkel refers to as “motivated compliance” with traditional timing.17 While spending a semester abroad in Spain, a twenty-two-year-old student made it a point to accommodate the unfamiliar schedule of her host, a sixty-two-yearold woman: “Every day, we made sure that we were at home at 2:30 to eat the big meal of the day together.” It may seem that her use of the plural, “we,” is affected; after all, she is the one who is adapting to a foreign schedule. Moreover, the relevance of this excerpt may not be apparent, given our concern with agentic practices. Yet there is a profound sense in which her use of the plural is quite correct, and the joint conduct of this pair brings to light a huge but heretofore unexplored world of agency. From Garfinkel, we have learned that the objective existence of norms and our subjective commitment to them sustains a loop of mutual dependence: Common sense knowledge of the facts of social life for the members of the society is institutionalized knowledge of the real world. Not only does common sense knowledge portray a real society for members, but in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophecy the features of the real society are produced by persons’ motivated compliance with these background expectancies.18 And if, as Mead taught us, the compliance of the individual is always “more or less uncertain,” then both the student’s and host’s compliance arise from agentic effort.19 We could dismiss their joint behavior as an instance of cultural determinism but only by reducing these people to mindless cultural dopes who act without electing to do so.20 Indeed, the student’s effort at adaptation illustrates the salient point that choosing to conform with normative expectations

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(here or abroad) is only a little less agentic than choosing to resist them.21 Conformity is a species of agency. In other words, it is crucial to see that the host’s conduct emerges from comparable effort— albeit to sustain a familiar routine. Hence, these data suggest that, without exception, agency is intrinsic to social interaction. Across the academic spectrum, scholars typically consign agency to the turning points of history, whereas determinism is the customary analytical framework for anonymous conduct in ordinary circumstances.22 However, this dubious distinction seems to reflect the different grains of available data in these respective contexts, rather than any essential contrast in their character. When we focus on temporality, at least, it becomes obvious that selfdetermination is a pervasive feature of everyday life. What is more, human beings can be keenly self-conscious about exercising choice with regard to timing and, like this sixty-seven-year-old retired professor, they celebrate this capacity even in the most trivial of circumstances: “I get up every day at different times, depending on what the day will bring. . . . I enjoy the freedom to choose when I get up.” She revels in autonomy and deliberation while, with kindred spirit, a twenty-one-year-old man appreciates the aesthetic implications of timing as well as his choice in the matter: I love to play [golf] in the morning. For me, it is the perfect start to the day. I love to see dew on the grass and step on the freshly cut greens. For some reason, I know that I’m going to play good. This early morning feel gives me confidence in myself and my abilities. Also, one thing that might have a big impact . . . is the fact that in the morning I have nothing on my mind. In the afternoon, I might be thinking about other things that I should be doing instead of playing golf. Playing in the morning is much more enjoyable. From his rapturous comments, we can infer an “erotics” of timing that is rooted in aesthetic or sensuous preferences.23 Clearly, there is much more to timing than duty or obligation. No response expresses the creative, against-the-flow potential of timing with greater clarity than this excerpt from a thirty-eight-year-old social scientist, thinking back fondly to her willful days as an undergraduate: I used to reverse day and night by staying up all night talking to whomever was around, wandering campus in the dark, reading, then going to class, if I went that day, and then going back to the dorm to sleep. I’d get up around 9:00 p.m., as things were getting socially interesting, and start over. This was mostly as a result of finding day-

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time to be quite boring, and the reversal provided some variety and better conversational partners. This person takes license with timing in a purposeful effort to realize (or maintain consistency with) a certain identity. Agency is harnessed to a particular vision of oneself—not social norms. In this narrative, we see temporal experience customized to fit personal predilections. This is not time management; this is time work that verges on something we can call “time play.” We must recognize, however, that she pursued this line of activity in order to realize a social, albeit eccentric, identity through association with other like-minded students. Moreover, it is not impertinent that she engaged in this behavior as an undergraduate— a socially defined stage in the life course during which there is greater license for experimentation of all kinds. Were she to engage in such behavior today, she would undoubtedly lose her job as director of Institutional Research and Planning. If, therefore, time play becomes less frequent as one moves through the life course, this decrease does not stem from lack of motivation for temporal agency but because of what Howard Becker calls “the process of commitment through which the ‘normal’ person becomes progressively involved in conventional institutions and behavior.”24

Not the Time If, as the saying goes, “there’s a time and a place for that,” then the obverse is no less true: certain times are deemed inappropriate for activities of a specified type. Collective self-restraint of this sort is a form of deference to community conventions or sensitivities, and such deference often is inscribed as so-called “blue laws” (e.g., a ban on the sale of alcohol before noon on Sunday). A personal variation on this theme is immortalized in the film, Never on Sunday. Its title refers to the only day of the week when its central character—a prostitute—refuses to ply her trade. But nonfictional examples abound. There are, for instance, times when a young man must refrain from calling his girlfriend, who is studying abroad: We are six hours away by time zones, so timing is crucial. If I call at 7:00 p.m., it is 1:00 in the morning over there. By 10:00 p.m., it is 4:00 a.m. I have to call when I think she will be able to actually talk. Most of the time, I choose to wait as long as possible so that I know she is home from wherever she went that night. I have to be careful to not wait too long, though, ’cause then she will be sleeping.

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Another young man exercises similar self-restraint for the sake of his academic record: It’s my weed, and I don’t smoke unless I want to. I don’t smoke before tests because it slows down the thinking process. . . . I don’t see it interfering with me in any negative ways as long as I am responsible with it. Agency is equally operative regardless of whether someone decides to do something at a particular time or decides not to do something at a particular time. To refrain from activity or to take a break (i.e., forbearance) does not require more or less agentic effort than does partaking in or continuing a line of conduct (i.e., intervention). Either way, the individual exercises self-determination in the timing of events; either way, a person must not only choose what to do, but when to do it. The degree of self-determination is equivalent, but it is manifest as two different subspecies of temporal agency. In the preceding excerpts, one young man talks about when not to call his girlfriend, while the other discusses when not to smoke marijuana. But to refrain from doing these things at a specific time implicates doing them at another, more auspicious, time. And instances of this type were in the minority. For whatever reason, our respondents were much more likely to discuss their efforts to have a say in when something happens as opposed to when it does not. Still, the evidence suggests that we are ceaselessly choosing and refusing temporal options for various activities and experiences. As a variation on this theme, it is also worth noting that one can get the timing wrong. Such errors are sociologically instructive because the violations make evident rules that were only tacit prior to the misdeeds. When, for example, the members of a professional baseball team take offense at the opposing pitcher’s tendency to throw at them rather than the strike zone, unwritten rules of etiquette prescribe retaliation during the opposing team’s next turn at bat. A team that waits to retaliate days later in another game can rightly be accused of violating the norms that govern such matters.25 Deviance of this type reveals the fact that something like a “temporal calculus” guides our assessment of each other’s actions in everyday life, and, of course, this temporal calculus is culturally specific.

Our Time Timing is indispensable to interpersonal coordination. Yet, because it is so easy to overlook the countless schedules by which we organize our lives, it comes as something of a shock to see how much of our conduct is encom-

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passed by this category. All manner of agency can be expressed through permutations on a simple question: “When can we get together?” An utterance of this sort is frequently the precursor for meeting with others to study, exercise, shop, play musical instruments, eat, drink, dance, or take recreational drugs. We make it our business to work on the timing of our encounters with others, and this influence begins with the primary socialization we receive from our elders. Parents agentically attempt to impose a bedtime on children but provoke equally agentic efforts by their children to postpone it. As is so often the case, our efforts to establish temporal regimentation meet with resistance. Early one morning, while walking on a nearly deserted beach, I noticed a very young girl by herself. She was three or four years old. Worried that she was lost, I looked around for her parents and saw them, roughly 100 yards away, trudging toward their car with all of their belongings. Perhaps due to the sudden proximity of a stranger (me), the little girl ended her resistance and began running toward them, crying and screaming for her mother to wait. I realized that she was learning a lesson in timing: “When we say it’s time to go, it’s time to go.” This lesson was being taught in that well-meaning but brutal style so typical of primary socialization.26 Tacitly, her parents were communicating the undoubtedly false claim that they would abandon the child if she continued to delay the timing of their departure. As in this instance, much of temporal socialization has more to do with self-abnegation than it does with clocks and calendars. Our elders may continue to hold sway over the timing of their encounters with us long after we have become adults. For example, a strict seventy-twoyear-old matriarch demands punctuality from her friends and relatives: Because I am time-conscious, people around me feel pressured if they are late, usually my family. When they are meeting me, I am very pushy about promptness, and don’t stand for tardiness. This causes others around me to be more time-conscious. Obviously, this woman is unrepentant for the sensitivity she fosters in others, so it should come as no surprise to find that we are often apologetic and cite mitigating circumstances when we are late or absent at important times. A nineteen-year-old woman provides a case in point: “I got sick from my roommate. Called my coach and told him. Missed practice and a game.” Moreover, during secondary socialization, instruction concerning when to do things can be an explicit part of the curriculum. The following excerpt reveals how another older woman (i.e., seventy-four) cultivates more than a garden:

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A woman is training to take over for me in the greenhouse. She is supposed to be learning from me. Timing is critical in greenhouse situations. When she starts cuttings and seeds, I influence her timing about how she takes care of plants at different times of the year. Apologies and rationalizations are significant because they serve as markers for social norms.27 Timing is taught and, with those who are neglectful, enforced. In socialization, we observe an orientation toward the future and the intergenerational transmission of temporal norms. But timing also can be an urgent interpersonal issue when the present is viewed as a decisive moment. Do others recognize the looming threat or opportunity? If not, exhortation is called for: “Now is the time!”28 For a fi fty-two-year-old real estate agent and her sisters, the arrival of November precipitates an annual flurry of activity: The sisters decide who will pick the gifts (by drawing from a hat) and how much to pay for each gift. The way I influence them is I call them on the phone and I say, “This is Pam and we need to pick the Christmas names as quickly as possible so that we can all go shopping,” and we think of who did it last year and who didn’t do it. Then it’s their turn, and we say they have to decide by this week because we need to go shopping. So we call Karen and say, “Okay, whose turn is it?” From the perspective of a twenty-three-year-old clerk in an insurance office, the crisis arises not at work (where indifference reigns) but during a volleyball game at her gym: “At a particular time, I was trying to motivate my teammates to go hard and strong.” In short, tardiness can be more than an affront; it can be inconvenient, problematic, even disastrous. It is possible for one person to have an unintended effect on the way timing is experienced by another. A young woman gives us this example: “The first individual to hand in the test may influence other students to rush and feel inadequate, dissatisfied, and critical of their overall per formance.” On different occasions, however, timing is concerted or outright coerced. We can begin with activity that demands close collaboration between a young man and his friend: Wake boarding is like snow boarding, but behind a boat. You have to do things at certain times so you do not fall. You have to have someone that knows how to drive a boat, because they have to start off at

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a certain speed and then drive at a constant speed. The person on the wake board has to know when to stand up and how fast to do it. Basically, it is all about timing. Nonetheless, the absence of synchronization can be a tolerated by-product of the division of labor, as is evident in the following admission from a twentytwo-year-old male: Since I don’t drink, I’m usually the designated driver when my friends and I go out to clubs at night. I usually also take the longest to get ready, so by the time I come to pick up my friends, they’re normally already waiting. In this way, I influence the time they leave for the clubs, as they have no choice but to wait on me. His preparation to go out is deliberate in at least two senses of that word. Must they wait for him? No, but to leave without him (to do “otherwise,” as Giddens would have it) entails known risks.29 Through this asymmetry and tacit complicity, his agency is transformed into something that masquerades as their necessity. It is not uncommon for one person to establish the timing of interaction with one or more others. When recurrent, such circumstances are structured by asymmetry in the relative power of the participants. This makes for our fundamentally dualistic experience: one who insists and one or more others who accede. Hence, some form of hegemony is involved, but the resulting encounters vary across quite different settings. At one end of the spectrum, we have a twenty-nine-year-old teacher who demands that her family (a husband and three children) gather for dinner every night: No matter what is going on at the time, everyone has to come in and eat. No exceptions. I want my family to eat as a family. So, at six every night, we eat. It doesn’t matter what else anyone has to do. I come early sometimes to cook and make sure the food is ready by six. I don’t like to let it slide even once because then they will think it can happen again. I am very strict with the six o’clock meal. At the other end of the spectrum, a forty-four-year-old ex-convict provides this chilling testimony: I was in a cell by myself for three months, and then a nineteen-yearold kid was put in with me. On the first day, I came up with rules for

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when he could do certain things. I basically controlled when the talking started and stopped and when the lights went on and off. Whether benign or exploitive, interpersonal commitment typically entails the imposition of timing on others. In the absence of any basis for a dictatorial stance, it is still possible to influence the timing of interaction with others. Persuasion is called for rather than command. One must exercise leadership, and it often involves taking the initiative to propose a particular time for the activity in question. More often than not, this effort is spontaneous and situational. As a twenty-oneyear-old female puts it, “I suggested a meeting time and place. Whoever was interested changed their plans in order to come to the meeting.” Within specific subcultures, a catchphrase can be used to get the ball rolling: Being the one to say “Wanna smoke a bowl?” generally means that you are the one with marijuana in hand. Because of having it, I can have other people smoke pot with me at any time. That’s how I influence when someone else does something. Similarly, familiarity with a social script enables an individual to seize the initiative: In a doctor’s office I haven’t visited before, I know I will have to fill out paperwork before I can see the doctor, so instead of simply signing in and waiting, I ask the receptionist for the paperwork. In this way, I force her to give it to me sooner than she would have otherwise. (nineteen-year-old male) And, of course, there are reminders. A twenty-year-old male relates the following example: “Sometimes I inform someone that it is Wednesday and we should be ready to watch South Park at 10:00 p.m.” Like so many others, he takes the initiative to organize a gathering at a particular time. Given this steady stream of suggestions, requests, and reminders, we must conclude that “temporal enterprise” is omnipresent and a significant contribution to social interaction. Others often want to see us at a precise time, but that can be inconvenient. Consequently, access and availability are ceaselessly negotiated. We prevail upon others for accommodation and flexibility. The example below is from our interview with a twenty-year-old male: My family used to eat dinner at 6:00 every night, and everybody knew that. I am the youngest in my family, so now that I am in college, my

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brothers and sisters have their own lives. My parents re-schedule dinner around me when I am home since I am not always able to eat dinner at 6:00. Instead, I eat earlier or later, but not usually at 6:00. Interpersonal relations provide the backdrop for a temporal calculus—a kind of home-grown cost-benefit analysis. The following instance is described by a twenty-two-year-old male: I asked my friend to stay longer on his vacation. He needed to change his flight at a cost of $50. After talking about it for a few minutes, weighing the pros and cons, he decided to stay because he didn’t have any other commitments that would interfere with him staying the rest of the weekend. The permutations increase with the number of participants, as illustrated by an eighteen-year-old female: Their schedules come into play as well. I call my friend Rob and tell him I can’t eat until 5:30 p.m. Rob would then call Sheena, Tina, and Luke to find out when they can eat. Then Rob would call me back to say whether we can eat at 5:30 or maybe not eat all together because of a time complication. For the sake of companionship, each person can veto a time, but the outcome represents willful collaboration. To a great extent, then, timing is worked out with others. As is always the case, some efforts at time work fail, thereby marking the contingent character of temporal enterprise. When interpersonal timing is at issue, one can fail to play one’s own part or others may renege on their commitments. A forty-seven-year-old woman describes the former scenario: “If I have not planned ahead for dinner, it takes longer to decide what to make. The meal might not be as well balanced, and we would probably eat later.” Her family provides at least tacit pressure to succeed, in contrast to previous examples where one person tries to lead another astray. In the following excerpt, however, a twenty-year-old Hispanic exchange student is let down by his sleepy roommate: On a Saturday night, I remind my friend that we have to get up at 8:00 a.m. to go to mass the next day. I say that we should go to bed no later than 2:00 a.m. So the next morning I try to wake my friend up, but he doesn’t want to wake up that early, so probably we will have to

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find out when the next mass is. We go together because we try to keep our Catholic values, and also he is the one with a car. There is, then, no guarantee of success, but foresight and diligence help to compensate for our own failings as well as those of recalcitrant colleagues.

Strategic Timing Through trial and error, children learn when to approach adults for favors. Frank McCourt recalls giving careful thought to the matter of borrowing a stepfather’s bicycle in his memoir, Angela’s Ashes: “The best time to ask him for anything is Friday night when he’s in a good mood after his night of drinking and his dinner.”30 Temporal enterprise is never more clearly agentic than when the individual employs it for tactical purposes. For various reasons, most of which have to do with self-determination, the individual assumes a calculating and manipulative stance toward the timing of his or her experiences with others. Thus, we have an interpersonal variation on the idea that there is an optimal time for a particular activity. More than with other dimensions of temporality, the narratives that implicate timing reflect attention to strategy and diplomacy in social interaction. Indeed, there is an extensive body of folklore concerning when one should try to do (or not do) certain things.31 The response from a thirty-two-year-old engineer is illustrative, although he puts perhaps too fine a point on it: Whenever I make an appointment at the barber, I always make sure to avoid the times right before lunch, a typical coffee break time, or closing time. I do this because I don’t want the barber to cut my hair in a rush or in a situation where he feels that he has to finish the job quickly so he can have his break or go home. In this way, I minimize the chances of having the barber give me a bad haircut. Others apply much the same logic in myriad circumstances. Timing is critical to “impression management” and related forms of deception.32 One may, for instance, exhibit prudent attention to the perception of one’s demeanor, as with a twenty-four-year-old woman who brings an adroit sensitivity to contacting male friends: “If I’m going to call these guys, I try to make it close to the weekend so I can go over and party with them, but I don’t want to call on the weekend or too late at night so they won’t get the wrong idea.” An impudent and self-serving version of tact is apparent when a thirty-three-year-old independent contractor meets “a new acquaintance” and

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his “gross” sister for dinner: “I had someone call me 45 minutes after I arrived so I could make an easy exit. Made idle conversation before departure, nursed a flat beer, and looked around a lot.” Equal measures of inner resolve and tactical anticipation figure in efforts to turn the timing of a situation to one’s own advantage. The strategic use of timing can be contingent on cues that are picked up on the fly, as it were, during social interaction. One carefully appraises the other’s demeanor before deciding that the timing is favorable. Consider this excerpt from our interview with a twenty-year-old female student: “When I need a ride . . . I usually call Heather, the only person I know with a car, and see what she’s doing. If she doesn’t sound too stressed, I ask her if she would mind giving me a ride.” In addition, there are more aggressive forms of temporal artifice through which the individual attempts to seize the initiative at an especially propitious moment. For example, a crafty twenty-year-old describes the right time to approach his professor for temporal clemency: In the situation where I need an extension for a paper or project, I’ll ask the professor at the beginning of class. Sometimes I’ll even show up a little early. If I can talk to the professor before other people ask him [such] questions, I usually get the extension. If the professor has already received requests for extensions, he may be irritated, causing him to turn me down. A twenty-five-year-old receptionist is equally shrewd: I’ve been living with my husband for three years, and we are still communicating and trying to overcome problems. Also, we both work full-time, and I’m in school full-time, so our morning coffee is often the only time we are together for the day. If there is a problem—like how he takes his laundry out of the hamper to wash it and throws mine on the floor—I certainly don’t want to argue, but I want to address it. We’re both awake in the morning and alert, receptive, not dragged down by the day and can reconcile problems. In multifarious encounters, therefore, skillful interpersonal diplomacy typically turns on our ability to recognize the auspicious time for a particular overture. Given the perceived importance of timing in everyday life, knowledge concerning the auspicious moment for any particular undertaking is a rare and valuable commodity. A certain segment of the public will pay for such knowledge, and consequently, members of the occult trades do a brisk business

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in advising their clients on exactly when to make their moves (at home, at work, etc.) or refrain from doing so. Many of those who are too frugal or cynical to pay for such advice are, nevertheless, also fatalistic about their own ability to anticipate the auspicious moment. Lacking a sense of efficacy, they can only fall back on superstitions with which to allay their anxiety. If the timing of their actions is catastrophically wrong, they simply view themselves as unlucky—that is, as victims of their fate. In the absence of confidence or efficacy, one looks upon oneself as the butt of a deterministic universe. For the purposes of our theory, however, determinism is thereby unmasked as a sense of agentic inadequacy. Determinism is what happens when the individual in question either does not intervene or does so ineffectually. It is what occurs when one feels powerless to alter the timing of events. But the individual need not be so passive. After all, why wait and watch for the proper time if we can make any given moment the right one through our own agentic effort? Put differently, the individual may resolve to be the temporal “architect” of any interval of his or her choosing.33 Note, for example, how a nineteen-year-old student purposefully engages his parents in reassuring conversation before revealing shameful behavior: Usually, I feel guilty after doing something that I know my parents would not be happy with. Consequently, I feel it necessary to tell them. This usually takes place over the telephone, and for the most part on the weekends. I try to make things seem as comfortable as possible before actually bringing up this act of guilt which my conscience won’t simply let me forget. Once this sense of trust is achieved, I discuss what it is that I feel I must share with them. For the most part, they do not explode on me. They basically rationalize with me as an adult and things are once again hunky-dory. The reason my parents do not get angry is because of the previous conversation. This vibrant shade of temporal agency becomes visible when one assumes the “activist” stance identified by Peggy Thoits.34 In other cases, the control individuals exert over timing seems to express nothing more than a strategic approach to interpersonal style. We customize our preferences concerning when we want to interact with others. For a fifty-oneyear-old librarian, this entails stalling diligently until just the right moment: When we have a social event to attend which has no specific starting time . . . my husband wants to be there right at the beginning, but I don’t. I want to arrive a little late to ensure that we are not among the first ones there. He will tell me when he wants to go, but, as that time

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approaches, I find little things to do to delay our departure, like finding just the right accessory to wear, or remembering there was “something” I wanted to bring with me, or finding things that need to be put away, or fiddling with my hair— all to waste a few more minutes without making him too upset. And the reason I like to arrive a bit late is because I find it easier to melt into the crowd rather than make awkward conversation. This clever woman has given a great deal of thought to when she would like to arrive at social gatherings. Invoking Garfinkel’s imagery, we can see that her temporal objective demands “work” of one kind or another in an effort to “manage” not only her own behavior but that of her husband, as well.35 The data make it plain that social interaction is suffused with such tactics. In all manner of circumstances, we can observe people trying to customize timing or turn it to their own advantage. When do things happen? Apparently, many things happen precisely when we want them to. There is, then, a relationship between timing and desire due to our pervasive and agentic intervention in the temporal flow of events. The intervention is purposeful and, more often than not, effective. Our motives vary with the content of the occasion. To be sure, we uphold cultural norms and solve problems, but we are more apt to manipulate timing for the sake of aesthetics and self-actualization than efficiency or productivity. Thus, to duration, frequency, and sequence, we can add timing as a willfully modulated dimension of temporal experience.

6 Allocation

t is not unusual to hear a person talk about “making time” for something or someone, as if hours and minutes could be manufactured from raw materials. Nonetheless, this familiar phrase is quite evocative when we pause to consider it, because there is a sense in which we “make time” by exercising control over its allocation. Hence, a modest but interesting segment of the data is devoted to this form of temporal agency. Nothing is more agentic than the deliberate allocation of time. The activity in question could not occur without such temporal intervention. Unless one allocates an interval of time for “this,” it will be filled by “that” instead. In these instances, we observe the individual deciding what to do with his or her time. Doing (and not doing) anything takes time. Absent its allocation, the activity in question is impossible. It is the process whereby we make time for our desires. For many of us, however, this effort is a reactive adaptation to lives in which there are greater demands on our time than there is time to give. Medical students epitomize this dilemma, and their agentic adjustments, though antiphonal, make extensive use of temporal allocation. Yoels and Clair observe that what medical residents desire is “free time, or more exactly, time that they control rather than are controlled by.”1 They would like to avoid “routine, unchallenging work” because it does not help them learn their trade.2 Indeed, such work obstructs their ability “to read medical journal articles or to attend various on-campus medical conferences”—activities they are expected to en-

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gage in even though the hospital does not make time for them.3 In short, there is never enough time to do everything they are supposed to do. The resulting adaptations are agentic but not especially conducive to attentive patient care. For example, residents learn to minimize the talking patients and their families do during examinations: If you let patients and families, they will talk your ear off. A lot of times you just don’t want to spend the time, I mean you don’t really have the time or your time could be spent more efficiently, so you have to learn how to cut the conversation down. Especially during an admit, I’ve learned only to get what’s important. I know that I have to be sensitive and be objective enough to make sure I don’t overlook something critical, but for the most part, a lot of what they have to say is irrelevant.4 Another resident “never wore his lab coat,” which “made it more difficult for his patients to remember his name.” 5 In addition, residents learn “to make themselves scarce.” 6 This behavior is provoked by their circumstances but formulated by the perpetrators. Once again, we see determinism and selfdetermination interwoven within the flow of events. These challenges are not unique to medical students. One of my own students was in the process of finishing her doctoral dissertation while applying for jobs. A familiar balancing act is required, as she reports in the following excerpt: I am only allowing myself to spend four days a month on job applications—two days every two weeks. It could take all of my time if I let it, so I am trying hard not to. Profound agentic practices are marked by deceptively simple words like “allowing” and “trying.” Here, we see a common process in operation: a socialized self-discipline governs the distribution of temporal resources, thereby shaping one’s own temporal experience. Moreover, the demand for such time work does not stop with graduation. It is not unusual, for instance, to observe a general manager reading during a meeting. Allen Bluedorn suggests that “reading and involvement in the meeting at some level indicate [one’s] simultaneous engagement in at least two activities.”7 The motivation for multitasking is rooted in our divided loyalties. By the same token, Goffman’s assertion that we are a “simultaneous multiplicity of selves” can be manifest in the allocation of time.8

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Our subjects report much less multitasking than one might expect, given the nature of our questions, but an understanding of temporal agency helps us to see why this is not really surprising. Multitasking involves the (nearly) simultaneous allocation of temporal resources to conflicting demands on one’s attention. In so doing, the individual tacitly accepts (or at least cannot refuse) these demands right now. Multitasking marks an individual at the mercy of simultaneity. This person is incapable of managing conflicting demands in a sequential and scheduled manner, designed with the self in mind (i.e., time work). Instead, the harried individual is relatively passive and reactive in the face of simultaneous demands on his or her time. Multitasking is not something one crows about with an interviewer. To do so would make a virtue of necessity. There is, then, a self-conscious tendency to set time aside for our various responsibilities (i.e., selves), but frequently this allocation seems to represent identities, emotional commitments, and strongly held beliefs rather than duty narrowly defined. A twenty-two-year-old woman describes herself in this way: I don’t like to waste time. If I have X amount of time before I have to do something or go somewhere, I feel the need to make the most of it [by] trying to find little things to do: reading for class, getting organized, cleaning my room. By dint of enculturation, empty intervals of time must be formatted into units of respectable effort. What is more, one must be on guard against losing track of time during enjoyable activity, as noted by a twenty-two-year-old male: When I walk my dog, I have a timer on my watch that counts down ten minutes. I used to just glance at my watch, but I would end up spending fi fteen minutes out there. I take her out three times a day so, if I don’t watch it, I end up wasting my time. “Watch it,” indeed; in our society, at least, there is a nearly universal selfconsciousness concerning the proper allocation of one’s time.

Self-Development The pursuit of personal development is an important variation on the theme of temporal allocation. We strive to learn, to improve, to grow, not because we have to, but because we want to. These activities are elective, but by devoting temporal resources to them, we ensure that they will occur. Ballroom dancing is one example:

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This is my down time. I work in a restaurant ’til late hours in the night, and I didn’t have something that only I do. So I started taking these classes, and it has been very therapeutic for me. Even though we are busy doing something, I am mentally relaxed. I don’t think about anything else but the dance. It’s a weird thing for a man my age [49] to do, but I really like it and enjoy every second I am there.9 His enthusiastic use of the word “therapeutic” parallels the response from a fifty-year-old female teacher who reports making time for a class in the martial arts: “I find that it is the only place in my life where I am usually totally in the moment. I just focus on pain and strength and really don’t have to think about other things that may be problems. It is very therapeutic for me.” Exercise is one of the larger categories in this segment of the data. Perhaps as a counterweight to involuntary stress (at home, work, or school), one sets time aside for self-improvement with a kind of compensatory therapy that is at once physical, mental, and spiritual. In the following excerpt, a fiftythree-year-old male engineer highlights the relationship between agentic practices and temporal aesthetics: I enjoy cross-country running. It is a perfect way for me to set aside time for myself. Running in the woods makes the experience even more satisfying. It feels like I am one with nature in a sense. The air is fresh, and I can hear every little sound. More than with other dimensions of time work, our efforts to control allocation exhibit a reactive form of temporal agency. Such enterprise, however, has more to do with self-efficacy than it does with efficiency or productivity. Thus, by making time for the gym, a twenty-eight-year-old computer engineer celebrates a measure of self-determination: When I work out, I’m in my own little world where there are no problems. I try not to think of anything; I only focus on what I am presently doing. After the workout, I feel a sense of accomplishment and confidence because I am proud of the fact that I have stuck with this schedule that I made for myself. Like so many others, she visits her “own little world where there are no problems.” In his essay, “On Multiple Realities,” Alfred Schutz observes that social experience is divided into separate worlds, which he terms “finite provinces of meaning.”10 He cites several examples—“the world of dreams . . . the world

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of art, the world of religious experience, the world of scientific contemplation, the play world of the child, and the world of the insane”—but, of course, there are innumerable others.11 Each of them, he argues, is characterized by a different cognitive style (i.e., way of thinking) that is consistent within that world and inconsistent with other worlds. It is for this reason that he calls them “finite” provinces of meaning. Moreover, each world has a characteristic “time-perspective.”12 In the world of dreams, for instance, one can revisit and even alter the past. Schutz does not consider the possibility that one might visit these worlds quite purposefully to experience time in a particular way, but that is what we see in the foregoing excerpts. The restaurant owner is “mentally relaxed” because he does not “think about anything else but the dance.” The student of martial arts does not “think about other things that may be problems.” And the patron of the gym tries “not to think of anything.” The cross-country runner does not use the same terminology, but it is apparent that his experience echoes theirs. All of them focus on the here-and-now, thereby clearing their minds temporarily of worry and woe. To allocate time for a special purpose is, in effect, to create a finite province of temporal experience—a cherished enclave where time is perceived in a distinct way. One visits these worlds, as it were, on excursions from the temporal regime of everyday life.13 Clearly, temporal allocation is not a free-for-all of self-expression. The individual chooses to make time for something (ballroom dancing, martial arts, etc.) but only in response to a life that seems to require such succor. Here, time work functions as an agentic link in the causal chain of determinism: a stressful life provokes a felt need for compensatory excursions of one type or another. What is more, these agentic practices tend to be interstitial in that one seeks time for self in the crevices between larger blocks of time already apportioned to one’s obligations. A forty-five-year-old Marine Corps officer enacts a recurrent motif by making time for himself: I try to set aside personal time daily. Usually, this means I get up earlier to review the day’s schedule, read, or do some personal tasks. Also, I like to take lunch time to conduct physical fitness training or run errands or other personal items. I do this every day because there is not enough time during the remainder of the day to squeeze in these same things. He repeatedly invokes the notion of “personal time,” but it is obvious that some of his activities during these intervals are subsidiary to his capacity as a soldier. Similarly, a fifty-seven-year-old commercial real estate agent uses exercise to improve his “mental awareness.” It would appear that activities

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during one’s “own” time are often selected because they are perceived to help one become what one is supposed to be. In instances of this sort, temporal agency is yoked to social expectations. For a happy few, the distinction between “their time” and “my time” is very nearly irrelevant. They enjoy and embrace their obligations, carving time for them out of their busy schedules and protecting these enclaves of time even from the temporally predatory organizations where they are employed. An assistant professor of biology provides a case in point by describing the way she spends “every Friday for at least five to eight hours”: Most of the time I’m by myself [in her office]. Often, I will call one of my colleagues to discuss my ideas. I read articles related to my research interest; then I brainstorm new perspectives. I write these ideas down as an outline. Over time, I fill in the outline and begin to incorporate references with my ideas. When I start thinking, I often feel energetic and my ideas flow. After three or four hours, I get mentally exhausted and my ideas seem repetitious. Our employers tend to idealize the merging of personal and professional development, whereas the data for this study suggest that it is actually quite rare. Indeed, the fact that therapeutic forms of escapism were much more prevalent serves as a troubling commentary on work in contemporary America. From the preceding excerpts, we see that conflict can arise in the allocation of time to personal interests and professional responsibilities. We must view the biologist as one end of a continuum where there is little or no conflict due to a self-actualizing merger between one’s personal and professional identities. This is possible, but not nearly as common as we might want it to be. At the other end of the continuum are cases that are much more typical. Here, we find time allocated for variations on compensatory escapism and a sharp disjuncture between personal and professional time. In the middle and also quite prevalent, there is a tolerable encroachment. With both the Marine Corps officer and the real estate agent, the needs of the job encroach on personal time because the latter is often agentically allocated to pursuits that contribute to being a better professional. Neither of these individuals seems to mind this temporal trespassing (aside from the officer’s fatalistic comment that “there is not enough time” unless he allocates it in this fashion). They “choose” to distribute their temporal resources in this way, but their intentions are bent toward role proficiency and not personal indulgence. Like so many others, their temporal agency makes for the more effective workings of social institutions.

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A number of our younger male respondents set time aside for sailing in order to conjure its recuperative, even transcendental, effects on one’s psyche: First, the sailor must find peace of mind. Second, the meditation of rigging must be accomplished. Without this meditation, the sailor will have no vehicle to the next plane. Lastly, the sailor must understand the gift bestowed: transportation with only the use of the elements. When sailing, I experience utter peace. There is nothing like it. At no other time can all problems and worries fall away leaving the wind, the waves, and me alone. The whole atmosphere out on the sea, with the waves around me, the fresh air, the special silence, brings me into a state of trance. My mind opens and I can let my thoughts play around. It is more than daydreaming because I . . . think about my actions. It makes me feel very easy and free, this “nature and you” experience. According to a third respondent, sailing “takes your mind off everyday life.” A fourth described it as a “very stress-relieving activity.” There is a salutary allocation of time and attention to matters that demand concentration, thereby deflecting one’s thoughts from stressful things. Making time for sailing is a compensatory form of temporal agency. We have something to say about whether there will be any time in our schedules for this or that endeavor. In so doing, we act as the architects of our own temporal landscapes. Gardening represents another way to design a temporal space for healing and personal tranquility. Like sailing, gardening imparts a welcome feeling of control and efficacy in lives that can often seem far too precarious. Consider, for example, the extensive comments from a fortythree-year-old professor: I recently planted a garden in my front yard—trees and flowers—and every morning I take time to water them for my own enjoyment.14 I open the front door. The cats and I go outside. There’s usually sunshine or some other celestial something to see: clouds breaking, sunrise, a white bird against blue sky. I turn on the soaker hose in the flowerbed. I hand-fill the blue bucket and hand-water all the plants along the house, in the bed around the sapling oak, the magnolia tree, the four jacarandas, the mandev illes at the mailbox, the rose bush by the trellis, the butterfly plants along the other side of the house. Passersby greet me and we sometimes talk. Cars go by— often the same ones at the same time each day. I finish watering and turn off the

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hose. I might sit and eat breakfast on the steps. Then I go inside. This little ritual makes me feel peaceful. . . . And, as you’ve noticed, I’ll talk at length about this experience to anyone who asks. It feeds my soul right now. It’s what I’ve turned to— digging in the earth and planting—since September 11. Her time work is admittedly reactive. The horror of 9–11 provided motivation; it was the antecedent event. But of what? As is nearly always the case, this individual must answer that question for herself. What 9–11 provoked was not gardening, per se, but a moment of reflexive choice, now embodied in a particular form of temporal agency. From innumerable alternatives, she has elected to make time for gardening, with its comforting mix of familiarity and novelty.

Self-Indulgence Self-development connotes activism. One learns to do new things, and these things make one a better person. At some point, however, self-development segues into self-indulgence. A distinctive irony becomes apparent: the agentic allocation of time for the passive consumption of pampering. These agentic practices retain a reactive etiology because they are typically justified by the individuals in question as compensatory or therapeutic responses to the stress (or stressful emptiness) in their lives. For a nineteen-year-old student, the experience requires certain accoutrements: Turn on the fan; kick off my shoes; lie down [with her head on a silk pillow]; turn on music. Relaxed, I can think about things in a more clear manner. Get my priorities straight. Enhances whatever mood I may be in. In the morning, it gets me awake, starts the day off right. In the afternoon, music mellows me out, calms everything. She does this every day for “about thirty minutes.” Thus, temporal allocation is not always about improving oneself; simply feeling better is often at issue. In the following excerpt, for instance, we see a twenty-one-year-old student give deliberate attention to creating a daily ritual in the realm of the senses: “I decided to put aside thirty minutes a night . . . and devote it to a relaxing, hot, bubble bath . . . los[ing] myself to the classical music that I played. To set the mood in the bathroom, I set up three candles and turned off the lights.” “I decided,” she says, to set time “aside”—phrasing which underscores the agentic character of temporal allocation.

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What we witness in these stories is not analogous to sleep; it is not something the organism simply needs to do. These individuals employ selfconsciously created strategies for indulgence and pampering. They allocate time for relaxation. Some people do not know how to relax. Others choose not to. We have an ambiguous label for such people: workaholics. From a cultural standpoint, we have not made up our collective mind about whether their inability or unwillingness to partake of pampering is a good or bad thing (for them or the rest of us). In any event, the fact that there are such people tells us that self-indulgence is a type of temporal agency. Stressful circumstances may make these strategies more likely, but they are neither natural nor inevitable. Tacitly, at least, there is a cultural context that makes self-indulgence seem both sensible and seductive. A twenty-year-old goes to the spa when she wants “to feel relaxed, pampered.” She views it as part of her beauty regimen— temporally organized practices that are dictated by gender socialization. And, of course, it is no coincidence that the following excerpt comes from our interview with another young woman: I sit on the couch with my blanket, watch Days of Our Lives, and eat chocolate. It is horrible to admit, but it makes me feel better. Chocolate is sometimes the only thing that I can count on to always be there, and that makes me feel complete. Even though it is probably the worst thing for me, I love it! This person is managing her time, but not in the way that concept is currently envisioned. Moreover, there are multiple variations on the allocation of time for habitual cultivation of bliss. A twenty-one-year-old woman goes to the beach “just to do nothing,” whereas a twenty-four-year-old woman who works as a bartender goes shopping: Once a week at least! Usually I go to the mall or a store I like, browse for a while, try something on if I like it. If I like it, I buy it! Always look at the sale items just in case. Shopping makes me feel very happy! I love clothes and getting new stuff in general and I love fashion and looking at all the new styles, so it’s a really fun and good experience for me! This exuberance should alert us to the fact that we cherish our ability to direct temporal resources toward the satisfaction of our own desires—albeit desires manufactured by the machinery of consumerism. Once again, we catch a glimpse of the irony of time work in the etiology of human conduct.

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We do not have much data on self-indulgence among men, possibly because they are less prone to admit it, but the dynamics appear to be quite similar. For a thirty-two-year-old plumber, pampering takes place on Sundays, when he lies on the couch in his living room to watch football on television with friends: “This is a time that I can set aside to relax and do something I enjoy.” The cultural legacy of Puritanism makes self-indulgence suspect in the eyes of many Americans—but more so for men than women.15 In the impoverished era before the widespread availability of public spectacles for the sake of advertising, the plumber’s male ancestors might have had recourse to hunting, fishing, or even sharpening a stick. The inescapable scarcity of time shapes our stance toward temporal matters, but this existential influence is realized in divergent and agentically colored ways. To be sure, there is never enough time, but given what you have, do you fill it or kill it? Like Ben Franklin, the good eighteenth-century Protestant filled it with work and worship. After all, time is the only resource that will bleed away all by itself unless we actively intervene. In apparent contrast, the plumber kills it by watching others play a game, and his predecessors may have used whittling as a way to make it seem as though they were doing something when, in fact, they were doing nothing (or at least nothing productive). Yet this suggests that the plumber and the Protestant are not as different as they may seem. Indeed, they share an ironic kinship rooted in their joint effort to treat time as an empty vessel for experience and activity. Compared to productive labor, that which has the look of wasted time typically requires equally relentless effort. The unquestioned admonition in both cases seems to be “keep busy” (and watching others play a game is one way to do so). Perhaps this ironic kinship between killing and filling time represents an anxious restlessness in the mind of the only creature self-consciously aware of its own impending mortality. All of us are running out of time, and we are painfully aware of this simple truth. Whatever its source, the ceaseless activity unites otherwise divergent approaches to the fact of finitude and the ultimately limited allocation of time. A colleague reports overhearing a passerby mutter, “Why shouldn’t I kill time? Time will eventually kill me.”16 True enough, but there is remarkably little effort to kill time in our data—further evidence, perhaps, of a culture that discourages us from wasting time.

Making Time for Each Other As with other dimensions of temporal agency, transcripts that concern allocation display interpersonal as well as intrapersonal renditions. We make time for the people who really matter in our lives, and we expect them to reciprocate.

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The notion of “quality time” is a prosaic variation on this theme, and a nineteenyear-old woman provides the following example: My parents would set aside certain times of the week when we all would be together without any interruptions. We weren’t allowed to have friends visit or even talk to them on the phone. We’d talk about various things—school, current events— over dinner, and these conversations would often last until bedtime. Note the statement that begins with “We weren’t allowed.” This phrase marks temporal agency on the part of her parents—a demand that the entire family assemble in one place several times a week, that members of the family, and only the family, make time for each other. This temporal agency on the part of her parents takes the form of prescription (conversation with family) as well as proscription (no interruptions by outsiders). Nonetheless, this family tradition is ultimately voluntary—a matter of choice. Nothing required the parents to demand this activity of their children, and many families do nothing of the sort. From a universe of behavioral options, they have elected to establish this tradition and impose it on their children. As such, their parental agency is experienced as temporal determinism by their daughter. She “must” allocate some of her time to the family. Actually, acceding to their wishes is an agentic move but clearly one that reflects parental insistence. Once again, we observe the twofold nature of causal processes in social interaction. There is plenty of agency, but it is often disguised as temporal imposition on others and their resulting conformity. Agency is implicated, but working backward in the causal chain, we frequently discover that agentic practices are products of prior socialization. The comments from a forty-year-old female sales clerk shed some light on this consequential linkage: I was raised in a religious home and try to raise my family in the same environment. So I ask my family to give one hour a week to God; that is not asking too much. I wake them at 8:00 a.m. and continue to push and hurry them to get ready so that we can get to church on time. Her temporal agency functions as a willful link in the causal chain, not an exercise in freewheeling whimsy. Instead of caprice, we witness the intergenerational reproduction of cultural practices. There is a twofold sense in which she makes time for her family—simultaneously allocating and demanding temporal resources.

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With only twenty-four hours in the day, choices must be made. As with fiscal allocation, then, the allocation of time reflects decisions concerning the appropriate use of our most precious resource. In the past, those who were separated from loved ones would have devoted time to reading and writing letters. A twenty-one-year-old woman reminds us that the contemporary versions are telephone calls, e-mail, and text-messaging: One hour every day—first thing when I get up. . . . I am studying here for one year as an exchange student. All my family and friends and boyfriend are in Ireland, so it is very important for me to keep in contact with these people in order to maintain relations. A twenty-one-year-old male chimes in with kindred behavior and emotions: Every day, around noon, in the computer lab. I sit down; I get connected; first, I read my messages and, if I feel like it, answer. . . . When my parents send me photographs and happy words, missing words, I feel sad and glad at the same time. There are so many other things these students could (or should) be doing. From an array of options and obligations, they choose to stay in touch with loved ones back home. Time is essential to the cultivation of our relationships. If we do not make time for them, they wither and die. Our social bonds need time in much the same way that other forms of life need sunlight and water. Hence, temporal agency figures prominently in the efforts of a twenty-three-year-old waitress to nurture a relationship with her boyfriend: I work a very busy schedule during the week, and so does my boyfriend. We rarely get to spend much time together. So we set aside Saturdays as our day for only each other. No matter what else has been planned. . . . I love spending time with him and savor every minute of my day with him. Even potential relationships are accorded temporal privileges, as indicated by a forty-six-year-old tree surgeon: “If I have a date, I will schedule everything else around it.” He creates a special temporal space in which to pursue companionship. In his observational studies of behavior in public places, Erving Goffman distinguished between a “single” and a “with.”17 The former is an individual; the latter “is a party of more than one whose members are perceived to be

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‘together.’ ”18 Indeed, it is incumbent upon the members of a “with” to employ “tie-signs” of one kind or another that display the nature of their relationship to others in the immediate vicinity.19 Goffman identifies a number of these signals, including proximity and touch, but he fails to mention the indispensable ingredient of time together. In contrast, Alfred Schutz emphasizes that, in the “We-relation,” individuals share “a common vivid present.”20 The simultaneity of regular, face-to-face interaction makes for “a new dimension of time”—a temporal foundation for intersubjectivity.21 “We grow older together,” as he puts it.22 The tree surgeon “will schedule everything else around” his date. The waitress and her boyfriend “set aside Saturdays as [their] day for only each other.” We use all manner of electronic devices to stay in touch with each other despite the many competing demands on our time. The sheer fact of time together is the fundamental tie-sign, as Goffman might have phrased it. People in a relationship look for “temporal indicators” of each other’s commitment: desire for time together, initiation of shared intervals of time, the duration and quality of these intervals. Likewise, Schutz tells us that people anchor their relationships in copresence. We spend time together and, rather than your time or my time, it becomes our time. Sharing the moment amplifies the flow of information between us. By cohabiting a “temporal commons,” we are more likely to know each other’s mind and mutuality is maximized. For a twenty-four-year-old drugstore cashier and her friends, what they accomplish is not as important as spending time together: I usually fish in the afternoons on Saturday. This is a weekly thing. I go with one or two other people. . . . Since it isn’t a necessity that we catch fish that day for food, I am able to relax, enjoy the weather and the company of my friends. It’s a way to get away from the everyday working environment and retreat into an almost alternate world. In the same vein, a fifty-two-year-old small business owner and her husband use sailing as a pretext for time together: “We go out to enjoy an afternoon on the water by ourselves.” It is also worth noting that the companions with which we want to spend time are frequently not human. Multifaceted research by Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders demonstrates that animals occupy an “important place” in our lives.23 And, as usual, the significance of animal companions is marked by our willingness to make time for them. Animals keep us company when we want to pamper ourselves, as in the case of this nineteen-year-old woman: “In the afternoons, three times a week, I put a movie in, lay on the couch, cover myself in a blanket, and get Antuco [a monkey] and my bunny and

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watch the movie.” However, spending time with animal companions is often the focus of our attention and personal satisfaction. A twenty-six-year-old waiter offers the following testimony: “I play with my dog or take him places to play, before and after work, almost every day. Seeing my dog happy makes me happy.”

Solitude We make time for others, but we make time for ourselves, too. In fact, a rich vein of data was devoted to the creation of intervals of solitude. During these moments, there is an intentional withdrawal from the world as we earmark time for personal reflection or aesthetic forms of self-expression. It is interesting to note that a recent architectural trend connects time and space for this purpose. Those who can afford to do so may devote a particular room in their house to solitude and meditation.24 Yet our respondents suggest that this form of time work can transpire anywhere, and it is no less likely to occur outdoors. A twenty-three-year-old woman allocates time for writing in her journal “at least three days a week,” during which she feels “expressive” and “intimate with myself.” Writing is optional, however, as the response from another young woman indicates: I set time aside quite frequently just to be by myself and think about what’s going on in my life and to understand things. This may either be just going and sitting on the beach or taking a bike ride somewhere. It involves normally being outside and getting away from people I know. It can be any time of the day or week. And, as a third young woman testifies, reflection can be a welcome intrusion on unrelated activity: In the evening, almost every day, I start reading, [but] then I begin to think of something that does not have anything to do with the reading. I keep fluctuating from reading to thinking. It is very important to me to have this time when I can learn about myself and get away from outside influences. Of course, it is naive to think, as she does, that “outside influences” do not accompany her during these interludes, but they are, nonetheless, “important” opportunities for self-reflection. Furthermore, as George Herbert Mead argued, self-reflection is preparatory to agentic practices because it

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enables the individual to consider different responses to his or her circumstances before selecting the one most likely to accomplish what he or she desires.25 We have examined the allocation of time for self-pampering, but many of our respondents seek solace in time alone or use solitude in otherwise comforting ways. When visiting his home in Trinidad, for example, a twenty-oneyear-old student drives on “back roads for the fun of it,” but also because it “settles the nerves.” A nineteen-year-old female takes a spiritual path toward the same goal: I pray at night before I go to bed to settle my nerves. I need some time to think and be at ease. I have a lot of things going on in my head all day, and at night when I can rest before I go to bed is my most peaceful time. I like to think back on everything and go over all that I have done, and praying for those I love and my friends makes me feel like everything will be okay. As a forty-one-year-old teacher points out, the key factor in comforting solitude is temporary disengagement from one’s responsibilities and relationships: I play [guitar] alone for a few hours. The week is spent working, maintaining home, and spending time with family and children. Time to myself falls on Sundays, early or late afternoon. This relaxes me and seems to remove me from the normal pace found Monday through Friday. When I play, I am happy, relaxed, carefree, and time seems to slow down. A twenty-eight-year-old waitress adds a loud variation on aesthetic and soothing withdrawal from the world: I feel at peace when I paint. I don’t get to do it very often, so it gives me a lot of joy. I haven’t finished any of the paintings I’ve started because I don’t get to paint a lot. But when I do, I try to block out every other aspect of my day, week, life. I blast the music and just kind of escape. Nothing bothers me; it’s really peaceful. I get to relax and devote all my energy to doing something I enjoy. Allocation is at issue. No one demands it of her, but she makes time for this pursuit even though she obtains only intrinsic satisfactions from doing so. “Time to myself,” in short, provides a temporal context for personal forms of spirituality and (re)creation.

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The early Christian hermits are not in vogue these days, but there is an important, if often unacknowledged, connection between reclusive time and private realms of spirituality. Not uncommonly, we summon these spirits while we are outdoors. Indeed, one young man describes the concurrence of nature and seclusion as something akin to a religious experience: I like to go camping with friends, but sometimes I’ll go by myself. It’s a great way to cut yourself off from everything and everybody. It’s time for myself—a special, almost sacred time for solitude. Nature is beside the point, however. Just as there are nature preserves, another young man creates what I call a “time preserve” in the midst of an electronic wilderness: There are days when I don’t answer the door if people knock. I don’t check e-mail, and I don’t answer the phone if it rings. I don’t watch television or listen to the radio. I try to keep the world from barging in so I can concentrate on the moment, and I revel in being off-line. In a society where technology connects us incessantly to one another, making oneself unavailable is a willful act of resistance.

My Time Those who would set time aside for themselves do not operate in a vacuum. We are, rather, enmeshed within an elaborate network of social relationships. Family, friends, colleagues, clients; all of these people want some of our time. They do not consider themselves greedy, nor should we. After all, each of them wants “just a minute.” But, like time piranhas, once each of them takes a bite, there may be little or nothing left for oneself. How, then, do we reserve time for ourselves in such circumstances? The data reveal a variety of strategies that are more or less assertive. A twenty-six-year-old graduate student took the most explicit route by putting her extended family on notice that she simply would not be available during preparation for her comprehensive exam. In this manner, she anticipates and fends off what would otherwise be numerous interruptions. By contrast, a harried forty-five-year-old lawyer and mother relies on the Machiavellian use of distraction in an effort to carve out a temporal space for herself at home: Saturdays, when I’m busy and my [six-year-old] child does not have anything to do or wants to participate in my activity. He wants me to

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play with him. I usually have to study or work. I try to get him interested in a book, game, or toy and then, when his attention is fully engaged, extract myself to go back to work. His attention is now on an interesting topic and time is irrelevant to him. For men, the classic ploy is activity that separates them from domestic relationships and responsibilities. “Going camping on a regular basis lets me relax and get away from the family,” as a forty-one-year-old carpenter puts it. The activity in question is, of course, only a pretext for solitude. Hence, a thirtythree-year-old mechanic invokes ancient folklore when he notes that it does not really matter “whether the fish are taking the bait.” Either way, he has freed time up for himself. There is, finally, evidence for an intriguingly possessive attitude toward temporal experience. A number of our subjects not only lay claim to regular intervals of “private time,” to use Eviatar Zerubavel’s terminology, but do so  with a distinctly proprietary way of speaking.26 For example, one young woman describes swimming as “my time, ’cause I don’t hear anything, just the water.” Likewise, a young man refers to hours at the seashore as “my personal time.” This pattern transcends age and gender differences. Moreover, some respondents go so far as to name these intervals for themselves, thereby staking claim to a kind of temporal sovereignty. According to a young man, “no other people” are allowed into his room during “Taylor time.” Similarly, a twenty-six-year-old woman asserts, “I take out mommy time twice a day. The kids know when it’s mommy time, and they respect that quiet time.” Indeed, “my time” is a fitting sobriquet for every species of temporal agency.

7 Taking Time

ore retail theft is perpetrated by employees than by customers. And blue-collar workers pilfer tools, while white-collar workers steal office supplies. Estimates of the annual losses run into billions of dollars. In short, thievery of both products and matériel is widespread across all segments of industry, and research on this topic by social scientists is equally abundant.1 No less prevalent, but far less studied, is the theft of time. Its design (i.e., the way one carries it off) is often confidential or clandestine, and with good reason. Something like temporal alchemy is at work because, through agentic practices of one kind or another, we can turn someone else’s time into our own. Temporal appropriation can be found in all manner of social contexts, but it is the crux of the matter in labor-management relations. Here, more than anywhere else, we have two dispersed populations dedicated to taking time from each other. In his magisterial article, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” E. P. Thompson documents the fact that labor and management have been stealing time from each other ever since the emergence of industrial manufacturing in Great Britain during the period from 1300 to 1650.2 There was no shortage of work during the preindustrial era, but the timely completion of one’s tasks was at issue, not how much time one had worked. With the transition to industrial manufacturing, however, formerly rural populations had to be resocialized for a new temporal regime that was based on the clock—not the natural rhythms of preindustrial agriculture and pastoralism.

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Thus, Thompson cites the simultaneously naive and brutal words of William Temple, who, in 1770, advocated that four-year-old children of the poor should be sent to work houses: There is considerable use in their being, somehow or other, constantly employed at least twelve hours a day, whether they earn their living or not; for by these means, we hope that the rising generation will be so habituated to constant employment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to them.3 His suggestion typifies attitudes that were widespread among the stewards of this cultural transformation. Many of those who owned the factories were not content to impose a fundamental revision of temporal orientation on their new employees. In addition, as Thompson demonstrates with extensive testimony, they not only took minutes and hours from workers through unscrupulous timekeeping but also knowledge of time itself, because workers were often forbidden to own or carry timepieces. Consider the testimony of an anonymous worker from Dundee: In reality there were no regular hours: masters and managers did with us as they liked. The clocks at the factories were often put forward in the morning and back at night, and instead of being instruments for the measurement of time, they were used as cloaks for cheatery and oppression. Though this was known among the hands, all were afraid to speak, and a workman then was afraid to carry a watch, as it was no uncommon event to dismiss anyone who presumed to know too much about the science of horology.4 These interdictions were established for much the same reason that African American slaves were prohibited from learning to read or write in the antebellum South. Clearly, some employers were making a convenience of their monopoly on time reckoning. Predictably, then, the workers responded to unfamiliar temporal discipline and routine exploitation by developing their own techniques for taking time back from their employers. The rising bourgeoisie was imbued with the philosophy of Isaac Newton, for whom the universe was akin to a great clock, and they strived to inculcate regularity in the working class.5 As Thompson observes, however, this orientation was utterly foreign to a population only recently removed from peasant agriculture: “The work pattern was one of alternate bouts of intense labour and of idleness, wherever men were in control

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of their own working lives.” 6 This clash of temporal cultures resulted in the proliferation of various forms of absenteeism—most notably, devotion to Saint Monday: “Saint Monday, indeed, appears to have been honoured almost universally wherever small-scale, domestic, and outwork industries existed; was generally found in the pits; and sometimes continued in manufacturing and heavy industry.”7 Many holidays were devoted to particular saints during the early days of the Industrial Revolution. A sardonic way to interpret absenteeism on Mondays, consequently, was the assertion that one was honoring “Saint Monday.” Devotion to Saint Monday continued into the twentieth century, especially among British coal miners: “An old Yorkshire miner informs me that in his youth it was a custom on a bright Monday morning to toss a coin in order to decide whether or not to work.”8 Acknowledging the “antagonistic” relations between labor and management at the outset of the twentieth century, Frederick Winslow Taylor set about to rectify the situation by applying scientific methods to the study of efficiency in manufacturing and other types of manual labor.9 He believed that the value-neutral ideal of greater efficiency would benefit both sides, despite the fact that it could only be achieved by eliminating any vestige of worker control over the temporality of production. Hence, from his standpoint, autonomy was the problem, and he was critical of the “old” assumption “that each workman shall be left with the final responsibility for doing his job practically as he thinks best.”10 Time was equally at issue, however, for his goal was to show the employee how “to do his work better and quicker.”11 This goal would be accomplished through “scientific study of the time required to do various kinds of work.”12 “With a stop-watch,” Taylor would ascertain “the proper time for all of the motions that were made by the men.”13 And, of course, the “proper time” was always the “shortest time.”14 Put differently, his time-and-motion studies were directed toward eliminating temporal agency on the part of the workers. Yet, by the middle of the twentieth century, a series of papers by Donald Roy revealed that nothing had changed. His ethnographic research showed that workers continued to assert control over temporal dimensions of industrial production. Quota restriction and “goldbricking” were endemic at the machine shop he studied, with workers wasting one-and-a-half hours out of every eight on the job.15 Roy was careful to put “wasted” inside of quotation marks, and rightly so, because that is a perspectival conclusion. In fact, “loafing on the job was discovered not to be simple inactivity,” but rather dynamic as well as creative behavior, and no less likely to emerge within the context of “labor-management harmony.”16 The most famous example is “banana time,” one in a series of unscheduled interruptions that were orchestrated by workers in the machine shop:

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Banana time followed peach time by approximately an hour. Sammy again provided the refreshments, namely, one banana. There was, however, no four-way sharing of Sammy’s banana. Ike would gulp it down by himself after surreptitiously extracting it from Sammy’s lunch box, kept on a shelf behind Sammy’s work station. Each morning, after making the snatch, Ike would call out, “Banana time!” and proceed to down his prize while Sammy made futile protests and denunciations. George would join in with mild remonstrances, sometimes scolding Sammy for making so much fuss. The banana was one which Sammy brought for his own consumption at lunch time; he never did get to eat his banana, but kept bringing one for his lunch.17 Needless to say, all work halted during this ritualistic horseplay, but Roy notes that, like his fellow workers, he “grew to look forward to the daily seizure and the verbal interaction which followed.”18 Research conducted toward the end of the twentieth century reiterates previous findings. Moreover, none of this is unique to British and American nationalities. On the contrary, it would seem to be intrinsic to that existential arrangement whereby time is exchanged for money. Michel de Certeau has described “what in France is called la perruque, ‘the wig,’ ” a term that refers to “the worker’s own work disguised as work for his employer.”19 A receptionist, for instance, may appear to be taking telephone calls for her boss when, in actuality, she is taking calls for her own catering business, which, unbeknownst to him, she runs out of his office. In such circumstances, she is said to be “wearing her wig.” This deceptive activity is a form of temporal deviance because, as de Certeau puts it, “the worker . . . diverts time” that has been paid for by one’s employer.20 Nonetheless, “it differs from pilfering in that nothing of material value is stolen. It differs from absenteeism in that the worker is officially on the job.”21 With this incisive concept, it becomes apparent that temporal agency is not restricted to industrial settings. Workers continue to take time from their employers, and vice versa. In his ethnographic study of Chicago-area temp workers, Kevin Henson observed what he calls minute pinching: “Through reporting shorter lunches than the ones actually taken, adding half an hour here, fifteen minutes there to their time cards, temporaries attempted to get the most pay possible for ‘a day’s work.’ ”22 Meanwhile, British employers have pioneered annualized hours agreements with employees in continuous-process industries. Under such arrangements, employees agree to work a certain number of hours per year, not on particular days, but whenever the company calls them. By the same token, they can be sent home whenever the need for production slackens. Emma Bell and Alan Tuckman note that such arrangements erode the traditional

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distinction “between owner’s time, the time for work, and own time, the time for leisure.”23 Predictably, workers have responded by “arranging for wives or partners to answer the telephone, filtering all telephone calls using an answering machine, or even changing the home telephone number”; in turn, employers have banned the use of telephone answering machines, initiated “disciplinary proceedings against employees who do not make themselves available for call-out,” and replaced missing workers with outside contractors.24 It is easier than ever before to wear one’s wig at work, as the French would put it, given the ubiquity of personal computers with access to the Web and Internet. As Paul Sloan points out, this is a central paradox in the new economy: “The same technologies that have spurred huge productivity gains in recent years have also made goofing off easier than ever—not to mention a lot more fun.”25 Nearly all of the possibilities have been assembled at one convenient Web site: www.ishouldbeworking.com. There is a digital clock counting the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the weekend. There are links to games, jokes, chat, loafing tools, contests, sports, free stuff, entertainment, a new job, and much more. It would not be complete without a panic button that sends you to a newsgroup if your boss is coming. Employers have responded by monitoring e-mail and Web-based activity with “key-logger” programs, which record every keystroke employees make on their computer keyboards. In light of the frequently antagonistic relationship between labor and management, it would be tempting to conclude that the theft of time represents nothing more than an employee’s sloth or self-indulgence. Some employees rest or even sleep while “on the clock”; others play games or view pornography. Nonetheless, this behavior does not encompass the full range of variation in the theft of time. A very different picture emerges when we consider the development and dissemination of free software. This process entails the theft of time because employees typically use time “at work” to produce and distribute such software. At one level, there is freeware— such as the now defunct Web browser, Netscape—for which there is no fee but also no way to examine or modify the code. At another level, there is free and open source software—such as the Linux operating system—in which anyone can examine and modify the code, providing that they make the resulting program available to others on the same terms. Either way, the company cannot make money from such software, so time devoted to writing it is time subtracted from proprietary production. Yet the employee was “at work” and, indeed, working in the generic sense. What, then, is his or her motivation? In his book, The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler shows that the motivations for “nonproprietary production” are quite diverse.26 Some of the employees in “the networked information economy” view such work as ideologically

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“desirable from the perspective of . . . freedom and justice.”27 In effect, like a lawyer’s pro bono hours, they “donate” their time (i.e., the company’s time) to work that serves the greater social good. But this interpretation is complicated by the fact that such reasoning need not exclude other, less highminded motives. What if the employee is using the creation of open source software to build a personal reputation in the field? What if the employee finds the nonproprietary work more enjoyable and surreptitiously gives it rather more effort than his or her supervisor would like? Benkler’s research suggests that the “theft” of time is often a subtle matter of perspective. But there is much more to time banditry than e-mail, Web sites, and software. Indeed, these stereotypes can blind us to the creativity and diversity of kindred practices. A police officer resigns when her supervisors discover that she was “ ‘putting hours on her time card that she didn’t work.’ ”28 Likewise, a county water department employee is arrested for “submitting false overtime claims.”29 And a large law firm stands accused of padding the billable hours charged to its clients.30 Obviously, the theft of time is not restricted to shopfloor underlings. In fact, the truly grandiose perpetrators are corporations and their governmental allies. During 2006, a Pennsylvania jury awarded damages of $78.5 million in a class-action suit that accused Wal-Mart of forcing employees to work through breaks and off the clock.31 A similar suit was brought against the Eckerd Drug Store chain on behalf of store managers who were paid no overtime despite making only modest salaries for working 100-hour weeks.32 This legal wrangling took place against the political backdrop of Bush administration efforts to revise overtime rules in an effort to deny eligibility among thousands of middle-income workers.33 Vincent Roscigno and Randy Hodson argue that individualized forms of worker resistance “are seldom studied given their subtle and often covert character.”34 Thus, by closely examining the theft of time, we can address a significant gap in the existing literature. Roscigno and Hodson assert that “our theoretical models must also acknowledge agency on the shop floor,” and, I would add, the office, the store, the boardroom, and wherever there is gainful employment.35 Yet their own analysis of eighty-two workplace ethnographies is thoroughly deterministic inasmuch as they assume that the rate of worker resistance is shaped by antecedent conditions: “Well-organized, bureaucratic workplaces with little interpersonal conflict and abuse, for instance, will generate lower levels of resistance, while poorly organized, more informal work environments with poor social relations will display higher levels.”36 In short, they maintain that the worker can be pushed into various forms of resistance by mistreatment. Recall, however, that Donald Roy and Ben Hamper observed shop-floor horseplay within the context of labormanagement harmony— data which contradict a deterministic framework.

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Contemporary social science research has not come to grips with temporal agency at work. Our quantitative methods are not attuned to clandestine types of dissonance, and our conceptual framework encourages us to think in terms of deterministic causation. Students of worker resistance mention agency only in passing while they focus on strikes, slowdowns, and absenteeism— thereby ignoring the agentic practices of employees who are “at” work. Yes, we still call in “well” and honor St. Monday (not to mention St. Friday), but, as we see in the following sections, there is much more to it than that.37 Roscigno and Hodson call for “broader conceptions of resistance— conceptions that systematically include the possibility of worker agency.”38 The findings of this study move us in that direction by bringing our attention to bear on the furtive creativity that makes for the theft of time.

Temporal Agency at Work Only thirty-seven of our subjects mentioned efforts to use time at work for personal reasons. This category is by far the smallest in our data, undoubtedly owing to the more or less illicit character of the conduct in question. Aside from socializing, their strategies are more solitary than interactive. In addition, it is worth noting that, with some exceptions, their responses were terse during our interviews, and their statements often took the form of lists without much elaboration. So, fewer of our subjects addressed this dimension of time work, and those who did had less to say. Despite their apparent candor, moreover, this is certainly a sanitized view— a conservative estimate, if you will. Nonetheless, it is illuminating to see what turns up in the way of agentic practices when “resistance,” per se, is not the focus of research. On the job, temporality is contested terrain where employers strive to control the behavioral rhythms of employees who, in turn, employ a panoply of techniques to appropriate time that ostensibly belongs to someone else. The motivation for taking time from others runs the gamut from necessary to gratuitous, but, more often than not, our subjects were stealing from Peter in order to pay Paul. This aphorism is nearly literal when, like a fifty-two-yearold female librarian, employees appropriate time from work for the upkeep of their personal finances: “I’ll also write out any bills that need to be mailed to save myself from doing that later when I get home.” Elsewhere, a thirtyseven-year-old information technology consultant is updating and reconciling her checkbook while “on the clock.” For a twenty-three-year-old staff-service associate in a financial firm, it is necessary to “make personal appointments by phone at work.” She and her fellow office workers engage in American variations of la perruque while ostensibly assisting the financial advisors. As she puts it, “When you work nine

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to five, and so do most of the doctors and other businesses, it becomes necessary [italics added] to do this then.” Her comments are echoed by a twentytwo-year-old day care teacher: I am working 6:30 to 4:30, Monday through Friday, which is very different from any other work I have had. I now have to [italics added] use work time to make appointments on the phone, wedding planning, car repair, fiancé chat, and so on during the time I am supposed to be working. Often times, too, we don’t like the lunch for the day, so I run over to Dominos and get pizza, or down the street for coffee since ours is horrible. These are things that I do on the clock, as well as some studying and the daily catching up with the girls at work. She also observes that “no one clocks out for smoke breaks.” The staff-service associate, quoted previously, does not smoke, but she indulges in compensatory agency: Half of the office smokes and therefore takes a five-minute break every hour or two in between tasks. So I take my own little breaks by surfing the Web, you know, checking to see if that coat I want to buy is on sale yet, what the weather will be this weekend, etcetera. To keep my sanity, these things are necessary [italics added]. The repeated use of wording like “necessary” and “have to” is symptomatic of the discomfort that diligent people experience when they admit to covert temporal strategies of this sort. It marks the temporal “double bind” that ensnares so many workers in the contemporary labor force.39 The demands of gainful employment are such that lower-level employees can be driven to steal time from themselves. Here, the staff-service associate provides another case in point: I usually don’t do much eating at lunch. I am allowed a break from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. and must be back for the others to take theirs. I usually go out and run errands: groceries, a return at the mall, recycling, post office. You name it, at noon is usually when I do it! Technically, I guess that is not using work time because that is my personal time, but I mention it because of an interesting trend that I found: all of the staff-service associates and operations staff do this. . . . The interesting thing is not that we are too busy to do this stuff later (most of the women in the office have children at home), but that the financial advisors in the office don’t have a set time; they break at

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any time of the day. They run errands at any time they feel like leaving. They check out the new Home Depot that opened down the street at 2:30 in the afternoon or go out to get a cinnamon bun and latte at 10:00 a.m. Her astute observations are in keeping with our previous findings concerning temporal agency— findings that corroborate the fundamental insight of Erving Goffman: “when the individual withdraws from a situated self he does not draw into some psychological world that he creates himself but rather acts in the name of some other socially created identity.” 40 When playing a particular role, one takes on a definite identity or “self.” There are innumerable ways to withdraw from a situated self, but common to all of them is the redirection of time that would otherwise be devoted to the social role in question. Our respondent is more than a staff-service associate; among other things, she is also a wife, daughter, citizen, and consumer. These social roles motivate her errands, and it is on behalf of these errands that she steals time from herself (i.e., from her lunch hour). There is, however, a more expansive point to make. We always take time from one role or responsibility in order to give time to another “socially created identity,” as Goffman puts it. Theft occurs regardless of whether one is stealing time from oneself or one’s employer. What is more, her aggrieved comments point to a significant but typically overlooked division in the American occupational structure: those who can mix personal work (or play) with the requirements of their job without getting into trouble for doing so and those who cannot. The chronic need to steal time from self foments what Max Scheler refers to as “ressentiment,” which is “chiefly confined to those who serve and are dominated at the moment, who fruitlessly resent the sting of authority.”41 Within such contexts (regardless of how placid things may seem), time work becomes, like crime, a disorganized and largely clandestine form of class warfare. The staff-service associate keenly observes that the financial advisors take a “break at any time of the day.” Generally speaking, employers offer some employees—usually those with greater power or prestige—the privilege of taking time for personal reasons whenever they want. It is typically a taken-for-granted (and unwritten) perquisite of their contract. Like the staffservice associate, however, the machinists studied by Christena Nippert-Eng are only allowed to take a “collective break” or “scheduled breaks” in accordance with a “break policy.”42 For all similarly placed employees, unscheduled breaks are insurrectionary, if only furtively so. Thus, Nippert-Eng argues that, during breaks, we “repossess” our time; we “take our time back from an employer.”43

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Human beings are not trapped in the present. Language empowers us to transcend the here-and-now of our immediate circumstances.44 It follows that one of the distinctive features of human nature is our capacity to take time from the present in order to plan the future. For example, a thirty-sixyear-old female cashier at Walgreens observes that “there are times during the afternoon when it slows down and I get breaks in the line. . . . There isn’t a whole lot that I can do except make up a shopping list.” In the same vein, a forty-nine-year-old air-conditioning technician interrupts his work to “figure out what we are doing for dinner so that, if needed, I can pick up some things or just come straight home.” But this form of temporal agency can encompass far more than one’s plans for the evening. Undoubtedly, the outer limits are explored by a thirty-one-year-old community organizer for a nonprofit organization: “I make lists. Lots of them. Lists of things to do for the rest of the day, places I want to travel in the world, camping trips and hikes I plan to take during the summer, books I want to read, movies I want to see, restaurants I’d like to eat at. You name it, I’ve got a list for it.” It is interesting to note that, upon hearing her own confession, she felt compelled to offer the following mitigation: “Of course, I don’t do this all the time. Don’t get me wrong; I work hard!” She is an esteemed employee, and there is no reason to question her diligence. It is difficult to argue, however, that such conduct is necessitated by a lack of time. As sociologists have shown, time and time again, norms become evident in the breach. In short, her proviso is the shadow of self-consciousness regarding temporal deviance. Employees bring an attentive and opportunistic attitude to work. While “on the clock,” they make personal use of whatever their employer offers or demands of them, as is evident in our interview with a twenty-six-year-old shelving assistant at a public library: On the job, I just put books away, so when I want to take a break or “get away” from the eyes of my boss, I hide in a row of the library and browse some books. Since my job isn’t all that intense, I tend to do a lot of daydreaming in which I figure out what I’m going to do that night or the next day. When I’m asked to take out the garbage, I usually make a quick phone call to a friend to make plans for after work. A forty-three-year-old female employee at Blockbuster takes time away from her official duties for “checking to see which [movie] I will rent later on for that weekend.” Likewise, “if I need some flowers, I pick them out and arrange them,” says a thirty-six-year-old female employee at a floral shop. A fifty-five-year-old male postal worker admits that, “while on the job, I usually take care of my own mailing whenever I can.” A thirty-eight-year-old female

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employee at Macy’s does some “pre-shopping” while on the clock, as does a forty-year-old assistant manager at a Dollar Tree store. And, of course, any employer who sends an employee out to run errands can count on kindred opportunism. The Lord’s work does not inhibit a forty-seven-year-old church secretary from providing the following instance: “In the morning, I take the mail to the post office. Also during this time, I take my own mail, as well, and get that done with. And if the need arises to get more stamps for myself, I’ll pick those up, too.” These forms of temporal agency are numberless, described in an offhand manner, and, it would appear, unmotivated by rancor or abusive treatment at work. Physical and mental needs of employees also compete with productive labor for time on the clock. The aptly named restroom, for example, is well known as a temporary haven from one’s responsibilities. Hunger offers another reason to interrupt one’s work, and the men in our sample were more willing to cite it. A forty-eight-year-old automobile mechanic describes how food is used to create a comfortable pace: “After I take care of a car, I usually take time out for myself to relax before starting the next car. During this time, I’ll make a quick snack and sit down with the rest of the guys for a little bit.” This agentic rhythm is not unique to manual labor, as indicated by the comments of a forty-three-year-old newspaper editor: “After reviewing a section of the paper, I will take a five-minute break or so to refresh my mind. During this time, I will get a snack, grab a drink with a friend, or make conversation in the office.” The desire to get up and move about is equally prevalent, and unlike hunger, women are no less likely to admit it. “I’ll usually take a walk around and talk to others who aren’t doing anything,” says a middleaged male accountant. His comments parallel those of a forty-four-year-old female high school teacher: “I like to roam the halls to stretch my legs and visit other teachers who are on their downtime, as well.” In some instances, as with this fifty-five-year-old male computer analyst, the individual has a cover story: “I walk around the office partly checking to see if anyone has any problems, but also to pass the time.” There are multiple variations on the theme of willful, albeit temporary, respite from one’s labor. To begin with, the individual can simply work slowly. A nice example is provided by the aforementioned Blockbuster employee, whose unadorned statement alludes to the leitmotif of this chapter: “I take my time when putting up the movies [italics added].” The same evocative phrase emerges from our interview with a twenty-eight-year-old male facilities worker with the city: “When I go out on the job to mow ditches or do random clean-up, I take my time and take many breaks to make the job last longer so I don’t have to do as many tasks per day.” In turn, his wording is echoed by a forty-year-old male photo manager at Walgreens, whose comments suggest

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that this practice is no less prevalent among white-collar and managerial employees: Being a manager, I can’t leave the area except to be in the office. However, when I’m in the office filling out some paperwork or counting the register, this is my time to take a break. I take my time filling out the paperwork or doing other jobs. This isn’t really time that I take for myself because I am still doing work, but by taking my time, I get a nice little paid break and am rarely questioned because I am the manager. In related fashion, a thirty-five-year-old sports reporter refers to his “personalized break,” while a fifty-seven-year-old female school counselor takes “a mini-break that is different than the scheduled break that I get.” 45 Indeed, given proper staging, it can be difficult to tell when an employee is back at work. Consider, for instance, this admission from the aforementioned postal worker: “Following my break, I usually take a little longer before I start back up again.” Whose time is it? Among many employees from varied walks of life, it is, momentarily at least, “my time.” To “take my time” is a noteworthy phrase. Its use signals a proprietary attitude. Given our current focus, this idiomatic expression refers to reappropriating time from one’s employer by means of dawdling. Put differently, the time one takes is often viewed as originally one’s own. Almost all of our respondents are English-speaking citizens of the United States, but a quick survey of other languages reveals the linguistic resources for comparable idioms and associated forms of time work.46 In Italy, disgruntled employees can mutter, “Me la prendo comoda” (I’ll take my time). Their Spanish counterparts might say, “Voy a tomármelo con calma” (I’m going to take my time). The French version, “Je vais prendre mon temps,” can be translated in the same way (I’m going to take my time), as can the German statement, “Ich lass mir Zeit.” Further afield, the linguistic expressions are more varied, but they can be wielded with similar intent. At the heart of the matter is an employee whose willingness to work is conditional on the right to set one’s own pace. This outlook can be enunciated in Icelandic, albeit without declaring that it is “my” interval: “Ég geri það þegar mér hentar” (I will do it when it is convenient for me). Japanese has very different syntax, but “Watashi wa jikan wo kakaru” (choosing to take my time) could suffice to make the same point. There are kindred implications in the Chinese statement, “Wo hui youzhe gan de” (I will take things easy while working). A brief and selective list of foreign phrases proves nothing, of course, but it would appear that people from diverse nationalities have the linguistic resources with which to reappropriate time via

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dawdling. Do they make use of these resources? And if so, how? These questions are beyond the scope of this study and must await future research. Many workers devote extensive time to consuming various forms of mass media while “on the clock.” In fact, this proved to be one of the largest categories of data. However busy they may be during other intervals, it would appear that they are frequently intent on staving off boredom. Some of this material is simply available in the workplace by virtue of the business that is transacted there. “At work,” for example, the aforementioned Blockbuster employee spends some of her time “watching the movies that are playing on the monitors.” In an effort to kill time, a fifty-two-year-old female librarian will read a book, while the previously mentioned drugstore cashier will read a magazine. And, of course, employees whose workplaces do not offer such amenities can be counted upon to bring or stash them at work for any opportunity that should arise. “During the job,” says a thirty-three-year-old male gas station attendant, “I fill out some crossword puzzles. It isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing, as you can see, but when it gets dull and no one is around, I have to entertain myself somehow.” Likewise, a thirty-four-year-old male police officer tells us that “when I don’t have paperwork or anything, I read my book.” It must be a disconcerting trend for employers that, increasingly, cell phones will put online games, television shows, and even films at the fingertips of employees, wherever they may be. Throughout the foregoing analysis, it has become apparent that another sizable portion of the data falls under the rubric of sociability. Not surprisingly, employees take considerable time from their work in order to make time for themselves and each other. It is interesting to note that, from a distance, some of this activity can resemble real work. Our Blockbuster employee provides a case in point: “I love to schmooze with the customers to find out which movies are the ones to watch and which are duds.” Similarly, a twenty-seven-year-old air traffic controller devotes “at least an hour” of each night on the job to conversation with pilots or crew members— conversation he describes as “not job related.” More often, however, there is little or no effort to disguise the sociability we share with co-workers and loved ones, both face to face and electronically mediated. As the aforementioned police officer puts it, “me and some fellow officers will talk about the past week or the upcoming weekend to pass the time.” Further comments from a previously cited newspaper editor represent the behavior of untold others: “During work, I usually check my e-mail or make a few phone calls.” Less typical are games of one kind or another, such as the one affi rmed by a forty-three-year-old female police officer: “On the job . . . a few co-workers and I play a word game. . . . It’s a fun game because it can be continued from downtime to downtime.”

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A thirty-seven-year-old editor does not mince words: “I do a lot of daydreaming when I’m on the clock.” Her frank statement calls our attention to the often camouflaged character of these agentic practices. As in this instance, some of them mimic behavior associated with the thought processes that are intrinsic to real work (i.e., staring into space with a look of profound concentration). Others require more activity, but it too resembles what one is paid to do. Thus, since editors are expected to spend time writing, she can secretly indulge in an aesthetic pastime: “I also like to write poems as a hobby, so I’ll write some of those while at work, too.” This is not “the worker’s own work disguised as work for his employer,” as de Certeau put it, but something akin to a form of play disguised as work for her employer. She savors getting away with something as much as the daydreaming and poetry. In a related vein, clients expect a thirty-seven-year-old information technology consultant to charge them for “billable hours” of work, but they may not realize that she exacts temporal vengeance by adjusting her rates: “I charge annoying clients time and a half; I charge really annoying clients double time.” Her assertive tone segues into self-satisfied amusement when describing how she arranges her desk for extended absences while ostensibly “at” work (i.e., visiting the corporation with which she is consulting): “Leave a sweating, open can of soda pop on your desk, plus half a page of writing on a pad of paper, and the computer monitor open to a relevant page. Do this and you can be gone for a long time.” She constructs an elaborate but false tableau. With this burlesque of real work, the employer’s time becomes her own to spend as she wishes. Neither the editor nor this consultant labor under cruel circumstances, yet both of these women take time from their respective employers by staging something that only looks like work. Not incidentally, they enjoy doing so.

Time, Work, and Self Jack Katz has argued that criminology is imbued with a “sentimental materialism.”47 According to Katz, the “study of crime has been preoccupied with a search for background forces” that motivate criminal activity.48 Fundamental to this causal determinism is the assumption that poverty produces crime— that is, one must be pushed into crime by economic necessity. Katz counters this naive view with persuasive research showing that people are frequently pulled toward crime by its seductive qualities. Moreover, as we have observed, individuals are complicit in their own seduction. To cite but one example, he notes that college students often engage in shoplifting despite having enough money in their pockets to purchase the things they are stealing. Their criminal behavior is not driven by economic necessity. Rather, they are drawn to the “sneaky thrill” of getting away with something.49 Katz concludes that “the

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causes of crime are constructed by the offenders themselves, but the causes they construct are lures and pressures that they experience as independently moving them toward crime.”50 The data in this chapter do not concern criminal activity. Employers are apt to penalize such conduct only on those rare occasions when it cannot be ignored. Nonetheless, the critique of sentimental materialism is applicable to sociological studies of employee resistance in the workplace. Social scientists have been preoccupied with the study of large, collective, and public forms of worker resistance— especially work stoppages of one kind or another. What is more, they search for the background factors that prompt such conduct, typically finding them in abusive and exploitive conditions in the workplace. In so doing, they systematically overlook the agentic, private, and seductive practices we have examined above—practices that seldom disrupt productivity in any noticeable way. Paraphrasing Katz, these sociological studies offer only a “quietist” temporality that blinds us to the actualities of worker resistance and its roots in our capacity for self-determination. Students of worker resistance should consider Goffman’s insights concerning the self—insights, for example, that help us comprehend the secret delight displayed by the consultant above: “It should be understood that the cynic, with all his professional disinvolvement, may obtain unprofessional pleasures from his masquerade, experiencing a kind of gleeful spiritual aggression from the fact that he can toy at will with something his audience must take seriously.”51 One delights in this “reality play” for its liberating qualities.52 Principally, there is the satisfaction of successful theatricality— of pulling one over on others, especially our “superiors.” With his concept of “role distance,” Goffman refers to ways in which we display a degree of “disaffiliation” with a role even while we are enacting it.53 One might expect to see role distance only in the conduct of those who must enact demeaning or otherwise subservient roles, but, on the contrary, Goffman makes it a point to show that even surgeons exhibit role distance during their highly prized and presumably rewarding work. He concludes that, in addition to “expressive” frustration with social restraint of any kind, it is functional to maintain some distance between self and role so that one is poised to handle matters when they go awry.54 Moreover, one cannot submerge oneself in a single role without detriment to competing obligations. The theft of time is a form of role distance, and the latter is an omnipresent feature of human conduct. It follows that people will steal time from their employers as a way of expressing a measure of disaffiliation with the roles in question, regardless of where they sit in the hierarchy or the state of labor-management relations. Goffman begins his study of total institutions by observing the “loss of self-determination,” but his subsequent analysis reveals the vibrant “underlife”

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of that social organization: “In total institutions there will also be a system of what might be called secondary adjustments, namely, practices that do not directly challenge staff but allow inmates to obtain forbidden satisfactions or to obtain permitted ones by forbidden means.”55 It turns out, for instance, that inmates in the mental asylum exploit “free places” where there is a lack of ordinary supervision or surveillance.56 The workplace is not a total institution, but there are admissible similarities that make for a family resemblance. While employers do not invoke Taylor’s name these days, there is no lack of effort to regulate employee conduct. Inevitably, as Goffman recognized, the self chafes under such regulation, and employees counter it by creating an underlife of secondary adjustments and free places. In short, Goffman’s dramaturgical sociology has disquieting implications for our understanding of worker resistance. “At work,” all manner of things transpire that have nothing to do with productivity or profit. There is, then, a wealth of temporal agency that involves taking time from what is ostensibly devoted to one’s job. Typically, these processes are not overtly disruptive. Some of the practitioners are harried and short of time, but others exploit the luxury of temporal autonomy. Some of them work in unpleasant conditions, but most do not. It follows that worker resistance cannot be solely attributed to authoritarian or abusive efforts to control their behavior. Frequently, it would seem, worker resistance represents the gratuitous expression of our existential capacity for willfulness— a desire to distance ourselves from unburdensome obligations. None of this is exclusive to labor-management relations, but just as the mental asylum was a fruitful site for the study of self-determination, so too is the workplace. Work casts a harsh and unflattering light on temporal agency, but one that illuminates something important—something that is often overlooked because it inhabits the shadows of self-consciousness and social interaction.

8 The Ironies of Temporal Agency

n everyday life, we are beset by temporal quandaries of one kind or another. For example, our circumstances can bring us to an experiential fork in the road where we must decide whether to be patient or impatient. This decision is consequential because “patience . . . opens us to a new experience of time.”1 With the effort that makes for patience, I welcome an opportunity to gaze at interesting or beautiful scenery outside my car, barely aware of being stuck in traffic. These moments seem fleeting in retrospect. With impatience, I accede to being a victim of circumstances, obsessed by blocked impulses and “lost” time. These moments seem prolonged and frustrating. Our capacity for selective attention is the decisive factor. Repeatedly, we have witnessed variations on a causal loop of selfdetermination wherein individuals construct their own circumstances with the intent that those circumstances will act back upon them to produce particular forms of temporal experience. We seek certain temporal experiences, and, by the same token, assiduously avoid temporal experiences that are viewed as unsuitable from the standpoint of individual preferences or societal norms. Either way, we strive to control or customize duration, frequency, sequence, timing, and allocation. We take time from others, most notably those for whom we are employed. These six dimensions of time work do not exhaust the possibilities, but they suffice to confirm Allen Bluedorn and Rhetta Standifer’s assertion that “individuals develop their own timescapes (i.e., practiced approaches to time).”2

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In regard to temporal experience, at least, we need not be helpless victims of our immediate circumstances. On the contrary, as Bluedorn and Standifer put it, “human beings socially construct forms of time through their interactions with each other.”3 I would add that, inasmuch as the self is a thoroughly social entity, it is equally true that individuals construct temporal experience through interaction with themselves. These findings suggest that a large portion of our temporal experience is designed and realized through agentic practices that operate at both the intrapersonal and interpersonal levels of analysis. Prior to this study, the agentic construction of temporal experience had not been subjected to systematic empirical scrutiny. Yet it is apparent that, by virtue of these homespun theories and humble practices, we are “doing time.” Doing time is not exclusive to those who are imprisoned. All of us must confront and master temporal experience. On this crucial point, the argot of inmates dovetails with the insight of Candace West and Don Zimmerman in their essay, “Doing Gender.”4 Drawing from Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology (especially his study of Agnes) as well as other sociological research, they reject the naive view of gender as something biologically given in favor of an “understanding of gender as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment.”5 With gender, the individual is accountable for managing a proper display in the eyes of his or her community. This task requires socialization as well as active and ongoing intervention. Likewise, time work involves comparable intervention in one’s temporal experience. Rather than look upon it as situationally given (i.e., a product of contextual determinism), we must see that the individual strives to control or customize how time is experienced. One elects to cultivate a particular form of time. As with gender, time becomes “a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment.” That which is accomplished was not inevitable; on the contrary, it occurs only through due diligence of the individual in question. Consequently, our variegated strands of consciousness—thoughts, feelings, perceptions—are woven together to manufacture the tapestry of temporal experience. Like time, human conduct is multidimensional. Although time work can be the predominant theme in one’s response to the situation at hand, in many instances it plays a less prominent role in a multifaceted agenda. Even so, the data make it clear that time work typically is marked by purposefulness, regardless of its salience in particular circumstances. The young man who would be a writer not only wants to write; he wants to write more often. In addition, it is useful to remember that these empirical materials are framed by the verbal context of our interviews. The subjects were asked to describe ways in which they attempt to control or manipulate their own or others’ experience of time. Consequently, they understood and offered these examples of

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their conduct as being directed, at least in part, to customizing temporal experience. From their own perspective, then, the resulting narratives represent efforts at time work, even where it is not the principal aim of their activity. There is tension between those aspects of human experience that are inflicted on us and those in which our agentic intervention is implicated. It is not always easy to tell them apart— even in the case of socialization, which was once thought to result solely from society demanding that human infants adopt preexisting cultural practices. Contrary to this naive view, William Corsaro has shown that “socialization is not something that happens to children; it is a process in which children, in interaction with others, produce their own peer culture and eventually come to reproduce, to extend, and to join the adult world.”6 As with socialization, it would appear that much of temporal experience does not just happen to us. On the contrary, we see ample evidence of self-determination in the construction of situations to which one wants to respond, not because these situations are ends in themselves but because they are thought to bring about particular types of temporal experience. We have examined one family of agentic practices: forms of time work in everyday life. Finding such conduct is not difficult because it seems to be quite prevalent, and people acknowledge it readily when prompted by careful inquiry. In fact, they frequently take pride in their own ingenuity. Further, there is enormous variety in this conduct, and it would appear that no situation is immune to such effort. On the other hand, often there is little to see because so much of this effort is personal, even subjective, and it tends to transpire within evanescent circumstances.7 Put differently, the evidence indicates that agency, like forms of life in a tropical rain forest, is abundant, diverse, and vigorous. What is more, while particular types of agency are large and exotic, most are small, quick, and easily overlooked by those hunting for bigger game—so much so, in fact, that most species of agency have not been observed, recorded, nor classified. Viktor Gecas observes that the “self-concept is, to a large extent, an agent of its own creation.”8 The findings of this study suggest that the self plays an important part not only in the design of the self-concept but of much temporal experience, as well. If we conceive of agency as personal initiative directed toward the realization of individually held aims, intentions, or desires, then agency animates concrete and familiar forms of conduct. The lion’s share of this conduct concerns personal predilections and temporal aesthetics, not productivity. Time work has more to do with efficacy than with efficiency. This study documents the use of agentic practices in an effort to modify or manipulate various dimensions of temporal experience. There can be no doubt that these extensive empirical materials are suffused by what George

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Herbert Mead termed “conscious” or “reflective determination.” 9 Likewise, we can be sure that Harold Garfinkel’s research subject, Agnes, is not the only person who exercises control over time in an effort to realize a specific version of self.10 It follows that one’s circumstances are not simply antecedent to one’s response (behavioral or experiential); rather, one often plans for, and takes steps to create, just those circumstances to which one would like to respond. In his introduction to Frame Analysis, Erving Goffman asserts “that when individuals attend to any current situation, they face the question: ‘What is it that’s going on here?’ ”11 Apparently, many of the subjects in this study are asking themselves a markedly different version of that question: “What is it that could be going on here?” They give deliberate and frequently elaborate attention to what Hans Joas calls the “future possibilities” in current or anticipated circumstances.12 Anne Swidler asks us to view “culture as a ‘tool kit’ for constructing ‘strategies of action.’ ”13 In the empirical materials, we see people using cultural tool kits and associated lore to construct strategies for modulating their own temporal experience. They avoid watching the clock during a long flight and buy a magazine before boarding the airplane. They prioritize their tasks and delay gratification. Yet, as we have witnessed, they also display a wealth of inventiveness and imagination. Many of them enjoy time work; they pursue it with enthusiasm, wit, and a cheerful sense of irony. They search for and seize opportunities for temporal creativity, even when those in authority view such innovation as deviant. By and large, the subjects of this study derive a spectrum of personal satisfactions from their efforts to customize temporal experience. Given the variety and prevalence of time work, it is tempting to celebrate the enduring sovereignty of the self and the efficacy of self-determination, but there is also evidence to indicate that such celebration may miss the point. The subjects in this study perceive themselves to be initiating lines of action that curl back around on them indirectly, through constructed circumstances, to shape their experience of time. Even so, social scientists cannot ignore the antecedent and anticipated circumstances to which these subjects are responding with agentic practices. As Karl Marx might have put it, human beings make their own temporal experience, “but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past.”14 This famously paradoxical statement represents the same dialectical mixture of determinism and self-determination that we observe throughout our data. Or, as George Herbert Mead would have it, “even the emergent happens under determining conditions.”15 The requisite resources for particular types of time work may or may not be available, or other people may en-

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courage or discourage certain categories of time work. In short, time work is conditioned by the social context within which it arises— a context with cultural, organizational, and relational dimensions. The data reveal various strategies for controlling or customizing our experience of time. Yet Swidler notes that “culture has an independent causal role because it shapes the capacities from which such strategies of action are constructed.”16 Despite whatever license for creativity they may have, the subjects of this study appear to want temporal experiences that are in keeping with cultural prescriptions, albeit experiences that also provide a measure of self-satisfaction. For example, their culture teaches them to think of time as a commodity: something to be “saved,” not “wasted.” In his classic study of the Protestant ethic, Max Weber quotes Benjamin Franklin’s familiar aphorism, “time is money.”17 Accordingly, if material success is viewed as a sign of salvation, then, as Weber points out, “waste of time is . . . the first and in principle the deadliest of sins.”18 Franklin’s perspective on time has been diffused throughout a culture that still values efficiency and productivity— a culture, moreover, with a standardized temporal system.19 Yet because of their prevailing commitment to material success, Americans often find themselves in undesirable circumstances (e.g., school, work, and traffic). Therefore, it should come as no surprise that we are more adept at speeding time up than at slowing it down. In the words of one young man, “I can’t think of how to slow it down.” Attempting to slow the perceived passage of time (e.g., to savor the moment) is perhaps too hedonistic or self-indulgent in a culture that is still imbued with the Protestant ethic. This young man lacks the cultural resources for that kind of effort, but like most students (and most employees), he is well versed in making time seem to pass quickly. Thus, one direction for future research would be cross-cultural studies of variation in time work. Time work also is conditioned by its organizational context. Students and employees are encouraged to use time efficiently. For students, a frequently changing schedule of classes, coupled with the need to balance the respective demands of school, job, and social life, makes for certain challenges and not for others. Businesses bring in consultants who remind employees of the need for time management, thereby providing resources for particular kinds of temporal effort, such as establishing priorities and formulating time budgets. But there are rival concerns because one’s temporal aspirations are never fully circumscribed by a single role. With Goffman, “we always find the individual employing methods to keep some distance, some elbow room, between himself and that with which others assume he should be identified.”20 As a result, organizations cultivate typical forms of adaptation and predictable types of temporal deviance. A medical intern’s unremitting schedule

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makes for a compensatory desire for free time. Given the close quarters in a dormitory, allocating time for solitude may seem especially seductive. Carving the academic calendar into an artificial structure of semesters (or quarters) creates the conditions for “incompletes” and other kinds of temporal extension. Procrastination may be the unintended consequence of soft deadlines and lack of supervision. Employees who are required to allocate time to certain tasks will learn how to look like they are giving time to one thing when, in actuality, they are taking time for something else. The upshot is what Andrew Pickering describes as a “dialectic of resistance and accommodation.”21 We have, then, another direction for future research: mapping time work across various organizational settings. Furthermore, time work is conditioned by all manner of relationships. As with cultures and organizations, our relationships encourage or discourage particular forms of temporal experience. Friends and loved ones demand time that could be devoted to career advancement; they must be held at bay. Still, we are motivated (and expected) to help them pass the time if necessary, and we have the interpersonal skills for doing so. Parents try to ensure that some things happen more frequently than others, with longer duration, in the correct sequence, and at the right time. Power, proximity, familiarity, loyalty, and access to a shared material world serve as resources in this endeavor. Yet the individual may feel the need to ration or even avoid time with a father or an ex-boyfriend. Roommates may wish to spend a certain amount of time on cleanliness or religious observances and to receive a reassuring call when someone will be coming in late. But relationships also provide a context for luring others from the straight and narrow path to types of time work that make for subversive activities and experiences. Future research could specify the time work that is typical in relationships of one kind or another. In brief, these data suggest that temporal agency is ubiquitous, satisfying, rarely obtrusive, and always shaped by various facets of one’s social setting, including cultures, organizations, and relationships. These findings, moreover, enable us to formulate a typology of the agentic practices through which we customize our temporal experience— a typology that maps the protean relationship between time and self-determination. Unlike previous efforts to classify agency, this model has been generated inductively from empirical materials.

The Spectrum of Temporal Agency To this point, the data have been classified as facets of temporal experience: duration, frequency, sequence, and the like. Temporal outcomes have been the center of attention rather than their agentic origins. By shifting the focus

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of our gaze, however, the same narratives can be reclassified in terms of the degree to which they exhibit agency. In other words, the white light of temporal experience can be refracted into different shades of self-determination. As we have seen, the respective antagonists in an ongoing debate depict human conduct as either agentic or not, but multiple readings of our data reveal four distinct types of temporal agency— consensual determinism, cultural reproduction, reactionary agency, and time play—which can be arrayed along a continuum representing more or less self-determination.22 Agency is an ordinal variable— a gradation of forbearance and intervention. Let us examine this spectrum of agentic practices from the standpoint of our empirical materials.

Consensual Determinism At one end of the continuum, we find narratives that appear to display no willfulness whatsoever. On the surface, at least, they are devoid of selfdetermination. When individuals are asked to describe how they control, manipulate, or customize temporal experience, they do not think of or offer instances where, it would seem, unwanted circumstances and undesirable experiences were thrust upon them. Hence, such episodes do not appear in the data for this study. They do represent an aspect of temporal experience, however, so we must address them even if, of necessity, that entails reaching back to my previous research for exemplary cases.23 It is useful to revisit these four cases to see what they can teach us about the universality of temporal agency. The most appropriate place to start, then, is where we find individuals in life-threatening circumstances. Here, more than anywhere else, the individual would seem to have no choice in the matter. Put yourself in the following situation. It is a Friday evening during the fall of 1973. The car you are riding in is heading toward a restaurant off Hamrha Street in Beirut, Lebanon. You are a young boy, the son of a corporate executive, with your mother, brother, and Lebanese driver. But your plans are interrupted by this incident: A gunman approached our car, stopped us, and stuck his head and gun in the driver’s side window. Not speaking any of the local languages, we were not sure what he was ranting and raving about, but our driver was able to talk our way out of the situation by saying that we were just American tourists going back to the hotel. We sat motionless and speechless for the entire ordeal, which seemed to last for thirty minutes or more, when actually it took no more than four or five minutes before we were on our way again.

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We observe familiar distortion in the perceived passage of time. The interval in question seems to elapse slowly relative to the standard temporal units of a clock. As conventional wisdom would have it, our narrator’s experience of time bears no trace of self-determination (unlike the data we examined in Chapter 2). The passengers in that car had no desire to redefine the situation. On the contrary, their circumstances were forcibly transformed by an outsider, altering their temporal experience in the bargain. The upshot is an unintended instance of protracted duration. So, others may impinge upon our lives, but accidents happen, too, and they often have the same impact on the perceived passage of time. The vignette below provides a case in point: We were practicing a pyramid-shaped formation that was three cheerleaders high. As the smallest one, I was on top. Everything was fine until one of the girls moved. I fell almost eighteen feet in just a couple of seconds, but it seemed like it took forever to hit the ground. It did not take “forever to hit the ground,” but it felt that way. Again, the individual in question did not seek or even anticipate this distortion in temporal experience, although we might say that she knowingly put herself at risk for the fall. In any event, there is no need for threatening circumstances; a comparable, if less extreme, effect can be realized when someone puts us “on hold” or asks us to sit in a waiting room for what feels like an interminable span of time. What is more, the circumstances need not be unpleasant, as when John Stamos first saw Rebecca Romijn, the famous model, who would one day be his bride: “ ‘It was total love at fi rst sight,’ says John. ‘There was this big empty white room, and she walked in. It was like a dopey, romantic movie. Everything was in slow motion.’ ”24 Clearly, something that looks like causality is frequently manifest in face-to-face encounters, but it is also true that one’s general social context can change, with deterministic implications for temporal experience among all similarly placed persons. The latter shade of causality is apparent in the following excerpt, where a Navajo woman describes how her people’s adaptation to the U.S. occupational structure dictates a new kind of temporal regimentation: The work world is a lot different from the traditional world of telling time by the sun. You had a lot of tasks to do and as long as you got them done before the sun went down, that was the main thing. Nobody really cared whether you adhered to a particular schedule or what. But now we have to teach [our children] the value of appoint-

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ments and keeping on time and things like that. Because that’s what they need in order to survive in the work world.25 Here, we see a semblance of determinism operating on the temporality of a social aggregate, with the effect illuminated by a marked transition from one temporal regime to another. Yet this excerpt presents novel features that complicate our analysis in helpful ways. First, unlike the previous examples, it does not concern perceived duration but rather scheduling, time reckoning, and other elements of temporal organization. This distinction suggests that comparable processes operate across the various dimensions of temporal experience. Second, a kind of “participation” is implicated by this form of causality— one that was not apparent in the preceding examples. The narrator’s use of the phrase “we have to” bespeaks compulsion, but as is so often the case, resistance is possible if quixotic in this setting.26 It would be naive, of course, to assert that the Navajo people simply elected to pursue temporal assimilation; this perspective would ignore a great deal of deplorable history. Nonetheless, there is a crucial sense in which this woman’s statement serves as a proxy for a dispersed and collective calculus concerning what is best for her people. A decision has been made, a particular future has been chosen, and we cannot say quite the same thing about the other three narrators. Or can we? In fact, this line of thinking should prompt us to revisit the previous excerpts. None of the other three narrators decides to slow the perceived passage of time in the same manner that the Navajo woman chooses a path toward temporal assimilation. It would be misleading, therefore, to argue that they intend participation with their abruptly changing circumstances. They are complicit, however, in the effect these changes have on subjective duration, because their respective circumstances, per se, do not bring about the perception that time is passing slowly. In each situation, the precipitating circumstances and the temporal effects are mediated by a self that is threatened, surprised, or love-struck. It is the self initiating a massive allocation of attentional resources that makes for the perception that time is passing at an altered rate. Given the self’s requisite contribution to interpretation and response, the difference between these examples and the Navajo excerpt is one of degree and not of kind. Something resembling determinism operates in all four cases, but the impact of the causal factor is, and must be, mediated by the self.27 The closer we look at what passes for temporal “determinism,” the less deterministic it seems to be. But should we conceive of such cases as agentically driven? “All times are socially constructed,” reply Bluedorn and Standifer.28 Their bold declaration of this principle is paradoxical in the face of narratives

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like those we have just examined. How can we reconcile such data with their sweeping statement? In addition, these cases must be distinguished from the markedly different narratives in the preceding chapters of this study, but on what basis? As Giddens points out, any form of agency is rooted in one’s capacity to “have acted otherwise.”29 That is certainly true of the data for this study, but in what sense is it applicable to the cases imported from my previous research? Georg Simmel’s unique perspective on sociological theory is indispensable for the resolution of these paradoxical questions. Writing in 1908, he observes that one never completely relinquishes control over one’s response to the situation at hand: “Even in the most oppressive and cruel cases of subordination, there is still a considerable measure of personal freedom. We merely do not become aware of it, because its manifestation would entail sacrifices which we usually never think of taking upon ourselves.”30 Simmel emphasizes that self-determination “prevails even where it often is not noted.”31 Decades later, Jean-Paul Sartre would make our distinctly human capacity for “self-negation,” one’s ability to “lie to oneself,” a central tenet of his existential philosophy.32 For Sartre, the focus was on our efforts to escape from freedom, as when a soldier denies responsibility for genocide because he was “only following orders.” Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that agency is at issue only in matters of subordination. Thus, Mead provides a crucial piece of the puzzle when he shows us that agency is equally intrinsic to perception: Our whole intelligent process seems to lie in the attention which is selective of certain types of stimuli. Other stimuli which are bombarding the system are in some fashion shunted off. We give our attention to one particular thing. Not only do we open the door to certain stimuli and close it to others, but our attention is an organizing process as well as a selective process. When giving attention to what we are going to do we are picking out the whole group of stimuli which represent successive activity. Our attention enables us to organize the field in which we are going to act. Here we have the organism as acting and determining its environment. It is not simply a set of passive senses played upon by the stimuli that come from without. The organism goes out and determines what it is going to respond to, and organizes that world.33 If all human conduct is agentic, including that which governs perception, then, in accord with Bluedorn and Standifer, we must acknowledge that all temporal experience is constructed, because one cannot exercise selective attention without simultaneously selecting the texture of one’s temporal experience.

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Selective attention guides our decisions about how to proceed with matters at hand. It is by means of these decisions that we construct lines of action (or inaction). In turn, these lines of action make for situations that act back upon us, and they are experienced in divergent ways. There is, then, a varied texture to human experience, and, in large part, it is a function of our agentic practices. We choose to meditate or we help to create chaotic festivity. Either way, we are selecting the circumstances to which we must respond and, by the same token, the tapestry of events from which we will choose our experience during the ensuing intervals. Consequently, there is a different feel to meditation and festivity from the standpoint of human subjectivity. Respectively, these situations are more or less serene, more or less stimulating. The events that are available in these respective situations are qualitatively different, and our selective attention to the texture of those events brings about distinct forms of temporal experience. The circumstances we have created for ourselves may feel like they are passing quickly or slowly (i.e., duration). In other situations, it may or may not feel like I am doing things as often as I want to (i.e., frequency). I may or may not experience these events in the preferred order (i.e., sequence). It may or may not feel like I am doing things when I want to (i.e., timing). It may or may not feel like there is enough time for the task at hand (i.e., allocation). And the interval may feel more like their time or my time (i.e., the theft of time). In the course of constructing the circumstances to which we respond, we pay selective and deliberative attention to the quantity and quality of events, thereby agentically shaping the contour of our temporal experience. This agentic effort, however, may or may not be intended. To be sure, we are always shaping temporal experience but not always in self-conscious fashion. Simmel and Sartre are profoundly correct in observing that we are capable of self-negation; indeed, we are practiced at complicity with our circumstances, which often permits us to deny any role in ensuing events and experiences. At the heart of this unwitting agency is a central irony: the self choosing to have no choice in the matter. One surrenders to the dictates of the situation becoming, thereby, a victim of circumstances. In such instances, one does not sense (or report) that one is controlling events and one’s experience of them—in fact, doing so only by not doing so. A related irony, then, is that one does not recognize one’s own temporal experience as a product of agentic effort. Although a subjective sense of efficacy may be missing, this must not blind us to the irrevocable contribution of self-determination. In short, there can be no unadulterated determinism when temporal experience is at issue. Reversing Giddens, we would have to find instances where the individual could not have acted otherwise to experience time in any other fashion, but Simmel and Sartre show us that is never the case.

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The boy in Lebanon, the falling cheerleader, the love-struck man, the Navajo woman; these narratives were culled from hundreds of kindred examples in my previous research. We misinterpret these narratives as instances of temporal determinism if we ignore the pivotal role played by selfconsciousness. It is the self that elects to be threatened, surprised, love-struck, culturally assimilated—and thereby moved to experience time in a particular way. These narratives may seem jarringly divergent from the data collected for this study— data we examined in previous chapters— and with good reason. They represent something we can call “consensual determinism.” With consensual determinism, the individual collaborates with his or her circumstances to bring about an unintended form of temporal experience. While unintended, the resulting temporal experience would not have been possible were it not for the elective passivity of the individual in question. Granted, the individual does not seek to bring about specific circumstances (this being a fundamental difference between these narratives and the data collected for this study), but consensual determinism is a form of temporal agency, albeit the most attenuated hue. Moreover, it is not a small, residual, or marginal category, despite its absence in the data for this study. Indeed, as Peter Berger points out, it represents the very foundation of social order.34 Why, then, were there no examples of consensual determinism in the data for this study? The lack of such instances is not a measure of its prevalence, but an artifact of our focus on self-consciously agentic forms of time work. We asked people to tell us how they control or manipulate temporal experience. Since the individual defines “consensual determinism” as a situation in which he or she has no choice concerning how to proceed, the individual does not view it as an instance of willfulness, nor does the individual offer such instances when asked to describe his or her efforts to customize temporal experience.

Cultural Reproduction Having taken a skeptical look at what passes for temporal “determinism,” let us turn our attention back to the data from this study: narratives that recount self-conscious efforts to control or customize temporal experience. These data move us along the spectrum to a more apparent form of agency. Consensual determinism is pervasive; paradoxically, so too is time work. When asked about it, people have no trouble identifying ways in which they attempt to modify their own experience of time or that of others. Yet here, also, there is reason for analytic caution, for it becomes apparent that some instances of time work are hardly more agentic than is consensual determinism. We can refer to this pale shade of temporal agency as “cultural reproduction.”

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Giddens identifies two modes of agency: intervention and forbearance.35 The individual can impinge upon what would otherwise be the trajectory of events or affect the outcome through the willful exercise of self-restraint. Either way, the consequences reflect a measure of self-determination. Both modes of agency are apparent in the narratives that implicate cultural reproduction. Together, they constitute more than a third of the responses. Examples of such intervention abound in the preceding chapters. When one fills an otherwise empty interval with distracting activity in order to make it seem, retrospectively, to have passed quickly, one is not only accelerating the perceived passage of time but also upholding the cultural prescription to “keep busy.” The person who goads himself or herself into exercising frequently is striving toward cultural ideals for health and beauty. A student who strenuously avoids repetition in the clothes she wears to class is regulating sequence with an eye toward cultural expectations concerning one’s appearance. On a daily basis, we choose to conform with traditional schedules, which is a sine qua non for the persistence of cultural practices. We set time aside for religious observances and reserve time for activities that are conducive to fulfilling our various responsibilities. Even when we take time from our employers, we often do so for competing and culturally approved reasons. During our interviews, we would ask subjects to describe how they control or customize their experience of time. This approach tacitly prompts people for what they do, rather than what they refrain from doing. For this reason, perhaps, every category of temporal agency contains far more instances of intervention than of forbearance. Still, there are plenty of cases in which individuals abstain from something for culturally approved purposes. This is especially true of frequency (with its behavioral emphasis), as when parents reduce the rate at which they buy toys and candy for their children, or when a young woman deliberately avoids seeing her boyfriend so that he and others do not conclude that she is obsessed with him. Timing and forbearance are at issue when a young man seeks to amend the deviant implications of his behavior by refusing to smoke marijuana before tests. In addition, we have witnessed medical interns allocating less time to routine patient care so that they have more time to learn their trade in other ways. Clearly, time work exhibits facets of intervention and forbearance, but here the analysis begins to confront obvious embarrassments. Whether impinging upon events or exercising self-restraint, subjects often seem to act as agents for cultural values rather than self-actualization. These cultural values are both “out there,” at large in one’s society, and (subsequent to socialization) “inside” one’s self-consciousness as the labels or categories of identity to which one aspires. The narratives document concern for productivity, efficiency, self-respect, balance, promptness, and frugality. According to Giddens, the

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agents “could have acted otherwise.” Yes, but not without contradicting values they themselves hold dear—values internalized during enculturation. Instead of self-indulgence or subversion, we see cultural reproduction. Compliance is not their intent, of course, but, in large measure, they want what they have been taught to want, and what they want runs parallel to cultural prescriptions for admirable conduct. In some quarters, there is a tendency to depict the self as an uncaused cause. However, Alfred Lindesmith reminds us that the difference between determinism and self-determination may hinge on selective attention: “What is called effect and what is called cause depends upon the par ticular stage or aspect of the total process that is taken as the problem.”36 The subjects in this study can be said to exercise a degree of self-determination, but they often do so simply because, at an earlier stage in their lives, they learned to value temporal experiences that their time work now brings into being.

Reactionary Agency A second and larger theme in our data (i.e., nearly two-thirds) is characterized by motives that do not uphold cultural values. Instead, these agentic practices are responsive to one’s current or potential predicament. Once again, time work is just as much an effect as it is a cause— a self-conscious moment of choice within the causal chain of events—but the provoking conditions have narrowly private implications. We must view it as a more vivid shade of self-determination, however, because one’s efforts are not oriented toward being a virtuous person but toward the solution of one’s own quandary. It follows that these efforts frequently take the form of resistance to the trajectory of temporal determinism that is evident within one’s circumstances. In short, there is a “reactionary agency” whereby the individual employs temporal practices to address personal dilemmas of one kind or another. When time work is triggered by a problem, the resulting temporal practices can be said to compensate the individual for bearing up under the burden of his or her lifestyle. A woman whose days are often difficult decides to sew in the evening in order to calm herself down. Others set time aside for gardening, ballroom dancing, or sailing in an effort to alleviate stress. A consultant, bedev iled by a client, exacts temporal vengeance by claiming more billable hours than she is entitled to. As usual, a circular causality is at work in these efforts to control or manipulate one’s own temporal experience—a loop of self-determination. One selects a line of conduct in a self-conscious attempt to construct temporal experience that compensates for tension and drudgery during other moments in one’s life. But, of course, this compensa-

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tory conduct marks these efforts as reactionary to problematic circumstances. It is noteworthy, moreover, that these forms of time work are almost always interstitial in that they fit within the personal crevices of social structure without challenging the status quo. Reactionary agency does not usurp the temporal resources we need for our obligatory tasks; it does not upend our responsibilities. Like a social lubricant, it prevents temporal friction from damaging structural elements in the allocation of time. Indeed, its reinvigorating effect enables the individual to reenter the fray despite the toll this takes on body and soul. Alternatively, the individual may react to the situation by first posing a procedural or existential question: How do I deal with temporal aspects of my immediate or anticipated circumstances? Again, the answer is more likely to entail intervention than forbearance. A young woman may try to forestall the end of the semester (when she must separate from her boyfriend) by making the remaining weeks seem to pass slowly. A young man who wishes to think of himself as a writer may create conditions that require him to write more frequently. An elderly man may try to avoid forgetting crucial steps by docking his boat in an unchanging sequence. An irresponsible young man may time his own errands so that he is absent when the dog needs to be walked. A couple in a long-distance relationship may allocate time to staying in touch with one another. An employee may hide from his boss while ostensibly “at” work. There are, however, instances of forbearance, as when one resists the urge to look at a watch during class or a long flight. Similarly, a woman may reduce the frequency of her cooking when there are other demands on her time, and one may refuse to drive at certain times in order to avoid the worst traffic. The adjectives we might use to describe these people (e.g., worried girlfriend, frustrated writer, shirking employee) allude to temporal agency in the solution of personal problems. Through reflexivity, these individuals are purposefully constructing conditions that are meant to bring about a certain kind of temporal experience. Yet the individual does not initiate this time work in a purely self-indulgent exercise of protean will but in response to current or anticipated circumstances that are viewed as problematic. Given the reactionary nature of these efforts, it is more than a little disingenuous to argue, as Giddens does, that the individual “could have acted otherwise.” Granted, one’s situation does not dictate the exact content of one’s response, but the person who abstains from time work of any kind, if such could be found, would be a new version of Garfinkel’s “cultural dope”: someone who has a stressful life but does nothing to alleviate the tension, someone who anticipates boredom but does nothing to ward off the ennui. We may choose the

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particular medicine, but choose we must, and then we must swallow it, for there is typically a price to pay in the quality of temporal experience when we fail to do so.

Time Play There are instances of time work that do not fit easily into any of the foregoing models. These narratives do not display the submissive attitude that we see in consensual determinism. Nor are they obviously the product of prior enculturation, as the motivation does not seem to reflect societal values per se. In addition, it would appear that something more than interstitial compensation is operating, because the behavior is not clearly occasioned by a reactionary need to solve current or anticipated problems. Ostensibly, the efforts in question are oriented toward self-actualization or at least the satisfaction of individual desires. One attempts to customize temporality for the sake of personal preferences. In its most agentic form, then, time work verges on conduct that seems to call for a different term: “time play.” At first glance, we observe people playing with various dimensions of temporality simply because they enjoy the resulting experiences. Time play is not typical of temporal agency, but these episodes are disproportionately revealing. With these cases, one playfully engages in temporal agency for its own sake. As such, time play distills the pure essence of temporal agency; it is time work in its purest form. One modifies one’s own temporal experience not in order to solve a problem or uphold a norm, but for the sheer delight in one’s capacity to do so. This whimsy brings to light something profound but difficult to see under normal circumstances: time, at least as we experience it, is a social construction. Time is ours to play with if we but have the wit and resolve to do so. We need not resign ourselves to the given trajectory of things as they unfold but can imagine them unfolding in a very different manner— one designed to develop in a way that suits our fancy. There is temporal exploration. One plays with time to see how things turn out if matters are handled in a certain fashion. Our ability to customize temporal experience is rooted in self-consciousness. Perhaps, in distant moments of evolution, the emergence of mind from brain had something to do with our unique capacity to play with our allotted intervals of time. A student deliberately reverses the activities associated with day and night in order to toy with normal timing. Others vary the sequence of their tasks simply to create a semblance of spontaneity in their lives. Several people describe abstaining from certain activities in an effort to prevent a favored pastime from becoming stale with overfamiliarity. There are those who take recreational drugs, in part, to experience distortions in the perceived passage

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of time. Still others attempt to savor (i.e., prolong the perceived duration of) marvelous meals, refreshing vacations, or special occasions. In contrast, there are those who make time for solitude, self-reflection, and the rejuvenation of their spirits. A woman procrastinates during her preparation for a party so that she will arrive only after most of the other guests are present, thereby indulging a disposition to blend into the crowd without formal introductions or awkward conversation. And a young teacher exercises some control over temporal order by demanding that her boyfriend undress in a particular sequence because she enjoys watching him do it that way. What are we to make of the willful expression of temporal predilections? In this most agentic shade of temporal agency, one plays with the experience of time for what would seem to be reasons of self-actualization. Nonetheless, there is only a handful of such cases (i.e., less than 5 percent) when examined against the backdrop of more than 400 narratives concerning time work. This, despite the fact that many of those narratives come from college students with something of a societal license for personal experimentation. What is worse, this line of analysis does not withstand close scrutiny. Behind nearly all of these examples lurks the shadow of temporal experiences deemed undesirable for one reason or another— experiences that individuals seek to avoid by means of time work. In the absence of such effort, one’s life would lack novelty, adventure, sensuality, celebration, privacy, eroticism, and other forms of pleasure. Returning to an increasingly dubious phrase, these people “could have acted otherwise” only by choosing a line of conduct quite like the one they chose or by becoming martyrs to contrariness as the triumph of the will. Viewed in this harsher light, what looked like self-actualization now resembles reactionary agency, once removed. Thus, we have arrived at a complementary irony: the closer we look at temporal agency, the less agentic it seems to be.

Ambivalence Sometimes we resist the given trajectory of temporal experience; at other times we accede to it. Why does temporal experience sometimes reflect consensual determinism while at other times it reflects temporal agency? Why are we seemingly selective with the effort of time work? There is, let us say, an individual who works within an organizational context that makes many demands on each employee— demands that compete with the time one can devote to one’s own agenda. The individual in question has colleagues who, with a wry smile or grimace, shrug their shoulders and say something to the effect of, “How am I supposed to get my own stuff done with all of these other demands on my time?” Still, the individual

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in question and some of his or her colleagues are able to do just that. They allocate time to one set of organizational demands while neglecting those which they view as less vital to their own identities, thereby making time for activities that would otherwise be impossible. For those who are unable or unwilling to engage in the requisite agency, the demands on each individual’s time (which are quite real) provide a comforting and convenient excuse. This resignation reflects the temporal ideology of one who finds it easier to be a victim of circumstances. Here, we see the epitome of consensual determinism—the false consciousness of temporal fatalism. It is possible to pursue one’s own agenda while working within that context, as evidenced by the temporal enterprise of one’s colleagues, but such enterprise does come at a cost. Tacitly or explicitly, one must say “no” on a regular basis to invitations, requests, even demands that emanate from clients, colleagues, superiors, neighbors, friends, and members of one’s own family. One must elect to sacrifice some activities for others, choosing to do this instead of that. One must pursue the uncertainty of one’s own agenda instead of the common gratitude that is offered in return for acceding to competing demands on one’s time. The only assured “payoff” is an opportunity to think of oneself in a crucially satisfying way. Yet part of what makes us human is that, whichever path we choose, we take with us a poignant sense of the path we did not take, the possibilities it may have represented, and the meaning our choice might have for any witnesses. If all times are socially constructed, why is there so much consensual determinism? Why are we not more agentic, more often? As we have seen, temporal agency requires an attentive and opportunistic degree of self-consciousness, anticipation and design, often meticulous execution—in short, effort and efficaciousness. For most of us, it is simply not feasible to live at that heightened level of mindfulness all of the time. It is always easier to succumb to our own weariness and the given experiential trajectory of our circumstances. In such instances, however, we are complicit with our seduction to consensual determinism. Thus, our attitude toward agency is fundamentally ambivalent. We enjoy it and take pride in it, but we often lack the wit or will to muster the necessary effort. There are, moreover, different degrees of temporal agency that reflect how mindful and active we are relative to the deterministic demands of our social context. Socially constructed time is no less real for that, and if it has been institutionalized, it cannot be dismissed by individual fiat. Ultimately, it is not a matter of choosing between authenticity and bad faith. In equal measure, we cannot escape the facts of social location nor can we deny the ever-present possibility of transcendence.

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Conclusion We have explored agentic practices that are meant to control or customize temporal experience. The narratives suggest that such effort is a ubiquitous and important force along multiple dimensions of time. We have observed temporal agency in a variety of personal and interpersonal settings, but there are also dispersed and collective effects, as when the people of one nation impose their temporal regime on others. Typically, the individual initiates temporal agency because current or anticipated circumstances are viewed as problematic, or potentially so. These efforts are manifest as forms of time work—agentic practices designed to modulate various facets of temporal experience. Do these agentic practices represent self-expression or enculturation? This question assumes antagonism between self and society, but the findings of this study indicate that agency does not preclude causality if we conceive of the latter as making certain practices only more or less likely in particular circumstances. Society attaches material and symbolic outcomes to specific temporal practices. As a result, when choosing to engage in time work, we do so with the knowledge that it may have certain consequences. It would appear, then, that agency emerges from a self-conscious and thereby socialized moment of choice within the causal chain of events. There are instances when time work is directed at countering the situated trajectory of temporal experience, but just as frequently, the forces of determinism and self-determination work in tandem with one another. Our desires are effects of culture as much as they are motives for our conduct. Hence, there is no unadulterated determinism where temporal experience is at issue, but we rarely toy with time for purely impudent reasons. “Freedom and causality are not logically contradictory terms,” states Peter Berger.37 It is not easy to find the truth of this assertion in empirical materials, but the systematic examination of temporal agency brings us to the same conclusion. The distinction between determinism and self-determination is a false dichotomy, and its perpetuation makes for a lingering sense of incongruity across the social sciences. Given the facts of social order and cultural reproduction, how can we account for the prevalence of personal creativity? And vice versa; if there is so much personal creativity, how can we explain the obdurate facts of social order and cultural reproduction? The central paradox is the coexistence of order and creativity. Its resolution can be found in the realization that nearly all of what passes for agentic creativity either contributes to cultural reproduction or has no unruly effects. Maurice Merleau-Ponty put the matter most succinctly: “There is no difference between saying that our life is completely

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constructed and that it is completely given.”38 The narratives we have examined confi rm the veracity of this statement. We construct that which we experience as determinism, and the great bulk of what we experience as selfdetermination is bent to the maintenance of social order. Agency and order are not antithetical forces. Social scientists who stereotype agency as insurgency marginalize what is actually central to human experience. In so doing, they only manage to see very little of the agentic activity with which social interaction is saturated. When we consider the evidence from this study, however, it becomes apparent that much of our time work is interstitial and compensatory. That is, a great deal of temporal agency operates within cultures, organizations, and relationships without challenging the status quo. Indeed, by compensating the individual in ways that do not threaten established patterns of conduct, most forms of time work reduce the friction between self and society. Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff Goodwin argue “that intentional, creative human action serves in part to constitute those very social networks that so powerfully constrain actors in turn.”39 In accord with their position, the findings of this study suggest that temporal agency is largely a product of existing arrangements and contributes to their reproduction. Sociologists should cheer this news, although not so loudly that others hear us. At the heart of our discipline is the assumption that social forces shape individual conduct and experience. On the face of it, temporal agency threatens that assumption, but careful attention to the facts reveals that time work has as much to do with social order as it does with self-expression.

Methodological Appendix

To what extent and in what ways do individuals purposefully construct lines of activity or social situations in order to create or inhibit diverse forms of temporal experience? To address this question, we need fi rst-person narratives that carefully describe cognitive and behavioral effort at the micromanagement of temporal experience. With these considerations in mind, I designed and supervised semistructured, openended interviews with 406 people. These interviews were conducted in two overlapping phases. From 1998 to 2001, my assistants and I interviewed 271 undergraduates who were enrolled in various sections of an introductory sociology course. These respondents came from forty-nine states, but, as one would expect, they were fairly homogeneous as to socioeconomic background. Consequently, from 2001 to 2004, we interviewed 135 people from all walks of life. As we have seen in the preceding chapters, their occupations ranged from waitress to banker and from beautician to engineer. Table A-1 breaks down the total sample by type of time work and status of respondent. This distribution of time work is arranged in descending order by frequency. In the total sample, 66.7 percent of the respondents are students and 33.3 percent are non-students. With the exception of taking time, there are more students than nonstudents in every category. Undoubtedly, the exception reflects the fact that most of our students do not have full-time jobs. Table A-2 displays the distribution of time work by gender of respondent. In the total sample, there are 186 men (46.5 percent) and 214 women (53.5 percent), with gender unknown in six cases. There are more women than men in every category except frequency, where they are even, and timing, where there are more men. In the total sample, 51 of the 406 respondents are non-white. They are evenly distributed across categories of time work and gender, but their small numbers and mixed constituency preclude separate analysis.

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TABLE A-1. TIME WORK BY RESPONDENTS’ STATUS Time Work

Students

Non-Students

Duration

84

23

Frequency

61

17

Sequence

55

16

Timing

38

19

Allocation

33

23

Taking

37

Total

271

135

TABLE A-2. TIME WORK BY RESPONDENTS’ GENDER Time Work Duration

Male

Female

Unknown

42

64

1

Frequency

38

38

2

Sequence

34

36

1 2

Timing

29

26

Allocation

26

30

Taking Total

17

20

186

214

6

The interviews were conducted by research assistants who were trained in the data-gathering procedures but were not privy to the theoretical framework. None of the subjects were at a loss for relevant responses, an indication of the prevalence of temporal agency. However, since college students enjoy a societal license for creativity and self-exploration, that segment of the sample may represent an exceptionally fertile source of temporal innovation. In any event, the resulting narratives constitute the data for this study, and they enable us to consider the implications of time work for our understanding of agency in temporal experience.1 The exact wording of each question was not specified in advance so, in a strict sense, there was no script for these interviews. My research assistants used a standard opening statement, however, as well as a list of especially relevant questions to guide them through the same sequence of topics. In all cases, the interviews began with the following introduction: “This study concerns ways in which people attempt to control or customize their own experience of time, or that of others. Is there any way in which you try to influence or manipulate the experience of time?” This opening was designed to make our respondents start thinking about time work— certainly not a subject uppermost in their thoughts when the interview began. Confirmation followed the inter-

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viewer’s recognition of a pertinent (but often tentative) response: “Yes, that’s what we’re looking for.” Handing the respondent a pad of paper, the interviewer then prompted written answers to the following questions: “Is there a par ticular time or day during which you find yourself in this situation? Would you describe the physical location of this situation? Would you describe any relevant objects? Generally speaking, how would you describe the social situation? In other words, what is supposed to be happening? Are there any other persons involved in this situation besides yourself? If so, please describe them, including your relationship. Now we would like you to describe how you control or customize the experience of time, and please be as specific as possible.” Finally, the interviewer recorded each respondent’s age, race, gender, and occupation. As Morris Zelditch noted many years ago, “a single observer cannot be everywhere at the same time, nor can he be ‘everywhere’ in time.”2 The interview format called upon respondents to describe their practices and the social settings within which they transpire. In effect, the interview prompted our respondents to reconstruct the elements of a situation during which they had attempted to control or customize some dimension of temporal experience. Put differently, the format of the interview was designed to produce narratives that read as if the researcher had been the respondent, present at the scene, and thereby able to record not only the objective features of the situation but also his or her subjective experiences of time.3 With these procedures, the respondent became what Zelditch calls “the observer’s observer.”4 The interviews were conducted one-on-one at a mutually agreeable time and place. They rarely required more than forty-five minutes to complete. Moreover, while time work is an aspect of ongoing interaction, these interviews were retrospective and vulnerable to the usual hazards associated with that technique. For example, respondents may have hesitated to report embarrassing or illegal practices. This problem was mitigated, however, by the use of students as interviewers as evidenced by a number of surprising admissions in the resulting narratives. There is another virtue in separating the tasks of data gathering and data analysis, especially in qualitative research: it is more difficult to see only what one would like to see. Some of the subjects may have found it difficult to articulate agentic practices that are taken for granted, but the interviews proved to be effective at evoking relevant responses. By the same token, however, the extent of this problem may indicate that time work is even more prevalent than my data suggest. In addition, the format of the interview may make some of these practices seem more thoughtful and less habitual than they are in everyday life. Yet, as we have seen, the respondents frequently accounted for their practices in terms of exigencies or logical principles, thereby testifying to their intentional character. I used analytic induction to arrive at a typology of time work and its motivations.5 Multiple readings of the first-person narratives revealed a number of themes and variations. Each new response was examined for its fit (or lack thereof) with previously gathered data. Negative cases prompted reformulation of the provisional categories until I arrived at a scheme of classification that encompassed all of the empirical materials. By disregarding the concrete idiosyncracies that make each narrative unique, I was able to construct generic or abstract types of time work. Nonetheless, the idiosyncracies figured in the recognition of variations on major themes. Novel responses served as the basis for new categories; familiar responses confi rmed the identification

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of predominant motifs. The goal was to discover what people do to influence or manipulate their experience of time, as well as their reasons for doing so. The study of agency has been dominated by procedural issues and the formulation of abstract conceptual models. More often than not, these models represent the neat categories envisioned by scholars rather than the messy actualities of human behavior. In contrast, the methods used for this study give us access to the vibrant, but heretofore invisible, agentic practices of people in everyday life. By means of these practices, we shape our temporal experiences in distinctly willful ways.

Notes

CHAPTER 1: MAKING TIME

1. Ed Magnuson, “Ten Minutes of Horror,” Time, 6 January 1986, p. 74. 2. Another approach is demonstrated by a fictional character: “Dunbar was lying motionless on his back again with his eyes staring up at the ceiling like a doll’s. He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom.” See Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), p. 9. 3. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: HarperPerennial, [1937] 1998), p. 1. 4. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, NY: Anchor Doubleday, 1959), p. 114. 5. John B. Watson, Behaviorism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, [1924] 1998), pp. 3, 6, italics in original. 6. Ibid., p. 6. 7. Ibid., p. 200. 8. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), pp. vi, 2–3. 9. Ibid., p. 176. 10. Robert M. MacIver, Society: Its Structure and Changes (New York: Ray Long and Richard R. Smith, 1931), p. 530. 11. George A. Lundberg, Foundations of Sociology (New York: MacMillan, 1939), p. 10, italics in original. 12. Ibid., p. 11. 13. Ibid., p. 13, italics in original. 14. Robert M. MacIver, Social Causation (New York: Harper & Row, [1942] 1964), p. 205. His position is in accord with Weber’s defi nition of sociology as “a science

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concerning itself with the interpretive understanding of social action.” See Max Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, [1921] 1978), p. 4. In turn, Weber’s definition reflects the German differentiation between Naturwissenschaften (the natural sciences) and Geisteswissenschaften (the social sciences). See Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought, 2d ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1977), p. 177. 15. Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 56. 16. Ibid., p. 55. 17. Randall Collins, “The Romanticism of Agency/Structure versus the Analysis of Micro/Macro,” Current Sociology 40 (1992): 77. 18. Ibid., p. 77. 19. Ibid., p. 77. 20. Ibid., pp. 77–78. 21. Ibid., p. 78. 22. Peter L. Callero, “From Role-Playing to Role-Using: Understanding Role as Resource,” Social Psychology Quarterly 57 (1994): 228. See also Gil Richard Musolf, Structure and Agency in Everyday Life: An Introduction to Social Psychology (Dix Hills, NY: General Hall, 1998), p. 7. 23. Glen H. Elder, Jr., “Time, Human Agency, and Social Change: Perspectives on the Life Course,” Social Psychology Quarterly 57 (1994): 4–15; Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff Goodwin, “Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency,” American Journal of Sociology 99 (1994): 1411–1454; Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische, “What Is Agency?” American Journal of Sociology 103 (1998): 962–1023; William H. Sewell, Jr., “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation,” American Journal of Sociology 98 (1992): 1–29; Guy E. Swanson, “Doing Things Together: Some Basic Form of Agency and Structure in Collective Action and Some Explanations,” Social Psychology Quarterly 55 (1992): 94–117. 24. Steven Hitlin and Glen H. Elder, Jr., “Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency,” Sociological Theory 25 (2007): 170. 25. William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1 (New York: Dover, 1890), p. 402. 26. Ibid., p. 402, italics in original. 27. Ibid., p. 624. 28. Barbara Adam, Time and Social Theory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), p. 38. 29. Hans Joas, G. H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-Examination of His Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [1980] 1997), p. 187. 30. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 117, italics added. 31. Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 12–13. 32. Ibid., p. 15. 33. Howard S. Becker, “History, Culture, and Subjective Experience: An Exploration of the Social Bases of Drug-Induced Experiences,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 8 (1967): 164. 34. Clinton R. Sanders, Customizing the Body: The Art and Culture of Tattooing (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), p. 37.

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35. Morris Rosenberg, “Self-Processes and Emotional Experiences,” in The SelfSociety Dynamic, ed. Judith A. Howard and Peter L. Callero (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 123, italics in original. 36. Elizabeth G. Menaghan, “Social Psychology: Interpreting the Data,” Social Psychology Quarterly 58 (1995): 323. 37. Dawn T. Robinson and Lynn Smith-Lovin, “Selective Interaction as a Strategy for Identity Maintenance: An Affect Control Model,” Social Psychology Quarterly 55 (1992): 12. Likewise, Alicia D. Cast, Jan E. Stets, and Peter J. Burke conclude that “the self is active in constructing others’ views of the self.” See their article “Does the Self Conform to the Views of Others,” Social Psychology Quarterly 62 (1999): 71, italics in original. 38. David R. Heise, “Controlling Affective Experience Interpersonally,” Social Psychology Quarterly 62 (1999): 7. 39. Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory, p. 54, italics in original. Elder, “Time, Human Agency, and Social Change,” pp. 4–5. More recently, Steven Hitlin and Glen Elder have formulated a typology of time and agency, but it is not empirically grounded. See their article “Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency.” 40. Emirbayer and Mische, “What Is Agency?” p. 963. 41. Ibid., p. 963. 42. Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 20. 43. Ibid., p. 18. 44. Eviatar Zerubavel, “Timetables and Scheduling: On the Social Organization of Time,” Sociological Inquiry 46 (1976): 87–94; idem, The Seven Day Circle (New York: Free Press, 1985). 45. Eviatar Zerubavel, “The Standardization of Time: A Sociohistorical Perspective,” American Journal of Sociology 88 (1982): 1–23; idem, “The French Republican Calendar: A Case Study in the Sociology of Time,” American Sociological Review 42 (1977): 868– 877. 46. Michael G. Flaherty, “The Perception of Time and Situated Engrossment,” Social Psychology Quarterly 54 (1991): 76– 85; idem, A Watched Pot: How We Experience Time (New York: New York University Press, 1999); idem, “Time Work: Customizing Temporal Experience,” Social Psychology Quarterly 66 (2003): 17–33; Michael G. Flaherty, Betina Freidin, and Ruth Sautu, “Variation in the Perceived Passage of Time: A Cross-National Study,” Social Psychology Quarterly 68 (2005): 400– 410. 47. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1972] 1977), p. 15, italics in original. It is worth noting that, instead of “working,” Bourdieu uses the word “playing,” which is more in keeping with an agentic interpretation. 48. William A. Corsaro, “Interpretive Reproduction in Children’s Peer Cultures,” Social Psychology Quarterly 55 (1992): 167. 49. Martha Copp, “When Emotion Work Is Doomed to Fail: Ideological and Structural Constraints on Emotion Management,” Symbolic Interaction 21 (1998): 318. 50. D. Angus Vail, “The Commodification of Time in Two Art Worlds,” Symbolic Interaction 22 (1999): 335–336. 51. Michael Bull, Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life (New York: Berg, 2000), pp. 24–25.

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Notes to Chapter 2: Duration

52. Inspiration can be found in the sociology of emotion. See Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure,” American Journal of Sociology 85 (1979): 551–74. See also Michael G. Flaherty and Michelle D. Meer, “How Time Flies: Age, Memory, and Temporal Compression,” Sociological Quarterly 35 (1994): 717. 53. Erving Goffman, “On Face-Work,” Psychiatry 18 (1955): 213–231. See also Pamela M. Fishman, “Interaction: The Work Women Do,” Social Problems 25 (1978): 397– 406; David A. Snow and Leon Anderson, “Identity Work Among the Homeless: The Verbal Construction and Avowal of Personal Identities,” American Journal of Sociology 92 (1987): 1336–1371. 54. Peggy A. Thoits, “Stressors and Problem-Solving: The Individual as Psychological Activist,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 35 (1994): 146. 55. Procedural details can be found in the Methodological Appendix. CHAPTER 2: DURATION

1. William Shakespeare, “As You Like It,” in The Annotated Shakespeare, vol. 1, The Comedies, ed. A. L. Rowse (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, [1598] 1978), p. 367. 2. Ibid., p. 367. 3. Ibid., pp. 367–368. 4. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove, 1954), p. 31. 5. The craft of the theater is equally instructive. Directors of theatrical productions customarily control the way time is perceived by the audience, and, in the following excerpt from an interview, one member of that profession reveals some tricks of the trade: “Manipulating a person’s perception of time can be done in many ways. Immediately, I think of using lighting to simulate the sun and then changing the angle or color of the light to indicate different times of day. Changing an actor’s position on stage can indicate passage of time as a convention, as can editing text and providing clues to days, seasons, and so forth. With set design, movement of scenery is an indication, too, and with sound there is the use of recurring themes . . . to change perceptions.” Just as theatrical technicians manipulate our perception of time, so too do we modify our experience of duration in everyday life. 6. This formulation of effort relies on Alfred Schutz’s definition of “action” as conduct that “is based upon a preconceived project . . . regardless of whether it is overt or covert.” See his Collected Papers, vol. 1, The Problem of Social Reality, ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, [1945] 1962), p. 211. Thus, the action in question may be purely mental. 7. Erving Goffman, Behavior in Public Places (New York: Free Press, 1963), pp. 59– 60. 8. Folk theories suffice for people in everyday life, but time does not always fly when you are having fun, and all of the related proverbs are equally problematic. See Flaherty, A Watched Pot, p. 37. 9. Goffman, Behavior in Public Places, p. 38. 10. Mentally, this individual is “away,” to use Erving Goffman’s evocative concept: “While outwardly participating in an activity within a social situation, an individual can allow his attention to turn from what he and everyone else considers the real or seri-

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ous world, and give himself up for a time to a playlike world in which he alone participates. This kind of inward emigration from the gathering may be called “away,” and we find that strict situational regulations obtain regarding it.” Ibid., p. 69. 11. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 161. 12. Ibid., p. 149. 13. Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. 2, Studies in Social Theory, ed. Arvid Brodersen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, [1951] 1964), p. 177. For ethnographic corroboration, see Nicholas P. Dempsey, “Hook-Ups and Train Wrecks: Contextual Parameters and the Coordination of Jazz Interactions,” Symbolic Interaction 31 (2008): 57–75. 14. Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. 2, p. 176. 15. Ibid., p. 175. 16. Ibid., p. 162. 17. Murray S. Davis, Smut: Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 15. 18. It has been suggested that this problem is especially acute among temp workers, because the rest of us have “a relatively steady supply of work,” but from the standpoint of exercising some control over temporal experience, the availability of work is an issue for practically all employees. See Kevin D. Henson, Just a Temp (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), p. 51. 19. Ben Hamper, Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line (New York: Warner, 1992), p. 150. Antics of this kind have been documented by social scientists, but they have not conceptualized this conduct as a form of temporal agency. In par ticular, see Donald F. Roy, “ ‘Banana Time’: Job Satisfaction and Informal Interaction,” Human Organization 18 (1959–1960): 158–168. 20. Hamper, Rivethead, p. 151. 21. Ibid., p. 150. 22. A cruise is something of an exception, in that the journey itself is the chief “destination,” and it is designed with nearly constant entertainment in mind. 23. Time work is not initiated in response to a lack of stimulation in the situation at hand. Yet it would appear that, like classroom instruction and the demands of one’s job, the complexities of driving are not stimulating enough, inasmuch as time drags during all of these endeavors without agentic intervention on our part. It is also the case, however, that multitasking while driving (e.g., using a cellular phone) has been shown to increase the rate of traffic accidents, which suggests that, in an effort to manage the perceived passage of time, many of us create more complexity than we can handle. See Allen C. Bluedorn, The Human Organization of Time: Temporal Realities and Experience (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 70. See also Donald A. Redelmeier and Robert J. Tibshirani, “Association Between Cellular-Telephone Calls and Motor Vehicle Collisions,” New England Journal of Medicine 336 (1997): 453– 458. 24. The sociological literature on waiting and delay does not come to grips with the variety and exuberance of temporal agency. For example, Barry Schwartz mentions the “diversions supplied in many waiting facilities,” but he does not conceptualize or examine individual efforts to customize temporal experience. See Queuing and Waiting: Studies in the Social Organization of Access and Delay (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 169.

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25. Put differently, there is plenty of stimulation in most instances of class, work, and travel, but many people cannot or will not be engrossed by what their circumstances have to offer. What we witness, then, is an agentic turning away from one thing in favor of another. As Jack Katz puts it, “We are always moving away from and toward different objects of consciousness” in response to the phenomenological dynamics of attraction and repulsion. See Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil (New York: Basic Books, 1988), p. 4. 26. Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. 1, p. 14. 27. Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), p. 237. 28. Carolyn Hax, “Tell Me About It,” St. Petersburg Times, 1 July 2004, p. E3. 29. Ibid. See also Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience, ed. Owen Thomas (New York: W. W. Norton, [1854] 1966), p. 62. 30. Baba Ram Dass, Be Here Now (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 1978). 31. Colleen Jenkins, “Riding toward Recovery,” St. Petersburg Times, 3 December 2006, p. B1. Photograph by Melissa Lyttle. 32. The only exception to the emphasis on aesthetics is reported by a student who tried “to slow down time during [his] exam” by “looking at [his] watch more frequently,” but he admits that the effort backfired: “Although this method slowed time down in my mind, in reality it only took away from my time directed towards answering the questions on the test.” 33. Her comments are typical of people who experience intense joy. See Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990). 34. See Erving Goffman’s essay, “Fun in Games,” in Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961), p. 67. 35. James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1, p. 402; Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 25. 36. Paraphrasing Howard Becker, we can conclude that some people take some drugs in order to manipulate their experience of time. See his “History, Culture, and Subjective Experience,” p. 164. 37. Norman K. Denzin, Treating Alcoholism: An Alcoholics Anonymous Approach (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987), p. 26. 38. Allen C. Bluedorn points out that “time cannot be managed in the same sense that other resources can.” He is critical of simplistic assumptions in the time management literature, and rightly so. See The Human Organization of Time, p. 227. CHAPTER 3: FREQUENCY

1. Actually, nature is only a paragon of temporal regularity when contrasted with the vagaries of human behavior. Due to the gravitational drag of the moon, our day has been growing longer over time. During the Jurassic Era, for instance, the length of a day was closer to twenty-three hours. The gradual lengthening of our day bedev ils those people who are responsible for measur ing time with utmost accuracy. See Keith J. Winstein, “Why the U.S. Wants to End the Link between Time and Sun,” The Wall Street Journal, 29 July 2005, p. A1. 2. Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael, and Stuart Michaels, The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 88.

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3. Glen Elder’s conclusion is unassailable: “Within the constraints of their world, people are planful and make choices among options that construct their life course.” See his “Time, Human Agency, and Social Change,” p. 6. 4. These individuals are not simply rejecting one version of the self but, by the same token, are embracing and realizing an oppositional variation. See Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, 2d ed. (New York: Van Nostrand, 1968), p. 97. 5. Bluedorn, The Human Organization of Time, p. 147. My data suggest that entrainment is not necessarily a product of blind determinism. Variation in the volume of e-mail per hour provides another example. This variation is linked to daily and weekly cycles of activity— a pattern that coalesces from myriad independent choices concerning when to use e-mail. See Michael G. Flaherty and Lucas Seipp-Williams, “Sociotemporal Rhythms in E-mail: A Case Study,” Time & Society 14 (2005): 39– 49. 6. Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory, p. 56. But, of course, the fundamental precursor is Mead’s insistence that the self makes for uncertainty in social interaction. See Mead, Mind, Self and Society, p. 176. 7. Monica A. Seff, Viktor Gecas, and Margaret P. Ray, “Injury and Depression: The Mediating Effects of Self-Concept,” Sociological Perspectives 35 (1992): 573. 8. Not all intentional behavior is manipulative; conversely, it is possible to be manipulative in a habitual or relatively unconscious fashion. Time work varies along a continuum from habitual and unconscious practices to conscious and highly purposeful efforts, but my data indicate that the bulk of these practices are deliberate. 9. E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present 38 (1967): 56–97. 10. Barry Glassner, “Fit for Postmodern Selfhood,” in Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies, ed. Howard S. Becker and Michal M. McCall (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990): 215–243. 11. Frequency can also mark problematic behavior, as in the case of alcoholism. See William A. Reese and Michael A. Katovich, “Untimely Acts: Extending the Interactionist Conception of Deviance,” Sociological Quarterly 30 (1989): 159–184. 12. The analysis of time work enables us to avoid conceptualizing temporal experience from the reductionist standpoint of what Harold Garfinkel calls a cultural dope: “By ‘cultural dope’ I refer to the man-in-the-sociologist’s-society who produces the stable features of the society by acting in compliance with preestablished and legitimate alternatives of action that the common culture provides.” See Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), p. 68. 13. Georg Simmel, “Sociability,” in Georg Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1910] 1971), p. 130, italics in original. 14. Ibid., p. 136. 15. Kai T. Erikson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1966), p. 189. 16. Ibid., p. 50. 17. Viktor Gecas, “The Self-Concept as a Basis for a Theory of Motivation,” in The Self-Society Dynamic: Cognition, Emotion, and Action, ed. Judith A. Howard and Peter Callero (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 171–187. 18. Ibid., p. 175.

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Notes to Chapter 4: Sequence

19. Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (New York: Anchor, 1967), p. 15. 20. Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, 2d ed. (New York: Free Press, [1963] 1973), pp. 75–76. 21. Ibid., pp. 52–53. 22. Angela O’Rand and Robert A. Ellis, “Social Class and Social Time Perspective,” Social Forces 53 (1974): 53. 23. Viktor Gecas, “The Social Psychology of Self-Efficacy,” Annual Review of Sociology 15 (1989): 292. 24. Ibid., p. 310. 25. Viktor Gecas and Michael L. Schwalbe, “Beyond the Looking-Glass Self: Social Structure and Efficacy-Based Self-Esteem,” Social Psychology Quarterly 46 (1983): 86. 26. Ibid., p. 79. CHAPTER 4: SEQUENCE

1. J. David Lewis and Andrew Weigert, “The Structures and Meanings of Social Time,” Social Forces 60 (1981): 437. 2. Ibid. 3. The study of sequence has a long and influential pedigree in microsociology. Howard Becker’s advocacy for “a sequential model of deviance” was a hallmark of his research and has been emulated by numerous scholars in the symbolic interactionist paradigm. See Becker, Outsiders, p. 22. Equally pathbreaking was Emanuel A. Schegloff’s research on “sequencing in two-party conversations,” because it served as a springboard for the development of conversation analysis—the most vigorous derivation from ethnomethodology. See his article “Sequencing in Conversational Openings,” American Anthropologist 70 (1968): 1075. Despite sustained attention to sequential matters, neither line of research has concerned itself with agentic efforts to control or manipulate the order of events. 4. Goffman, Interaction Ritual, p. 44. 5. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Doubleday, 1966), p. 26. 6. Vyvyan Evans, The Structure of Time: Language, Meaning, and Temporal Cognition (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2003), p. 204. 7. Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism, p. 15. 8. Bluedorn, The Human Organization of Time, p. 48. In addition, he notes that a preference for multitasking is shaped by both culture and personality. 9. In its original formulation, this concept was abstracted from collective phenomena. See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 10. Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism, p. 66. 11. According to Garfinkel, “Agnes vehemently insisted that she was, and was to be treated as, a natural, normal female.” See Studies in Ethnomethodology, pp. 122, 166. 12. Ibid., p. 125. 13. Ibid., p. 178. 14. Ibid., p. 136. 15. Ibid., p. 180.

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16. Berger and Luckmann define reification as “the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something else than human products.” See The Social Construction of Reality, p. 89, italics in original. 17. Ibid., p. 53. 18. Ibid., pp. 58–59. 19. Howard S. Becker identifies another version of this faultline in the intriguing tendency of social scientists to use the language of causal determinism when talking “about other people” but to invoke chance or coincidence when explaining important events in their own lives. See his article “ ‘Foi por Acaso’: Conceptualizing Coincidence,” Sociological Quarterly 35 (1994): 184. 20. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language, trans. Hugh J. Silverman (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 15. 21. Worker resistance is the topic of Chapter 7. 22. In a kindred manner, college professors make assignments but leave the details of implementation to students, thereby permitting some discretion and variation in sequence. A twenty-one-year-old describes his approach: “The way I write papers is different compared to the way others seem to write their papers. I like to start writing my papers in the middle of the paper. This lets me express my main points and thoughts without confining myself to the introduction I wrote. This also helps to add organization to the paper and, for me at least, makes the whole process go quicker. The last thing I do is the introduction.” 23. Zerubavel, “The Standardization of Time.” 24. Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss, “Awareness Contexts and Social Interaction,” American Sociological Review 29 (1964): 670. At least in theory, both parties see what each other wants, as exemplified by these comments from a young man: “By asking a friend to delay drinking so we can go on a quick run to the store, I am usually able to acquire the needed transportation long enough to get what I want and not to overly delay their planned activities.” 25. Ibid. 26. On these occasions, selective attention plays the crucial role envisioned by William James. See The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1, p. 402. 27. Marvin B. Scott and Stanford M. Lyman, “Accounts,” American Sociological Review 33 (1968): 46– 62. 28. The same is true of collective (i.e., macrolevel) forms of agency, such as social movements. 29. William C. Yoels and Jeffrey Michael Clair, “Never Enough Time: How Medical Residents Manage a Scarce Resource,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 23 (1994): 195. 30. Of course, this line of analysis is derived from Erving Goffman’s marvelously cynical insight concerning sincerity: “At one extreme, one finds that the performer can be fully taken in by his own act; he can be sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality.” See The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, p. 17. CHAPTER 5: TIMING

1. Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), p. 8.

164

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2. John Bartlett, Familiar Quotations, ed. Emily Morison Beck (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), p. 421. 3. Jennifer Saranow, “Hey, Mom and Dad: Weddings Are Costly,” Tampa Tribune, 25 December 2005, p. 5. 4. Ibid. 5. Emile Durkheim, Suicide, trans. John A. Spaulding and George Simpson (New York: Free Press, [1897] 1966). 6. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States, 2003: Uniform Crime Reports (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 2004), p. 12. 7. Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), p. 27. 8. Murray Melbin, “Behavior Rhythms in Mental Hospitals,” American Journal of Sociology 74 (1969): 650. 9. Reese and Katovich, “Untimely Acts.” 10. Chris Lamb, “It’s Serious Business Behind Humor Class Laughter,” St. Petersburg Times, 18 July 1999. 11. David J. Magid et al., “Relationship between Time of Day, Day of Week, Timeliness of Reperfusion, and In-Hospital Mortality for Patients with Acute ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction,” Journal of the American Medical Association 294 (2005): 809. 12. Cox News Ser vice, “Year of the Pig Sparks Chinese Baby Boom,” St. Petersburg Times, 4 March 2007, p. A23. 13. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 99. Elaborating on Mead’s work, Peter Callero asserts that “we enter into a covert conversation [i.e., thought or cognition] only when we find ourselves in novel behavioral episodes that require self-conscious problem solving.” See Peter L. Callero, “Toward a Sociology of Cognition,” in The SelfSociety Dynamic: Cognition, Emotion, and Action, ed. Judith A. Howard and Peter L. Callero (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 46. 14. Ibid., p. 98. The stimulus in question may emanate from the mind’s internal or external environment. See Alfred R. Lindesmith, Anselm L. Strauss, and Norman K. Denzin, Social Psychology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988), p. 93. 15. Reed Abelson, “Limits on Residents’ Hours Worry Teaching Hospitals,” New York Times, 14 June 2002, p. 20. See also Yoels and Clair, “Never Enough Time,” p. 192. 16. Travel as well as more systematic forms of research corroborate the fact that notions of punctuality vary across national borders. See Elizabeth Devine and Nancy L. Braganti, The Traveler’s Guide to Latin American Customs and Manners (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000); Mark Iutcovich, Charles E. Babbitt, and Joyce Iutcovich, “Time Perception: A Case Study of a Developing Nation,” Sociological Focus 12 (1979): 71– 85. 17. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, p. 53. 18. Ibid., italics added. This dialectical conception is anticipated by William James in his seminal essay, “The Perception of Reality.” See The Principles of Psychology, vol. 2 (New York: Dover, 1890), p. 301. 19. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 176. 20. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, p. 68.

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21. Simmel, Georg Simmel, p. 97. 22. The literature in social psychology is a major exception, as we saw in Chapter 1. 23. This formulation was inspired by Susan Sontag’s famous declaration: “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.” See Against Interpretation (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1966), p. 14. See also Michael G. Flaherty, “The Erotics and Hermeneutics of Temporality,” in Investigating Subjectivity: Research on Lived Experience (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992). 24. Becker, Outsiders, p. 27. See also Elder, “Time, Human Agency, and Social Change.” 25. John Romano, “Retaliation Timing Way Off,” St. Petersburg Times, 18 May 2009, pp. C1, C4. 26. Spencer E. Cahill, “Children and Civility: Ceremonial Deviance and the Acquisition of Ritual Competence,” Social Psychology Quarterly 50 (1987): 312–321. 27. Scott and Lyman, “Accounts.” 28. Thomas Paine provides a famous example from American history: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the ser vice of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” See “The American Crisis: I,” in Common Sense and other Political Writings, ed. Nelson F. Adkins (New York: Macmillan, [1776] 1953), p. 55, italics in original. 29. Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory, p. 56. 30. Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir (New York: Touchstone, 1996), p. 284. 31. A nice example can be found in Anthony Bourdain’s exposé on restaurants: “Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best nights to order fish in New York. The food that comes in Tuesday is fresh, the station prep is new, and the chef is well rested after a Sunday or a Monday off. It’s the real start of the new week, when you’ve got the goodwill of the kitchen on your side. Fridays and Saturdays, the food is fresh, but it’s busy, so the chef and cooks can’t pay as much attention to your food as they— and you— might like.” See Kitchen Confi dential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (New York: Bloomsbury, 2000), p. 72. 32. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. 33. This conceptualization is derived from Shawn E. McNulty and William B. Swann, “Identity Negotiation in Roommate Relationships: The Self as Architect and Consequence of Social Reality,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67 (1994): 1012–1023. 34. Thoits, “Stressors and Problem-Solving.” 35. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, p. 136. CHAPTER 6: ALLOCATION

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Yoels and Clair, “Never Enough Time,” p. 207. Ibid., p. 206. Ibid., p. 204. Ibid., p. 202. Ibid., p. 203.

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Notes to Chapter 7: Taking Time

6. Ibid. Medicine has been described as a “greedy institution.” See Lewis A. Coser, Greedy Institutions (New York: Free Press, 1974). Yet, as Erving Goffman revealed in his ethnography of a mental asylum, the greedier the institution, the more vibrant its underlife of resistance. See Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1961). 7. Bluedorn, The Human Organization of Time, p. 49. 8. Goffman, Encounters, p. 132. 9. A twenty-four-year-old grocery clerk expresses nearly identical opinions concerning his participation in swing dancing: “It makes me feel out of the everyday crowd and good at something I’ve practiced. It’s one of the only things you can do with such a variety of ages at the same time. It lets me relax and be able to hang out with a different crowd than what I’m used to.” 10. Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. 1, p. 230. 11. Ibid., p. 232. 12. Ibid., p. 230. 13. Here, I elaborate on the work of Berger and Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality, p. 25. 14. Italics added. 15. Erikson, Wayward Puritans. 16. My thanks to Ginna Husting for this observation. 17. Erving Goffman, Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (New York: Basic Books, 1971), p. 19. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., p. 194. 20. Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. 1, p. 219. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., p. 220, italics in original. 23. Arnold Arluke and Clinton R. Sanders, Regarding Animals (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), p. 2. 24. Alex Markels, “Room to Think,” U.S. News & World Report, 30 September 2002, p. D10. 25. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 117. 26. Eviatar Zerubavel, “Private Time and Public Time: The Temporal Structure of Social Accessibility and Professional Commitments,” Social Forces 58 (1979): 38–58. CHAPTER 7: TAKING TIME

1. Lloyd W. Klemke, The Sociology of Shoplifting: Boosters and Snitches Today (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992); see also Katz, Seductions of Crime. 2. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” 3. Ibid., p. 84. 4. Ibid., p. 86. 5. Barbara Adam provides an excellent summary of the impact of Newton’s work on the temporal outlook of the West in her book, Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards (London: Routledge, 1998). 6. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” p. 73. 7. Ibid., p. 74.

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8. Ibid. 9. Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (New York: Harper, 1911), p. 10. 10. Ibid., p. 25. 11. Ibid., p. 26. 12. Ibid., p. 53. 13. Ibid., p. 55. 14. Ibid., p. 103. As Harry Braverman puts it, Taylor aspired to dictate “the precise manner in which work is to be performed.” See Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), p. 90, italics in original. 15. Donald Roy, “Quota Restriction and Goldbricking in a Machine Shop,” American Journal of Sociology 57 (1952): 441. 16. Donald Roy, “Work Satisfaction and Social Reward in Quota Achievement: An Analysis of Piecework Incentive,” American Sociological Review 18 (1953): 508, 514. See also Donald Roy, “Efficiency and the ‘Fix’: Informal Intergroup Relations in a Piecework Machine Shop,” American Journal of Sociology 60 (1954): 255–266. 17. Roy, “ ‘Banana Time’: Job Satisfaction and Informal Interaction,” p. 162. 18. Ibid. As noted in Chapter 2, Ben Hamper provides more recent examples of similar highjinks, albeit in a different industry (automaking), thereby helping to corroborate both its persistence and prevalence. See Rivethead, p. 150. 19. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 25. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Henson, Just a Temp, p. 81. 23. Emma Bell and Alan Tuckman, “Hanging on the Telephone: Temporal Flexibility and the Accessible Worker,” in Making Time: Time and Management in Modern Organizations, ed. Richard Whipp, Barbara Adam, and Ida Sabelis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 117. Likewise, given the absence of overtime pay, these arrangements “blur the distinction between holidays and rest days, workdays, and weekends.” Ibid., p. 121. 24. Ibid., p. 124. 25. Paul Sloan, “New Ways to Goof Off at Work,” U.S. News & World Report, 4 September 2000, p. 42. 26. Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 106. 27. Ibid. 28. Anne Lindberg, “Officer Resigns over Her Timecard,” St. Petersburg Times, 30 August 2006, p. 16. 29. “Water Official Accused of OT Theft,” St. Petersburg Times, 15 October 2004, p. B3. 30. “Law Firm Accused of Bill Padding,” St. Petersburg Times, Thursday, 31 August 2006, pp. D1–D2. 31. “That’ll Be $78-million, Wal-Mart,” St. Petersburg Times, 14 October 2006, pp. D1– D2. Similar lawsuits have been lost by Albertsons and brought against Eli Lilly.

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32. Mark Albright, “Eckerd OT Suit Opens to Hundreds,” St. Petersburg Times, 25 February 2005, pp. D1, D5. 33. “Revised Overtime Rules Take Effect, Stir Debate,” St. Petersburg Times, 23 August 2004, p. A3. 34. Vincent J. Roscigno and Randy Hodson, “The Organizational and Social Foundations of Worker Resistance,” American Sociological Review 69 (2004): 14. 35. Ibid., p. 18. 36. Ibid., pp. 15, 18. 37. One measure of absenteeism is the lower volume of organizational e-mail on Mondays and Fridays. See Flaherty and Seipp-Williams, “Sociotemporal Rhythms in E-mail.” 38. Roscigno and Hodson, “The Organizational and Social Foundations of Worker Resistance,” p. 35. 39. Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John H. Weakland conceptualized the “double bind situation” in their article, “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia,” Behavioral Science 1 (1956): 253. 40. Goffman, Encounters, p. 120. 41. Max Scheler, Ressentiment, ed. Lewis A. Coser, trans. William W. Holdheim (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, [1912] 1961), p. 48, italics in original. 42. Christena E. Nippert-Eng, Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries through Everyday Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 61. 43. Ibid., p. 91. 44. Lindesmith, Strauss, and Denzin, Social Psychology, p. 41. 45. Unofficial breaks are ubiquitous, and they can be found in quite different occupations, as indicated by this response from a thirty-two-year- old male construction worker: “Since the job can be demanding at times, I use the downtime I have from my job as a time to rest. This is not during my break, but in between. After I fi nish a section or goal, I take a little breather before moving on to the next project.” 46. Hoyt Alverson argues that “anthropology and other human sciences have overstated the . . . diversity of temporal experience.” His research suggests that terminology concerning temporal experiences can “in general be translated quite exactly between languages as different as English, German, Setswana, Mandarin, and Hindi. See Alverson, Semantics and Experience: Universal Metaphors of Time in English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Sesotho (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), pp. xii, ix. See also Flaherty, Freidin, and Sautu, “Variation in the Perceived Passage of Time.” I am grateful for the linguistic assistance of Kristy Cardellio, Yanira Angulo- Cano, Lee Hilliker, Ginna Husting, Renate Kling, Margret Skaftadottir, Keiko Takamasu Flaherty, and Jing Shen. 47. Katz, Seductions of Crime, p. 313. 48. Ibid., p. 3. 49. Ibid., p. 52. 50. Ibid., p. 216. 51. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, p. 18. 52. Michael G. Flaherty, “A Formal Approach to the Study of Amusement in Social Interaction,” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 5 (1984): 71– 82.

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53. Goffman, Encounters, p. 116. 54. Ibid., pp. 101, 120. Role distance must be distinguished from “burnout” where employees are “at work” but have ceased working altogether. See Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler, Paradise Laborers: Hotel Work in the Global Economy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), p. 173. 55. Goffman, Asylums, p. 44; ibid., p. 171; ibid., p. 54. 56. Ibid., p. 230. CHAPTER 8: THE IRONIES OF TEMPORAL AGENCY

1. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Donald P. McNeill, and Douglas A. Morrison, Compassion: A Refl ection on the Christian Life (New York: Doubleday, 1983), p. 93. 2. Allen C. Bluedorn and Rhetta L. Standifer, “Time and the Temporal Imagination,” Academy of Management Learning and Education 5 (2006): 197. 3. Ibid., p. 200. 4. Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” Gender and Society 1 (1987): 125–151. 5. Ibid., p. 126. 6. Corsaro, “Interpretive Reproduction in Children’s Peer Cultures,” p. 175. 7. As previously noted, this formulation of “effort” relies on Alfred Schutz’s defi nition of “action.” See Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. 1, p. 211. 8. Viktor Gecas, “The Self-Concept,” Annual Review of Sociology 8 (1982): 17. 9. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 45. 10. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology. 11. Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 8. 12. Joas, G. H. Mead, p. 192. 13. Anne Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51 (1986): 277. 14. Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapart,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, [1852] 1978), p. 595. 15. George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of the Present (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), p. 15. 16. Swidler, “Culture in Action,” pp. 276–277. 17. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner’s, [1904–1905] 1958), p. 48. 18. Ibid., p. 157. 19. Zerubavel, “The Standardization of Time.” 20. Goffman, Asylums, p. 319. 21. Pickering, The Mangle of Practice, pp. 22–23. 22. Previous efforts at classification identify different types of agency but do not recognize degrees of agency. See, for example, Swanson, “Doing Things Together.” 23. These four cases were collected in the course of my research on variation in the perceived passage of time. Three of them were examined in a previously published article. See Michael G. Flaherty, “Making Time: Agency and the Construction of Temporal Experience,” Symbolic Interaction 25 (2002): 379–388.

170

Notes to Chapter 8: The Ironies of Temporal Agency

24. Lisbeth Levine, “Chic to Chic: Rebecca Romijn and John Stamos,” InStyle, February 1999, p. 229. 25. Amy Schulz, Faye Knoki, and Ursula Knoki-Wilson, “ ‘How Would You Write about That?’ Identity, Language, and Knowledge in the Narratives of Two Navajo Women,” in Women’s Untold Stories: Breaking Silence, Talking Back, Voicing Complexity, ed. Mary Romero and Abigail J. Stewart (New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 186. 26. The mass suicide at Masada offers instructive contrast with the Navajo woman’s statement, which shows that besieged people must choose what to do, even if all of their choices are undesirable. Similarly, Viktor E. Frankl assures us that agency endured inside Nazi concentration camps: “And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.” See Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), p. 66. 27. Likewise, the temporal effects are mediated by self-consciousness when we are put “on hold” or asked to sit in a waiting room. 28. Bluedorn and Standifer, “Time and the Temporal Imagination,” p. 200, italics in original. 29. Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory, p. 56. 30. Simmel, Georg Simmel, p. 97. 31. Ibid., p. 98. 32. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, [1943] 1956), pp. 47– 48. 33. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, p. 25. 34. Peter Berger’s phrasing cannot be improved upon: “We are betrayed into captivity with our own cooperation.” See Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1963), p. 121. 35. Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory, p. 56. 36. Alfred R. Lindesmith, “Symbolic Interactionism and Causality,” Symbolic Interaction 4 (1981): 88. 37. Berger, Invitation to Sociology, p. 123. 38. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt,” in Sense and Nonsense, trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, [1948] 1964), p. 21. 39. Emirbayer and Goodwin, “Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency,” p. 1413. Their position echoes the dialectical model formulated by Berger and Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality, pp. 60– 61. METHODOLOGICAL APPENDIX

1. The examples of consensual determinism are drawn from my previous research. From 1983 to 1994, my assistants and I collected 705 first-person descriptions of circumstances during which individuals perceived time to pass slowly. Further details concerning that data can be found in Flaherty, A Watched Pot.

Notes to Methodological Appendix

171

2. Morris Zelditch, Jr., “Some Methodological Problems of Field Studies,” American Journal of Sociology 67 (1962): 572. 3. Although my topic requires interviewing, these methods represent an approximation to “naturalistic inquiry.” See Norman K. Denzin, “The Logic of Naturalistic Inquiry,” Social Forces 50 (1971): 166–182. 4. Zelditch, “Some Methodological Problems of Field Studies,” p. 572. 5. Jack Katz, “A Theory of Qualitative Methodology: The Social System of Analytic Fieldwork,” in Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Readings, ed. Robert M. Emerson (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1988).

Index

Absenteeism, 117–118, 121, 168n37 Acceleration, 15, 32, 34–35 Accommodation, 85, 136. See also Collaboration; Complicity Accounts, 72 Action, 5, 9, 141, 150 Adam, Barbara, 7, 166n5 Adventure, 147 Advice, 68 Agency, 3, 5, 46, 170n26; conceptualization of, 133, 149; controversy concerning, 137; critics of, 38, 60; effort at, 34, 148, 160n25; failure at, 54–55; gradations of, 55, 142; interactive, 20; mnemonic function of, 74; modes of, 143; neglect of, 11; observation of, 6, 13; origins of, 64; social order and, 150; social psychology and, 8; time and, 9, 12; typology of, 157n39; unwitting, 141; work as metaphor for, 11; worker, 121 Agentic practices, 36, 38, 134; camouflaged character of, 128; family of, 133; mélange of, 69; self-reflection in, 111; temporal experience and, 149; typology of, 136 Alcohol, 34 Allocation, 12–13, 98–114; interpersonal, 107–111 Alternation, 65 Alverson, Hoyt, 168n46 Ambivalence, 147–148

American occupational structure, 123, 138 Anderson, Elijah, 79 Angulo-Cano, Yanira, 168n46 Animals, 110–111 Annualized hours agreements, 118 Anxiety, 65, 96 Arluke, Arnold, 110 Astrology, 79 Athletes, 19, 29 Attention, 18, 158n10; agentic, 69 Attentional resources, 33, 139–140 Authenticity, 49 Authority, 36 Automobile assembly line, 23 Bateson, Gregory, 168n39 Becker, Howard S., 8, 52, 87, 160n36, 162n3, 163n19 Beckett, Samuel, 15 Behaviorism: Mead’s critique of, 4; temporality of, 3, 7 Bell, Emma, 118 Benedict, Ruth, 30 Benkler, Yochai, 119–120 Berger, Peter L., 58, 64, 142, 149, 163n16, 166n13, 170n34, 170n39 Billable hours, 120, 128, 144 Bluedorn, Allen C., 59, 99, 131–132, 139–140, 160n38, 162n8 Blumer, Herbert, 7–8, 59–60

174

Boredom, 15, 22, 28, 155n2; avoidance of, 19, 53–54, 127; during travel, 24–25; help with, 27 Bourdain, Anthony, 165n31 Bourdieu, Pierre, 10, 157n47 Braverman, Harry, 167n14 Breaks, 123, 126, 168n45 Bull, Michael, 10 Burke, Peter J., 157n37 Callero, Peter L., 6, 164n13 Cardellio, Kristy, 168n46 Cast, Alicia D., 157n37 Catholics, 49 Causality, 1, 144, 149; agency and, 149; appearance of, 138–139; circular, 53, 65, 81, 144; controversy concerning, 3–6 passim, 137; deterministic, 121; human experience of, 3; loop of, 37, 40; selfdetermination and, 7, 41; temporal experience and, 9 Celebration, 147 Cell phone, 25, 127, 159n23 Children, 65 Choice, 4–5, 7, 35, 109, 170n26; abstention from, 64, 141–142; agentic capacity for, 38, 41, 141; allocation of time and, 103, 106; choosing to conform, 85, 108; constrained, 76, 102; exercise of, 8, 11, 40, 83, 86, 149, 161n3; reflective, 82, 105, 144; socialized moment of, 149; timing and, 84, 88 Chores, 23, 29, 50, 83 Circumstances, 1–2, 7, 39, 99, 131; antecedent, 134; anticipated, 134, 145, 149; complicity with, 54, 142; constructed, 134, 141; current, 134, 145, 149; normal, 146; precipitating, 139; problematic, 145 (see also Problems); resistance to, 56, 132; trajectory of, 148; transformation of, 138; victim of, 148 Clair, Jeffrey Michael, 75, 98 Clothing, 45, 61, 77 Coaches, 19, 29 Cognitive economy, 65 Cognitive focus, 24, 33 Coincidence, 163n19 Collaboration, 18, 93, 142. See also Accommodation; Complicity Collins, Randall, 5–6 Comedy, 80 Commitment, temporal indicators of, 110 Commodity, time as, 135 Commuting, 50, 62, 159n23

Index

Compensatory behavior, 40, 65, 83, 101–102, 105, 122, 136, 144 Complicity, 139, 141, 147–148. See also Accommodation; Collaboration Conflict, 70 Consciousness, 3–4, 132 Consensual determinism, 137–142, 146–148 Constructionism, 2 Consumerism, 106, 127 Conversation analysis, 162n3 Copp, Martha, 10 Corruption, 43 Corsaro, William A., 10, 133 Crime, 79, 128–129 Crossword puzzles, 127 Cultural reproduction, 137, 142–144, 149 Culture, 20, 26, 30; components of, 31, 135; context of, 106–107; desires as effects of, 149; differences in, 58, 88; ongoing systems of, 71; representatives of, 48; temporal, 117; tendencies, 72; time work and, 135–136, 150; tool kit, 134; values of, 135, 143–144, 146 Data, 13 Davis, Murray S., 20 Dawdling, 125–127. See also Goofing off Daydreaming, 22, 128 Deadlines, temporally pliable, 81 Deceleration, 30, 32, 34–35 De Certeau, Michel, 118, 128 Delay, 26, 159n24 Delayed reaction, 82 Dempsey, Nicholas P., 159n13 Denzin, Norman K., 34 Desires, 2, 26, 30, 37, 40; agentic, 71, 133, 146; allocation of time to, 98, 112; anticipation of, 42, 58; compensatory, 136; contingencies resulting from, 60; realization of, 44; socialized, 149; temporal, 59, 72 Determinism, 2, 4, 6, 9, 56; agency disguised as, 40, 54, 138–139, 141, 150; agentic inadequacy as, 96; causal chain of, 102, 128; conceptualization of, 39, 86; contextual, 132; contradiction of, 120; cultural, 85; experience of, 46, 71; language of, 163n19; operation of, 82–83; self-determination and, 11, 36–37, 55, 58, 99, 134, 144, 149; temporal, 10, 15, 70, 81, 108, 142, 144; temporal structure of, 1, 7. See also Consensual determinism Dinner, 91–93 Diplomacy, 94–95

Index

Distraction, 16, 25, 32, 143; principles of, 28, 113 Doing time, 12, 132 Drugs, 8, 89, 146, 160n36. See also Alcohol; Marijuana Duration, 12–13; efforts to manage experience of, 14–35. See also Perceived duration Durkheim, Emile, 79 Duty, 45 Ecclesiastes, 79 Efficiency, 61, 63, 72–73, 77, 97, 101, 117, 133, 135, 143 Elder, Glen H., Jr., 9, 157n39, 161n3 Elections, timing of, 81 Elective passivity, 142 Ellis, Robert A., 55 E-mail, 127, 161n5 Emirbayer, Mustafa, 9, 150, 170n39 Emotions, 4 Empiricism, 5, 9, 132 Employees, 21–22, 29, 65, 115–127, 129–130. See also Workers Employers, 29, 116, 118–119, 123–130 Enculturation. See Socialization Enjoyment: renewal of, 52, 54; self-restraint and, 51–54 Entrainment, 40–41, 161n5 Environment, selection of, 7–8 Environmental provocations, personal construction of, 40 Erikson, Kai T., 49 Erotic time, 20, 71, 86, 147 Escapism, 103 Etiology, 2, 106; reactive, 105; temporal experience and, 8–9 Evans, Vyvyan, 59 Events: antecedent, 105; causal chain of, 144, 149; progression of, 59, 64, 67, 97, 99; tapestry of, 141; trajectory of, 143 Evolution, 146 Exercise, 39–41, 44, 67, 73, 75, 83, 89, 101 Existential philosophy, 140 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 79 Flaherty, Keiko Takamasu, 168n46 Flaherty, Michael G., 10, 169n23, 170n1 Folk theories and practices, 3, 15, 19, 83, 94, 114, 132, 158n8 Forbearance, 5, 35, 143, 145; agentic effort in, 88; gradation of, 137 Frankl, Viktor E., 170n26 Franklin, Benjamin, 79, 107, 135

175

Freedom, 140, 149, 170n26 Free places, 130 Free time, 98, 136 Frequency, 12–13, 36–56; identity and, 49; strategic manipulation of, 43 Fun, 33 Future research, 127, 135–136 Games, 33, 73, 127 Gardening, 104, 144 Garfi nkel, Harold, 6, 61–62, 85, 97, 132, 134, 145, 161n12, 162n11 Gecas, Viktor, 49, 56, 133 Gender, 43, 53, 61, 106–107, 132 Giddens, Anthony, 5–6, 9, 41, 91, 140–141, 143, 145 Goading, 43 Goffman, Erving, 2, 6, 12, 16–17, 33, 49–50, 58, 99, 109–110, 123, 129–130, 134–135, 158n10, 163n30, 166n6 Golf, 32, 53, 86 Goodwin, Jeff, 150, 170n39 Goofing off, 119. See also Dawdling Governmental policies, 84 Grooming, 59, 61 Habituation, 64, 71, 106, 161n8 Haley, Jay, 168n39 Hamper, Ben, 23, 120, 167n18 Heise, David R., 9 Henson, Kevin, 118 Hilliker, Lee, 168n46 Hitlin, Steven, 157n39 Hobby, 85 Hobsbawm, Eric, 60 Hodson, Randy, 120–121 Horseplay, 118, 120, 167n18 Housekeeping, 84 Human experience, textures of, 141 Hurston, Zora Neale, 2 Husting, Ginna, 166n16, 168n46 Identity, 39–41, 48; awareness of, 70, 143; frequency and, 49; maintenance of, 87, 100; realization of, 87, 100; sense of, 59, 123 Imagination, 134. See also Temporal creativity Impatience, 30, 131 Impression management, 94 Impropriety, 17 Incompletes, 81, 136 Indeterminism, 6, 63. See also Uncertainty Industrial revolution, 44, 115 Information processing, 10

176

Ingenuity. See Temporal creativity Instigation, 48 Intentionality, 2, 4, 8, 10, 35; agency and, 13, 24, 77, 133, 150; degrees of, 84, 141; lack of, 42, 139, 144; manipulation and, 161n8; specific outcomes of, 7, 111. See also Purposefulness Interpersonal coordination, 88 Interruptions, 54, 113 Intersubjectivity, 110 Interval: empty, 26; size of, 28 Intervention, 5, 35, 143, 145; absence of, 96; agentic effort in, 88, 132–133 (see also Agency); deliberate, 65, 97; dimensions of, 69; gradation of, 137; scientific research as, 9; temporal, 98. See also Micro-insurgency Invention of tradition, 60, 65 Inventiveness, 134. See also Temporal creativity Involvement, 17, 20, 33 Irony, 37, 64, 106, 131, 141, 147; cheerful sense of, 134 Jackson, Don D., 168n39 James, William, 6–7, 15, 33, 163n26, 164n18 Joas, Hans, 7, 134 Katovich, Michael A., 80 Katz, Jack, 128–129, 160n25 Killing time, 26–27, 29, 107, 127 Kling, Renate, 168n46 Knowledge, 82, 95; social distribution of, 30; stock of, 19 Labor-management relations, 115, 117, 119–120, 129–130 Lao-Tzu, 79 Laumann, Edward O., 36 Leisure pursuits, 83, 119 Lewis, J. David, 58 Life course, 161n3 Lindesmith, Alfred R., 144 Linguistic resources, 126 Logic, 72, 75, 94 Luckmann, Thomas, 58, 64, 163n16, 166n13, 170n39 Lundberg, George A., 4 MacIver, Robert M., 4–5 Magid, David J., 80 Mantra, 32 Marijuana, 33–34, 40–41, 45; career in law enforcement and, 48; self-restraint and, 52, 88, 143; timing of, 92

Index

Martial arts, 101–102 Marx, Karl, 134 Masada, 170n26 McCourt, Frank, 94 McNulty, Shawn E., 165n33 Mead, George Herbert, 4–5, 7–9, 20, 33, 82, 85, 111, 134, 140, 161n6, 164n13 Meaning, 5 Medical residents, 75, 98–99, 135, 143 Meditation, 32 Melbin, Murray, 80 Mementos, 32 Memory, 74–75. See also Mementos; Mnemonic devices Menaghan, Elizabeth G., 8 Mental excursions, 16 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 149 Micro-insurgency, 16 Mind, 3, 148, 164n14 Minute pinching, 118 Mische, Ann, 9 Mnemonic devices, 32 Multitasking, 21, 59, 99–100, 159n23, 162n8. See also Polychronicity My time, 103, 110, 113–114, 126 Natural sciences, 1, 4 Navajo, 138–139, 142, 170n26 Negotiation, 68–70, 92 Nippert-Eng, Christena E., 123 Novelty, 63, 77, 147, 164n13 Opera, 10 O’Rand, Angela, 55 Organizations, 48, 81, 130; temporally predatory, 103; time work and, 135–136, 150; underlife of, 129–130 Overfamiliarity, 54, 146. See also Satisfaction, renewal of Overtime rules, 120 Paine, Thomas, 165n28 Pampering. See Self-indulgence Participation, 139 Patience, 30, 131 Pavlov, Ivan, 3–4 Perceived duration, 1, 10, 14–35. See also Duration Perception, 140 Personal computers, 119 Personal hygiene, 59, 61, 72, 74, 85 Personal stereos, 11 Personal time, 102–103 Persuasion, 48, 68–69, 92

Index

Pickering, Andrew, 9, 136 Planning, 63, 124, 161n3 Pleasure, 147 Polychronicity, 59 Possibilities, 134 Power, 136. See also Navajo; Temporal regimentation Prayers, 32, 112 Pregnancy, timing of, 81 Pride, 17, 35, 44, 133 Principles, 15–16, 71–72, 75 Prioritizing, 75 Private time, 114, 147 Problems, 97, 144–145. See also Circumstances: problematic Pro bono hours, 120 Procrastination, 34, 85, 136 Production: nonproprietary, 119; temporality of, 117 Productivity, 97, 101, 130, 135, 143 Professional time, 103 Protestant ethic, 107, 135 Protracted duration, 2, 22, 30–32, 138 Punctuality, 37, 85, 89, 164n16 Puritans, 49, 107 Purposefulness, 132. See also Intentionality Qualitative research, 13 Quality time, 108 Randomization, 77. See also Novelty Ranger, Terence, 60 Rate, 36–37, 39; activity, 40–41, 53; another’s behavior, 43; compliance, 38; events, 45; modification of, 55, 139 Reactionary agency, 137, 144–146 Reality play, 129 Recreation, 112. See also Leisure pursuits Redirection of time, 123 Reese, William A., 80 Reflexivity, 145 Reification, 163n16 Relationships, 48–49; cultivation of, 109–110; network of, 113; time work and, 135–136, 150 Relaxation, 106–107 Religious services, 24, 29, 94, 136 Resistance, 2, 44, 57; circumstances for, 56, 147; degrees of, 86; dialectic of, 136; employee, 47; sociological studies of, 129; time work and, 66, 89; willful acts of, 113, 139, 144; worker, 120–121, 129–130 Resources: requisite, 134; situated, 35; temporal, 99–100, 103, 106, 108, 145

177

Responsibility, abdication of, 35 Restroom, 125 Rhythm, 37, 40, 43, 47, 121 Ritual, 73, 105, 118 Robinson, Dawn T., 9 Role distance, 129 Romijn, Rebecca, 138 Roscigno, Vincent J., 120–121 Rosenberg, Morris, 8 Roy, Donald, 117–118, 120, 159n19 Sailing, 104, 110, 144 Sanders, Clinton R., 8, 110 Saranow, Jennifer, 79 Sartre, Jean Paul, 140–141 Satisfaction, renewal of, 52. See also Overfamiliarity Savoring complex, 31–33, 35, 128, 135, 147 Schedules, 66–67, 88, 93, 104, 135, 139 Schegloff, Emanuel A., 162n3 Scheler, Max, 123 Schutz, Alfred, 20, 30, 101–102, 110, 158n6, 169n7 Schwalbe, Michael L., 56 Schwartz, Barry, 159n24 Secondary adjustments, 130 Seduction, 128 Seff, Monica A., 41 Selective attention, 7, 30, 33, 35, 131, 140–141, 144, 163n26 Self, 1, 3, 19, 99, 128; agentic, 65, 133, 157; determination of human experience and, 6; frequency for, 51; Goffman’s perspective on, 129–130; manipulation of, 39, 77; mediating effects of, 41, 142; motivation and, 49, 100; one’s involvement with, 11, 132 (see also Self-interaction); realization of, 134, 161n4; regulation of, 8; relevance in causal analysis, 7, 56, 141, 144; sense of, 56, 123; sequence in, 59; society and, 149–150; sovereignty of, 134; temporal effects mediated by, 139 Self-actualization, 37–38, 53, 82, 97, 103, 143, 146–147 Self-consciousness, 4, 44, 100, 149, 170n27; capacity for, 7, 142; cultural values in, 143; degrees of, 35, 141, 148; focal point of, 80; identity and, 59; sequence in, 58; shadow of, 124; shadows of, 130; temporal experience and, 8, 146 Self-denial, 53, 89 Self-determination, 3–4, 7, 23; apparent absence of, 138, 140; capacity for, 52, 54, 76, 129, 143; causal loop of, 9, 77, 131, 144;

178

Self-determination (cont.) conceptualization of, 5, 38, 86; critique of, 6; degrees of, 137; determinism and, 11, 36–37, 55, 58, 99, 134, 144, 149; efficacy of, 134 (see also Self-efficacy); empirical study of, 56, 130; evidence of, 133; exercise of, 88, 94; experience of, 71, 75, 82–83, 150; irrevocable contribution of, 141; pride in, 63, 65, 101 (see also Pride); seat of, 82; shadow of, 41; temporal, 81 Self-development, 100–105 Self-discipline, 65 Self-efficacy, 17, 35, 101; allocation and, 104; capacity for, 54, 96; frequency and, 55; human need for, 56; motivation for, 49; resources and, 44; sense of, 141; time work and, 37, 133 Self-esteem, 49 Self-expression, 102, 149–150 Self-indulgence, 32, 45, 103, 105–107, 112, 119, 135, 144–145 Self-interaction, 8, 59, 132 Self-interest, 69 Self-negation, 140–141 Self-regulation, 44 Self-restraint: agentically guided, 37–38, 52, 143; collective, 87; exercise of, 88; need for, 56; temporal meanings of, 49 Self-tests, 52 Sentimental materialism, 128–129 Sequence, 12–13, 57–78; agentic design of, 73, 80; experience of, 61; routinization of, 74–75, 77; social construction of, 57, 71; study of, 162n3 Setting, 61, 91. See also Environmental provocations, personal construction of Sexual intercourse, frequency of, 36 Shakespeare, William, 14–15 Shen, Jing, 168n46 Shopping, 75, 89–90, 106, 125 Simmel, Georg, 46, 140–141 Simultaneity, 100 Sin, 49, 135 Situation, 1, 8; construction of, 133; modification of, 9, 138; one’s involvement with, 11; resistance to causal trajectory of, 38; temporal dictates of, 15, 141 Skaftadottir, Margret, 168n46 Sleeping, 16, 24, 106 Sloan, Paul, 119 Smith-Lovin, Lynn, 9 Smoking, 52 Sociability, 22, 46, 127 Social aggregate, temporality of, 139

Index

Social class, 55 Social environment, 62, 135, 138. See also Situation Social institutions, 103 Social interaction, 3, 5, 55, 60, 110; agency and, 86, 92, 132, 150; Blumer’s conception of, 61; causal processes in, 108; forms of, 12, 68; identity maintenance and, 9; improvisational, 63; managed pulse of, 47; ritualistic, 118; self as goal of, 49; shadows of, 130; socialization and, 133 (see also Socialization); tactics in, 97; timing in, 80, 91, 94–95 Socialization, 19, 47, 72, 89–90, 108, 132–133, 143–144, 146, 149; self-discipline and, 99. See also Temporal socialization Socializing, 121 Social location, 148 Social movements, 163n28 Social norms, 45, 87, 97, 124, 131. See also Temporal norms Social order, 6, 43, 142, 149–150 Social psychology, 4, 6, 8, 11, 165n22; cross-cultural, 58; enduring polarities of, 63; survey of, 56 Social role, 20, 129, 135; duties associated with, 65; proficiency at, 103; withdrawal from, 123 Social sciences, 1, 3, 5, 129, 134, 150; epistemological framework of, 3–4, 149, 156n14, 163n19 Social structure, 5–6, 145 Social theory, 7, 140 Society, 81, 149–150 Sociology, 4–6, 76, 124, 129, 132, 150; dramaturgical, 130; emotions and, 158n52; ethnomethodology and, 132; Weber’s definition of, 155n14 Sociotemporal rhythms, 80 Solitude, 111–114, 136, 147 Sontag, Susan, 165n23 Spirituality, 112–113. See also Prayers Stamos, John, 138 Standard temporal units, 138 Standifer, Rhetta L., 131–132, 139–140 Stealing time, 13. See also Taking time Stets, Jan E., 157n37 Strategy, 68–69, 106; attention to, 94, 96; construction of, 134; covert, 122; experience of time and, 135; interpersonal, 70–71, 113; timing and, 95 Stress, 40–41, 101–102, 104–105, 144 Structure. See Social structure Students, 15–18, 21–22, 29, 65

Index

Subjectivity, 3–5; human, 141; manipulation of, 8 Subordination, 140 Suicide, 79 Suicide by cop, 8–9 Swann, William B., 165n33 Swidler, Anne, 134–135 Synchronization, 91 Tact, 94 Taking time, 12–13, 115–130 Tardiness, 90 Tattoos, 8, 10, 32 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 117, 130, 167n14 Teachers, 18, 29 Tempo, 10, 56 Temporal aesthetics, 30, 32–34, 86, 97, 112, 133 Temporal agency, 19, 23, 40, 44–45, 123, 147, 150; counterefforts at, 81; efforts to eliminate, 117; ironies of, 131–150; observation of, 149; shadow of, 65; spectrum of, 136–148; structure resulting from, 65, 109; tales of, 63; theory of, 58, 100; types of, 66, 98, 101, 104–105, 137, 142; uncertainty in, 61; universality of, 137; unrecognized, 60, 64; work and, 121, 130. See also Temporal enterprise; Time work Temporal alchemy, 115 Temporal appropriation, 115, 121 Temporal architect, 96 Temporal artifice, 95 Temporal aspirations, 135 Temporal assimilation, 139 Temporal autonomy, 3, 130 Temporal calculus, 88, 93 Temporal clemency, 95 Temporal commons, 110 Temporal compression, 22–24, 27, 29 Temporal conformity, 39; agentic effort toward, 85–86 Temporal constraint, 3 Temporal creativity, 2, 17, 23, 35, 86, 133; license for, 135; opportunities for, 134, 149; strategies for, 37, 117; structure resulting from, 65, 150; theft of time as, 120–121 Temporal deviance, 39, 88, 118, 124, 134–135, 143. See also Katovich, Michael A. Temporal discipline, 116 Temporal elitism, 10 Temporal enclaves, 103 Temporal enterprise, 92–94, 148. See also Temporal agency; Time work

179

Temporal experience, 16, 132–133; agentic construction of, 78, 99, 132, 140, 144; causal roots of, 5, 8, 147; contingencies of, 34; dimensions of, 133; distortion in, 2; diversity of, 168n46; efforts to customize, 134; finite province of, 102; forms of, 131, 141–142; self- management of, 21, 26, 151; situated trajectory of, 149; synchronization of, 20; textures of, 11, 140; theatrical productions and, 158n5; willful modification of, 3, 6–7, 10–11, 39 (see also Temporal agency; Time work) Temporal exploration, 146 Temporal extension, 136 Temporal fatalism, 54, 96, 148 Temporal gamesmanship, 81 Temporal ideology, 148 Temporal intelligence, 55 Temporal intersubjectivity, 20, 159n13 Temporality: agency and, 9 (see also Temporal agency; Time work); causal loop of, 39; control or manipulation of, 2; normal, 62; social construction of, 10, 39; social organization of, 10; subjective side of, 1 Temporal landscapes, architects of, 104 Temporal norms, 38, 58, 90. See also Social norms Temporal organization, 139 Temporal perspectives, 55 Temporal privileges, 109 Temporal quandaries, 131 Temporal reference groups, 38 Temporal regimentation, 89, 102; agentic complicity in, 45; new, 115, 138–139, 149 Temporal regularity, 160n1 Temporal socialization, 66 Temporal space, 104, 109, 113 Temporal system: social construction of, 70; standardized, 135 Temporal tolerances, 60 Temporal trespassing, 103 Temporal variety, 78 Temporal vengeance, 128, 144 Temp workers, 118, 159n18 Theft of time, 115, 119–121, 129. See also Taking time Their time, 103 Thoits, Peggy A., 13, 96 Thompson, E. P., 44, 115–116 Thoreau, Henry David, 31 Time: agentic manipulation of, 10 (see also Temporal agency; Time work); dimensions of, 149; experience of, 2, 10, 146; external demands on one’s, 38, 40, 55; inner flow of,

180

Time: agentic manipulation of (cont.) 58; manipulation of, 62; perceived passage of, 1, 10, 15, 28, 31–32, 35, 138, 158n5; reappropriation of, 11, 126; self and, 128; social psychology of, 10; sociology of, 10; standardization of, 10, 70; textures of, 2, 8, 34; typology of, 157n39; work and, 128 Time-and-motion studies, 117 Time budgets, 135 Time embeddedness, 58 Time management, 34, 75, 87, 135, 160n38 Time piranhas, 113 Time play, 87, 128, 137, 146–147. See also Reality play Time preserve, 113 Time rationing, 44, 136 Time reckoning: monopoly on, 116; systems of, 36, 58, 70, 139 Timescapes, 131 Time together, 110 Time work, 3, 6, 15, 18, 57, 144; agentic efforts at, 81, 87, 133; bracketed by temporal tolerances, 60; causal loop of, 39; class warfare as, 123; cross-cultural studies of, 135; cultural preferences and, 72; definition of, 11; failure at, 28–31, 54–55, 93–94; function in causal chain, 102; general feature of, 53; gradations of, 54–55; interpersonal, 25, 41, 46, 132; intrapersonal, 25, 41, 46, 132; neglect of, 11; prevalence of, 134; self- consciousness and, 59; self-expression and, 150; social order and, 150; types of, 12–13, 30–31, 126, 131, 142, 149; vectors for, 19. See also Temporal agency Timing, 12–13, 79–97; desire and, 97; deviance and, 80; errors in, 88; experience of, 90; occult trades and, 95 Total institutions, 129–130 Traditions, 73

Index

Traffic, 43, 50, 131, 135, 145 Transcendence, 148 Travel, 24–26, 29, 159n22, 160n25, 164n16 Trial and error, 71, 82, 94 Tuckman, Alan, 118 Uncertainty, 77, 85. See also Indeterminism United States, 15, 21, 26, 103, 107, 121, 135. See also American occupational structure Vacation, 31 Vail, D. Angus, 10 Velocity, manipulation of, 34 Violence, 79 Waiting, 26–27, 29, 159n24, 170n27 Watson, John B., 3–4 Weakland, John H., 168n39 Weber, Max, 135, 155n14 Weddings, 79 Weigert, Andrew, 58 West, Candace, 132 Willfulness, 44, 64, 69, 71; apparent absence of, 137, 142; capacity for, 130; demonstration of, 76, 93; exercise of, 145; fondness for, 86; link in causal chain, 108; temporal predilections and, 147 Withdrawal, 111–112. See also Solitude Work, 63, 84, 128–130, 135, 160n25; willingness to, 126 Workaholics, 106 Workers, 117–122, 124–130. See also Employees Yoels, William C., 75, 98 Zelditch, Morris, 153 Zen Buddhism, 31 Zerubavel, Eviatar, 10, 70, 114 Zimmerman, Don H., 132

Michael G. Flaherty is Professor of Sociology at Eckerd College. He is the author of A Watched Pot: How We Experience Time.