Time, Technology and Social Structure

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Time, Technology and Social Structure
CTUR

• Jonathan Gershuny
• Centre for Time Use Research
• Department of Sociology
• University of Oxford
• (Derived from ISER WP 2005-08)

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Polanyis Great Transformation
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The starting point for this work

• Post-Polanyi treatment of economic activity
  within sociology
• Misplaced exclusive focus on paid work (leads to
  age, ethnicity and gender distortions).
• Narrow view of technology (provides no clue as to
  reasons for long-term social, economic dynamics).
• Uninterested in the nature of consumption.
• No Great Transformation, many small ones.

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The twelve transformations
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National Accounts and economic activity.

System of National Accounts Production Boundary
(SNAPB)
SNAPB
GPB
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The objectives for this talk

• Introduce a system of social accounts based
  jointly on time and money.
• Show how change in social structure may be
  represented through this.
• And illustrate its potential for investigating
  social differentiation.

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Definitional preliminariesSocial Structure and
Position

• Structure set of objects plus set of defined
  relationships among them.
• Social structure individuals with given
  characteristics, relating with each other in ways
  that serve to enable the mutual satisfaction of
  their wants.
• Social position from characteristics that locate
  individuals within social structure.

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Definitional preliminaries Technology

• A system for the satisfaction of human wants,
  consisting of
• a set of artifacts embodied within a set of
  social relations.

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Consumption, production and provision.

• Technologies include production, reproduction
  (paid unpaid work) and consumption.
• Alternative terminology
• chains of provision for human wants.
• Technological diffusion as change in balance of
  modes of provision ( shift in modal split).

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20th century shifts in modal split

• Transport
• Trips by bus and train substituted by
• private automobiles, fuel, garage services.
• Entertainment
• Visits to cinema, theatre, etc substituted by
• television, video, radio, records and players.
• Domestic functions
• House cleang, food prep, laundry substituted by
• white goods, easy care materials, ready meals.

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Regulatory choice and modal split

• Child care
• Home care by mother (partially) substituted by
• Free childcare, non-gendered parental leave,
  shorter paid work hours.
• Transport
• Private car (partially) substituted by
• Subsidised public transport.
• Health care
• Private insurance (partially) substituted by
• Public funded health service.

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Three UK datasets

• Own-words diaries, national samples, harmonised
  to MTUS (v.5.22)
• BBC Audience Research Department Viewer and
  Listener Availability Survey 1961
• (N9,292 adult days).
• ESRC Time Diary Study (SCPR) 1983/4
• (N8,411 adult days).
• ONS/ESRC Time Use Study 2000/1.
• (N15,781 adult days).

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Empirical estimation of chains of provision

• The societys Great Day 1440 great minutes
• All great minutes either paid work, unpaid work
  or consumption, in a chain of provision for a
  want.
• Inclusive list of categories of human wants, eg
• sleep,
• shelter, household operation, nutrition,
• home leisure, childcare,
• shopping, travel, out-of-home leisure,
• medicine, education,
• background services.

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Constructing chains of provision a three step
procedure

• Associate each individuals leisure and unpaid
  work time with the appropriate category of want.
• Associate the money values of each item of final
  output from the economy (including investment
  flows) with the appropriate categories.
• Use input/output matrices etc. to calculate the
  labour time content of categories of final output
  (including imports and investments) substitute
  these for the money values.

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Step 1 Wants and time use categories
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Step 2 Wants and GNP money categories
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National Accounting definitions.

• final output
• hhold final expenditure govt services
• investment
  expenditure
• investment goes in long term to final
  consumption, hence
• long term final output
• hhold final expenditure govt services

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Shift in balance of the Great Day
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Shift in occupational balance
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Shift in paid/unpaid work balance
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Service trends
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Macro to micro

• So far, entirely macroscopic view.
• But amounts of time in Great Days, imply
  proportions in particular class (human capital or
  occupational), gender, and age groups.
• So we can disaggregate the tables to get views of
  different groups contributions of different
  sorts of work, and their access to different
  sorts of service consumption.

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Work time by sex and age
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New measures of social inequality

• Time Use, new opportunity for analysis
• Provision from outside the SNAPB
• Full income (OutputConsumption_time)
• Non-subjective non-monetary measures
• Here, three examples
• Unpaid_work_time shadow_wage
• Unpaid_work_time housekeeper cost
• Distributions of effective length of the day.

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Valuing production outside the economy

• Unpaid labour inputs vs consumption outputs
• Input method 1 own shadow wage
• Input method 2 producer cost (specialist or
  housekeeper wage)
• Output method value consumption events
• Accounting identity Inputs Outputs.

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HH incomes extensions by occupational groups
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HH incomes extensions by human capital deciles
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Why value the informal economy?

• These measures draw attention to distinct
  dimensions of social differentiation.
• Differential contribution of women, older people,
  non- or partially employed.
• Differential distributions of household
  equipment, facilities, access to services.
• Implications for public policy (eg capital or
  housing grants, attendance allowances).

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Effective day lengths by humcap deciles
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Discussion

• Framework for considering social impact of change
  in technology and regulation.
• Cross-national historical applications.
• New approach to occupational opportunity
  structure (slots).
• Disaggregated, new means of approaching
  inequality/s differentiation.
• Properly reflects economic contributions of
  distinct classes, sex and age groups.

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JGs new book-in-progress Time, Money, Social
Structure

• Other elements of the book
• Social position from embodied capitals or
  capabilities (economic, social, cultural)
• Conflict organic solidarity from positional
  characteristics (lecture last year)
• Economically salient embodied capability (
  human capital) as key to position
• Social mobility as dynamics of human capital
  formation and dissolution