Coordinating daily practices: time, convenience devices and gender

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Coordinating daily practices time, convenience
devices and gender

• Dale Southerton
• (ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and
  Competition,
• University of Manchester)

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Explanations of the time squeeze

• DO MORE
• People work more to consume more
• Dual burden theory
• THE WAY WE DO THINGS HAS CHANGED
• A gap between perception and life course
  trajectories
• Time increasingly subject to the principles of
  Taylorization people fragment and re-sequencing
  tasks in order to maximise efficiency
• De-routinization - flexible working and shopping
  hours weaken socio-temporal structures
• New technologies create more work or generate new
  temporal constraints (e.g. TV schedules or email)

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Harriedness (1)

• Juggling tasks
• being overwhelmed with things that need doing
  and rushing around to get them all done
  (Samantha)
• "I find the mornings very very hectic what with
  trying to feed her, get her dressed, to get
  myself dressed and get her out the door in time
  to get her to school I find myself stressed all
  the time by trying to get her to places for the
  time she needs to be there (Cindy)

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Harriedness (2)

• Lack of spatial and temporal identity within
  networks
• loss of a whole weekend, so I have to get
  everything done by Friday or there is a pile of
  ironing to do on Sunday night, as well as washing
  from the weekend and just the other stuff you
  need to do to get ready for a weeks work
  (Suzanne)

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Harriedness (3)

• Lack of alignment between personal socio-temporal
  constraints within social networks
• Managing cultural standards and expectations
• Lack of discipline in the implementation of
  personal schedules
• "first my Mum phoned as I'm about to leave the
  door, then I'm caught in traffic 'cause I chatted
  for too long with her, then when I get into work
  there's no ink in the printer and that's another
  20 minutes gone and then I'm up against it all
  day all because I didn't say to my Mum I'd phone
  her back, it's my fault (James).

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Respondents strategies for averting harriedness

• Fixed household socio-temporal routines
• Personal lists
• Shared diaries and schedulers
• Use of co-ordinating devices
• Use of time saving and shifting devices

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Implications of strategies for averting
harriedness

• Strategies employed to anticipate and avert
  harriedness do little to really alleviate the
  underlying problem.
• In many respects, anticipations of harriedness
  generate the problem itself.
• Goods and services sold in the name of
  convenience as market solutions to harriedness
  only act to generate the problems they promise to
  solve they make the need to control, manage and
  co-ordinate ones daily schedule more pressing.

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Hot and cold spots (1)

• Hot spots were necessary to create temporal
  space for the counter experience of 'cold spots
• "In the main we like to have dinner by half past
  5 at the latest. And then in the evenings, I mean
  it's one of the house rules to have everything
  cleared away by 7 even if that means somebody has
  to rush to do their job. So we have eaten, washed
  up, put away and then we are free. And then it's
  our potter time." (Mary)
• "we keep Sundays free as like our quality time
  but it does make Saturday's a bit hectic, like we
  try and get everything done so that Sunday is
  free, so we can spend proper time together."
  (Steven)

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Hot and cold spots (2)

• "I set the cooker sometimes if I want to haveif
  I have got a long meal, a dish is going to take a
  long time, sort of two or three hours and I know
  that I am not going to be home until six Ill
  set it to come on at three, so that the time
  about six or six thirty comes along the food is
  ready and we can have a proper meal, not
  something out a packet." (Sarah)
• "It's a case of getting a balance isn't it. Like
  for us, we got a dishwasher so that we've got
  more time on an evening for us but I don't like
  it, I'd rather wash up because I feel like I've
  cheated when it goes in there." (Ron)

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Hot and cold spots (3)

• On the one hand, convenience devices and services
  were regarded as essential if hot spots were to
  be successfully negotiated and cold spots
  produced.
• On the other, the forms of convenience necessary
  to negotiate hot spots also generated anxiety
  about taking short cuts and not doing a job
  well anxieties about a lack of care

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Five dimensions of time

• Periodicity (the frequency of an activity)
• Tempo (the pace of an activity)
• Synchronization (the mutual adaptation of
  activities)
• Duration (the length of an activity)
• Sequence (the ordering of events).

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Temporal organisation of practices

• Fixed practices are critical to the rhythm of
  any given day and all such practices required
• the social involvement of others where a degree
  of coordination and arrangement was required in
  order for the practice to be conducted
  satisfactorily
• a high degree of obligation to others
• and, significant degrees of personal commitment.

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Temporal organisation of practices (2)

• Different kinds of practices have specific
  temporal characteristics
• Weakening of institutionally timed events has
  specific implications for different kinds of
  practices
• The temporal re-ordering of practices has
  particular implications for different social
  groups
• lots of things are planned for me if you like,
  like all the things the kids do, you know,
  everything fits around them once Chloe is at
  nursery I get some time to myself but then its
  like I havent got enough time to do anything I
  can read a magazine which is nice and get some
  jobs done but I cant go shopping cause there
  isnt the time (Deborah).

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Conclusions (1)

• Temporal re-ordering a consequence of the erosion
  of some fixed institutional events which act as
  coordinating points of social practices.
• Discourses of time pressure individualise the
  problem, casting the rationalized scheduling of
  practices as a matter of personal control.
• Technological and service innovations around
  convenience permit individual scheduling, but
  this only make coordination between practices and
  people more problematic.
• Convenience comes with anxiety about doing things
  properly, about making time for, and spending
  time with, significant others. This anxiety is
  alleviated through cold spots which symbolize
  care and togetherness - but to generate cold
  spots necessitates hot spots of harriedness.

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Conclusions (2)

• Women disproportionately carried the obligations
  and responsibilities for coordinating hot and
  cold spots. This required the use of convenience
  technologies and the anxiety of compromising
  care. Women (more so than men) attempt to
  re-institute collective points of temporal
  coordination.
• Yet, women were also most constrained by fixed
  practices within the temporal order. They are
  charged with individually managing personal
  schedules in contexts where they have the least
  control over their own temporal ordering of
  practices.