If time is one amongst other resources that practices need to survive, it is important to think about how they capture and secure necessary minutes or hours of attention given the very many other things that people might do in a day. How do new practices enter the frame and how are others squeezed out or reconfigured?
Practices as Competitors: For Time and Other Resources
When focusing on relatively bounded populations, like those who enjoy winter sports, it may be possible to demonstrate the impact of new practices on those which are already established. For instance, snowboarding appears to have stolen energy and enthusiasm from people who previously concentrated on skiing (Franke and Shah 2003). More generally, it seems that the arrival of TV viewing challenged other forms of leisure. Newspaper articles reporting on a BBC daily life study conducted in 1952 refer to a running contest between gardening and TV watching: according to the Daily Sketch, 14 April 1952, ‘Many people will watch television this afternoon and evening instead of going out. There will be few gardeners among them however. A BBC inquiry into the changes TV makes in family life reveals that it is seldom allowed to come between a man and his flowerbeds’ (cited in Griffiths and Holden 2004). Gardening remains extremely popular in Britain today, but audience figures suggest that TV viewing has gained ground since 1952 and that flowerbeds have lost some of the prime time commitment they once commanded.
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Elizabeth Shove