Every treatment of the subject of time never deals with time alone. The conflicts over time which are coming to light are strategic battlefields, political arenas, as the political scientists say, in which it is a question of better understanding what directions social processes are pursuing and what options are open. Shifts in the patterns of the allocation of time, which are to be found in the historical survey or in the international comparison, produce highly meaningful chronograms of a society. So much time for ourselves: so much time for others; so much time for work (paid): so much time for work (unpaid); so much time for buying: so much time for making; so much time for fundamental needs: so much time for luxury; so much time for waiting: so much time for getting things done. The list of empirically ascertainable classifications can be refined, and continued almost at will. Every categorization says something about the content and its quality at the same time, since the assessment results from the relation with the remaining pattern of allocation. Desires and reality can be confronted with one another, classified according to the features of the stratification of a society. Retrospectively, it is possible to ‘estimate’ what social development has changed and what it has 'brought'.
Politics of Time
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