In the everyday routine of the welfare state, the human time of services presents itself in a much more banal fashion, of course. In recent years, private forms of organization, unpaid voluntary work, and informal networks have increasingly also become a theme of government social policy.26Patients and clients are being discovered as partners’ of professional helpers and by professionally operating institutions. Their time is an important resource for furnishing one's own services and self-help. Under the pressure of falling social security benefits, a corresponding revaluation of all informally usable resources occurs which ultimately return to the resource of unpaid, private time. Laura Balbo has employed the image of crazy quilts in this connection, that patchwork of colourful remnants stitched together by American pioneer women in their remaining free time. In exactly the same way, women also use their remaining time today to furnish those services at home, in schools and clubs, in hospitals, neighbourhoods and offices, which are regarded as private.27
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Politics of Time