Viewed in terms of society as a whole, a paradoxical structural convergence of patterns of time arises, in which uncertainty strives for new order. The area of industrial production is characterized by a comprehensive phase of rationalization for the reorganization of industrial manufacturing. Flexible manufacturing systems simultaneously facilitate special and mass production; through so-called ‘just in time’ organization, a close adaptation of production to a demand that is becoming more sophisticated can be made through computer-based networking of processing stages with one another, and of the temporally optimized delivery by suppliers. The extended technological and organizational possibilities are geared to optimization that is economical in terms of cost and time, but they increase the patterns of combination between human presence and mechanical processes. Whether and how far these new possibilities of combination, which permit an emancipation from formerly rigid practical constraints, are passed on to employees is an open question which will be decided politically.31
The other extreme is dominated by patterns of time which, because it is mostly a question of unpaid time tied to individuals and connecting individuals, are not yet under the same pressure of rationalization. It is the temporal availability – at any time – in service time which is used by people for people. Even though we cannot totally abstract here from the marginal economic conditions of the possible substitutability of individuals by technologies or other paid helpers, there are optimizing strategies. The child who can be alone only in the presence of his or her mother, who has to remain in sight in order to be supervised, and the mother who combines this supervision with countless, overlapping secondary'activities which simultaneously come up in household routine, with countless interruptions again and again, are used to a flexibilization' of their daily time in another sense, which is not yet fully rationalized in economic terms. The doctors whom Peter Pritchard advises to organize their time in such a way that, if necessary, they can also find time for their dying patients, would equally be living a flexible and optimizing routine, oriented towards being on call, while not totally caught up in the money nexus.
Politics of Time
129