it towards one's own everyday needs, and on the other hand the necessity of coping, at a social level, with the limitations contained in the extended present. Meaningfully appropriating proper time is dependent on the - unequal – initial social position, on the social hierarchies of power and income, in which people find themselves. Comprehending the limitations of the extended present, and managing to deal with them, awaits individual and collective solutions; it seeks answers which a scientific and technological culture gives to the problems it has created itself. This, reduced to a bare common denominator, is what is concealed by the slogan about the 'quality' of time, which goes beyond the demand for quantity.
‘Time as such is not scarce. The impression of the scarcity of time arises only from the overtaxing of experience by expectations. Experiences and actions need time and can therefore be accommodated in a given span of time only in a limited fashion. The horizon of time and the structure of expectation must therefore be brought into line', so runs the sociologist's prescription.1 For the economists, on the other hand, the rise of the 'hurried leisure class’ of grafting managers who have almost everything, only no time, automatically and axiomatically follows from the rising standard of living. I work so hard that I am killing myself and ruining my family. But I am earning so much that I can afford it', so runs one of the concise summaries.² From this viewpoint, it is the so-called opportunity costs'which arouse the hunger for time. With the increase in productivity, it becomes more costly not to work, and time is calculated according to what could have been earned if a person had worked - considerations which admittedly presuppose that work and earnings are there. In order to cope with the shortage of time' or the 'hunger for time', there are very different strategies. The problem is different for organizations and for managers, and different again for working mothers, who are all dependent on time in varying and unequal ways.
The Longing for the Moment
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