{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","uuid":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","normalized_title":"timeconsumptionandeverydaylifepracticematerialityandculture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%2C%20Consumption%20and%20Everyday%20Life%20Practice%2C%20Materiality%20and%20Culture","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/search"},"page":{"printed_page":126,"pdf_page":127,"physical_index":127,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"bce474cd8867f8bac9ba72a18c346882d213865e8c28dd39a44484e8d5065770"},"chapter":"List of Tables and Figures","content":"Barnard, wrote four such novels on various aspects of gardening for both home consumption and local markets. As an example, the book Farming by Inches, published in 1869, tells the story of a bookkeeper in an unnamed North American city with striking similarities to Boston. The clerk is in ill health and is advised by his doctor to get out to the country. As luck would have it, the very next day news arrives that a distant relative with no closer heirs has died, leaving the clerk a house and a few acres on the outskirts of a mill town. In due course, he and his wife decide to move there and try their hand at raising vegetable for markets in the town. In crafting the story of Robert and Harriet Nelson, which the last lines of the book state ‘is a true story of actual experience’, Barnard explains how the couple, with no background in tending the soil between them, learn to garden (Barnard 1869: 123).\n\nBarnard’s book echoes not only the description of Burpee’s Fordhook Farm, but the agricultural reform movements of the late nineteenth century, through applying organizational ideas to small-scale gardening. At the start of the novel, the characters pledge, ‘we resolved that all things should be conducted in the most systematic order. We would bring our methodical and mercantile ways of doing things into a business notoriously loose and inaccurate in its operation’ (Barnard 1869: 20). Examples of organization usually considered hallmarks of the industrial era creep into their habits. In one instance, while doing the prosaic task of bundling radishes to prepare them for selling, Hattie asks if it would save time to divide the labour. They change the process so that their hired hand washes the radishes, Robert arranges the bundles and Hattie ties them; they work much more quickly as a result of this separation of tasks into constituent parts. In another scene, they wonder at the apparent leisure of a neighbouring farmer noting his ‘utter indifference to the value of time’ (Barnard 1869: 78). This passage raises the issue of task orientation and time orientation, the former usually associated with agricultural work and the latter with industrial work; the Nelsons slowly introduce the time orientation of their previous urban lives to their horticultural pursuits. To underscore this point, Barnard depicts the end of a day of preparing garden beds as coinciding with the sound of the factory whistle coming from the nearby mill town. Still, all the while, the Nelsons reject any kind of mechanized labour in the market garden, only in part because they are planting so intensively as not to leave any room for garden machinery. Barnard lauds the health benefits of outdoor, manual work, as well as of the literal fruits of their labour. He seems to advocate drawing on what he perceives to be the best components of the two prevalent economic and social systems.\n\nThe passages from Burpee’s catalogue and Bernard’s novel reveal varying attitudes towards time in relation to horticultural practice and, by extension, horticultural consumption. One of the differences between agrarian and industrial economies and cultures is the way labour is organized. Agricultural work is said to be ‘task-orientated’, in that there are a set of tasks to be carried out in the raising and tending of produce and livestock. Some of these tasks need to be performed daily and some seasonally; some tasks are affected by forces, such as weather or blight, beyond human control. So those engaged in agricultural work must organize their labour in effective ways, often adjusting as they go, to make sure the list of requisite tasks is completed. By contrast, much industrial work, especially in mechanized production, is ‘time-orientated’, with labour organized into specific, frequently repeated, tasks that are carried out for a certain period of time. These two approaches to the organization of time, one by nature, one by the clock, carry over from work to other facets of social and cultural life. For example, in the United States, the sports of baseball and (American) football developed in different ways, with the former played as long as it takes to complete a particular set of tasks, and the latter played for a specific amount of time, in which a set of tasks may be repeated any number of times.<sup>2</sup>\n\n126\n\n• Marina Moskowitz","previous_page":125,"next_page":127}