{"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":152,"pdf_page":153,"physical_index":153,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"be8d3deb701afbb8a0dfae4abb62e9dfb8e3bc4c9567d42854644d7e33ae8145"},"chapter":"List of Tables and Figures","content":"There are some habits I resent terribly. When I was working for the US Embassy in Belize I had to get up every morning at 6 a.m. and dress especially for work in clothes much more formal than my usual; after six months my body was habituated to the routine so that even on the weekend I woke up at 6 a.m., and blue jeans and T shirts no longer felt like my normal clothes. There was a part of me that was happy to be awake and alert early in the day, in contrast to my slothful student days. But it felt like liberation when I finally quit and went back to the university, where I could sleep later and dress as I wanted. It took less than a week to lose the early waking habit. If I had enjoyed my routine and uniform, like long-time soldiers who love their jobs, would it have been much harder to return to my old clothes and late rising?\n\nI have tried unsuccessfully to cultivate the habit of eating breakfast for many years. I know it would be better for my health if I could just get used to eating in the morning, but the idea of eating when I wake up usually makes me nauseated. Lefebvre and Régulier say it takes ten years to train your body to get hungry at regular mealtimes (1985: 191), and I have never had any external schedule or routine which forced me to eat breakfast at any particular time, in a hotel or an archaeological camp, for more than a few months at a stretch. I can get myself started eating breakfast, but the slightest interruption and I lose the habit almost immediately. But other habits are frighteningly easy to cultivate and extremely difficult to lose, like smoking cigarettes. And it is remarkable the degree to which the human body can get habituated to routines which are painful and unpleasant.\n\nCan you have a habit of having habits? My college roommate Steven woke up at the same time every morning, ate the same thing for breakfast every day, went home for spaghetti dinner every Friday night, kept his desk meticulously organized and had his career carefully planned. My half of the room was a messy pile of clothes, and I had no schedule, no organization, no plan and no system. We managed to survive a year in a single room together only by drawing a diagonal line on the floor. He resisted my attempts to teach him to ‘loosen up’, and I subverted all of his efforts to organize my life. As far as I can tell from the last time I saw him, these have remained lifetime commitments, and he is happy as a very meticulous dentist.\n\nThis grey area between active and passive is complex and fascinating, for it is the space where we shift from being in control to being controlled. Repetition has a compelling power which we do not fully control; it relieves us of the burden of making the thousands of micro-decisions which would otherwise overwhelm us. We need to set priorities in the normal pace of life, and habits are our autonomous agents to handle trivia. They are also the chains which bind us and blind us. The rhythms of life both liberate us from constant worry, and keep us in constant bondage. These are not two separate kinds of experience, two kinds of time, as Lefebvre would have it. Instead they are two sides of the very same phenomenon.\n\nUncertainty about the degree to which we are in control of our own rituals, routines, rhythms and habits is itself a vital social resource, an instrument which enables human interaction. The structuring power of time gives us plausible deniability, allows us to step in and take responsibility, blame others for our own failings, give up all hope and wield invisible power.\n\n152\n\n• Richard Wilk","previous_page":151,"next_page":153}