{"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":165,"pdf_page":164,"physical_index":164,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"0833c2fbbf9a9da8e4dce66c0b6cf66b46d03ecc95c0e583637d49b1ab5ac2e5"},"chapter":"List of Tables and Figures","content":"This research project starts from the observation that there has developed in Britain a vast multi-million pound trade in various forms of antiques, junk and second-hand goods, often through more informal sites of provision such as flea markets and car boot sales (Gregson and Crewe 2003). On casual observation one can see that most of the people involved in this trade are 50 and over, and it seems particularly to attract those who are retired from regular work and can give themselves more fully to such activities.\n\nThis is clearly also an example of buying time, a trade in patina. These people circulate objects that have actually been used by some other person. One might have expected, then, that these objects would be possessed and treasured, respecting this patina of prior personalization on analogy with the heirloom. But actually this is not at all what we find. Instead the emphasis is rather on establishing routines of consumption. Those involved develop a very regular, often weekly ritual of trading, exchanging and collecting. The routines seem actually more important than the respect for the individuality of these objects, which are mostly gathered, traded, formed into collections, returned to the market, and so forth. This routine of exchange and consumption has the effect of making such objects almost trivial in their relative alienability and often transience of possession. The high-frequency circulation seems to cut against the idea that they are authentic to individual past lives and would be treated with appropriate respect as such.\n\nJust as in the case of distressed blue jeans, these people seem to be buying time in the form of a material culture which seems to at first evoke a patina of its usage by other people. These objects also are worn, abraded, faded and signify their own prior lives. Yet just as with distressed jeans, this degree of personalization signifying their previous usage is instantly denied by its very opposite. They are actually highly alienated commodities that form a vast circuit of constant exchange which lends themselves to these particular routines and rhythms of consumption. As such they become tokens of a generic past rather than an individualizing past. As with the Buryat, they seem to work within a field established by these parameters of contrast, such that antiques and junk must be personal but not too personal.\n\nMachines for the Suppression of Time\n\nHaving parked the question of why young people are involved in the purchase of distressed jeans, it is now joined by the question as to why older people are involved in the circulation of flea market goods. I want to suggest an explanation based on what is itself a well-worn classic of anthropological theorization with a patina of its own. In anthropology the concept of rhythm and repetition in time evokes the classic discussion by Lévi-Strauss on ritual and myth, as ‘machines for the suppression of time’. In particular there is the opposition of Lévi-Strauss (1972) to Sartre’s work on the dialectic of practical reason found in the last chapter of The Savage Mind called ‘History and Dialectic’, and which follows on from a previous chapter called ‘Time Regained’. In brief, Sartre’s love of history links him to his particular sense of the individual as a historical narrative leading to choices, to freedom and to death. Lévi-Strauss, by contrast, draws attention to the cyclical nature of repetitive time as another form of human experience that transcends and complements narrative time, with an emphasis on the endless and transcendent, the immortal qualities of mythic time. For Lévi-Strauss, forms of time that are constantly repeated, such as annual ceremonies or retold myths, are a means by which we deny the linear narrative sense of time that leads ultimately to death. This is why religions tend to proliferate rituals and routines of time as machines that suppress linear or narrative time.\n\nBuying Time\n\n165","previous_page":164,"next_page":166}