{"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":76,"pdf_page":79,"physical_index":79,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"dc15a8246b88b285ff0645cda738ce65c1a98bf3d5d03145d713b020a2459100"},"chapter":"List of Tables and Figures","content":"And the elasticity of everyday life changes over time. It can snap. When the next major blackout struck New York on a blistering hot 13 July 1977 – this time affecting 6 million people – it hit a community scarred by recession, austerity and racial tensions. At Shea Stadium, play stopped in the sixth inning, with the Mets trailing the Cubs 2 to 1. In the heat, the 22,000 fans sang along for almost an hour to the Organist playing ‘White Christmas’. Elsewhere the atmosphere was less cool and convivial. In the ghettos, unemployment amongst young African-Americans stood at 40 per cent, more than double that in 1965. As in other disasters, many alarms of theft or fire proved false, but there also was real looting and arson. Firemen had to fight 1,037 fires – six times the average. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, ‘bands of determined men, women and even little children’ were roving the streets with crowbars, smashing shop windows and helping themselves to clothing, TV sets, liquor and furniture. In the Bronx, looters broke into the Ace Pontiac showroom and drove off with fifty new cars. On 125th street in Harlem, people walked off with bags full of steaks from a meat market. Altogether 2,000 stores were plundered and the police arrested more than 3,500 people, eight times the number during the 1964 and 1968 riots (Time, 25 July 1977: 12–26).<sup>2</sup>\n\nPerceptions of what counts as ‘normal’ and what as unacceptable disruption have likewise changed over time. Technological systems, and the expectations of functional order surrounding them, have transformed the sense of what is an ordinary and what an avoidable breakdown. These values, in turn, are also shaped by politics that inform assumptions about the working order of society, about accountability, and about what people can and should do when things go wrong. Together, these factors influence how disruptions play themselves out. Disruption, in other words, alerts us to how rhythms need to be situated within both technological and political cultures. Three short examples illustrate the different dynamics at work.\n\nThe first example comes from a developed country with an unusually distinguished record of things breaking down or not materializing: socialist East Germany. The GDR was not a ‘consumer society’ in the classic sense, but people here too had a lot of stuff. The difference was that many private goods and services were scarce and shoddy or required ‘connections’ and many years of patience. Everyday life moved to the rhythms of queuing, making-do, things breaking down and trying to fix them. The case of the Sparwasser family of Oranienburg tells a sad, familiar tale. They were a family of seven with a disabled mother. Having waited for twenty years for a car, the family was finally able to jump the queue in 1986. After picking up the car from the VEB works in Magdeburg, the Dacia 1310 developed one fault after another. At 690 kilometres the radiator and speedometer ceased to function. Thirty kilometres later Mrs Sparwasser had to return it again because the starter would not work. At 3,200 kilometres the gear unit gave up. By 3,600 kilometres the ball-bearings had become defective. Two hundred kilometres later, the clutch went. Mrs Sparwasser was exasperated. Each time she went back to the VEB works she was told the problem had been fixed and everything was fine. Now the warranty was coming to an end. The family’s routines were thrown into chaos. The Sparwassers avoided longer trips and, like so many people in East Germany, had to use up their holidays to return and collect their defective product from the factory (Bundesarchiv Berlin 1986).\n\n76\n\nFrank Trentmann","previous_page":75,"next_page":77}