Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture

Timespace and the Organization of Social Life Ted Schatzki

Introduction

This chapter argues that timespace is central to the organization of social life. By ‘timespace’ I do not mean – as is usual – some combination of objective time and objective space. The timespace concerned is a phenomenon of human activity that is based in the teleological character of human life. It is also something largely overlooked in social thought. My thesis is that interwoven activity timespaces form a kind of infrastructure through which human activities coordinate and aggregate. Because coordinated and aggregated activities are essential to society, this infrastructure is fundamental to social life.

Analytics of Time and Space

When social theorists say ‘time’ or ‘space’, they, like most people, mean objective time or space. Objective time and space are time and space conceived of as features of reality that persist independently of human activity and understanding. Examples are the geometric arrangement of a room and the time it takes for a grape to ripen on the vine. Human activity and understanding can affect or comprehend objective times and spaces (as when humans rearrange a room or plant a vine in a greenhouse), but what they affect or comprehend persists independently of the activity and understanding. That feature of objective reality that is dubbed ‘time’, moreover, is succession: whenever events or instants occur before and after one another, there is succession – and time. Of course, different conceptions exist of this before and after ordering, including, most famously, absolute time, relational time and, on some interpretations, relativistic time.¹ Considerable dispute also exists regarding the entities whose succession constitutes time; events and instants are not the only candidates. Two prominent conceptions of objective space are, likewise, absolute space and relational space. Whereas absolute space is space construed as a container or arena in which events occur and entities exist, relational space is a collection of relations among entities (longer than, inside, etc.) and of properties based on those relations (length, position, etc.). Relativistic space also sometimes counts as a type of objective space.

35

Most social theories who consider time or space examine either time or space. Time and space, in other words, are taken to be separable matters, between which only contingent relations exist. Social theory is replete with accounts of either social time or social space that mostly ignore or elide the other phenomenon. In the past two or three decades, however, a variety of theorists have analysed social space-time, including Torsten Hägerstrand (1975), Don Parkes and Nigel Thrift (1980), Anthony Giddens (1984), David Harvey (1996), Tim Ingold (2002) and Henri Lefebvre (2004). Two features characterize their accounts. First, they usually, though not always, treat space-time as an objective phenomenon. Second, they always treat space-time as a conjunction of space and time conceived of as separable phenomena, that is, as phenomena that are not intrinsically related. According to these theorists, space-time is not unified; it exclusively embraces contingent connections between spatial and temporal phenomena or between the spatial and temporal properties of social phenomena.

I have no particular brief against most conceptions of social space-time. Social phenomena do have contingently related objective spatial and temporal properties, and grasping these properties can be important to understanding them. Social life, however, possesses another kind of space-time, or, better, timespace. Although this timespace is less noticeable than objective space and time, it is arguably at least as crucial to the existence of society as are the latter, if not more so. In fact, as indicated, interwoven timespaces are fundamental to human society.

The spatial dimension of timespace is familiar in the philosophy and geography literature, going under the names of ‘phenomenological’, ‘existential’ and ‘lived’ space. I will follow Heidegger and call it ‘spatiality’ (Räumlichkeit) so as to differentiate it from objective space. Spatiality is the world around (an actor) in its pertinence to and involvement in human activity. This world is pertinent to and involved in human activity in providing a platform for, and comprising entities that have places in, human activities. Spatiality, as a result, encompasses arrays of places and paths anchored in material entities. A place is a place to perform a particular activity, whereas a path is an avenue for getting from one place to another. A railing, for instance, can be a place to watch a horse race, whereas a grandstand exit passageway can be a path from the viewing stands to the betting windows, concessions and washrooms.² As a person goes through her day, she proceeds through arrays of places and paths that both reflect and determine her and others’ activities; the passageway, for instance, is a path between stands and betting windows because people watch races and bet on them, and people use the passageway when they want to bet because it is such a path. As indicated, moreover, places and paths are anchored at objects: a place to watch the race can be anchored at a metal railing, whereas a path between stands and windows can be anchored at a cement passageway. The physical entity at which a path or place is anchored also yields the location in objective space where the path or place exists. Places and paths, finally, form arrays called ‘settings’. Settings, in turn, form broader locales and regions: for instance, betting area, facilities under the viewing stand, the grandstand, Keeneland race track and the Bluegrass horse region. Which settings, locales and regions exist in a particular geographical area depends on the physical arrangements that exist there and what practices are carried on amid or in relation to those arrangements.

36

• Ted Schatzki

The temporal component of timespace is less familiar. Perhaps it will help clarify matters if I explain that my conception of this temporal component is heir to a tradition, beginning with Augustine, that affirms the idea of a human time. Twentieth-century notions of time that stand in this tradition include experiential time, lived time, existential time and the time of consciousness. My own conception of such a time derives from Heidegger’s Being and Time (1962).

‘Existential temporality’, as Heidegger called it, is not succession. It does not consist in before and after orderings of events, instants or anything else. It is characterized, instead, by dimensionality, that is, by past, present and future. More specifically, existential temporality is the past, present and future of human existence. For present purposes, existence can be understood as human activity. Existential temporality is, thus, the past, present and future dimensions of human activity. Of course, past, present and future also characterize events (or instants): events belong to the present, past or future according to whether they are, are no more or are not yet. As dimensions of human activity, however, past, present and future do not order events or anything else. Rather, they are features of activity. As features of activity, moreover, they are so long as a person acts: the three dimensions of temporality occur simultaneously, ‘at one stroke’, as Bergson (1911: 309) put it. In this, the past, present and future of activity differ from past, present and future events. Past events are no more, while future events are not yet; only present events are. By contrast, the three dimensions of activity are and occur together so long as a person acts. If activity ceases, the three disappear together.

Heidegger famously analysed human existence as being-in-the-world, which he interpreted more expansively as projecting, thrown being-amid entities. Projection, thrownness and being-amid are, respectively, the future, past and present dimensions of human activity. Projection is acting for the sake of a way of being or state of affairs. Most of the time a person acts for the sake of something, and in doing so she comes towards that thing. This coming towards is the future dimension of her activity. Thrownness, meanwhile, is being situated. When a person acts, she almost always responds to or acts in the light of particular states of affairs. These states of affairs are that given which she does whatever she does. This departing, or coming, from particular states of affairs in acting is the past dimension of activity. Being-amid, finally, is having to do with entities: acting amid, towards and at (bei) them. It is the present dimension of activity, activity itself. In sum, a person, when acting, comes towards a way of being departing from certain states of affairs. This acting–coming towards–departing from is the temporal structure of activity.

Timespace and the Organization of Social Life

37

This structure can be formulated in more familiar terms: the future dimension of activity is acting for an end, whereas its past dimension is acting because of something. The future is teleology and the past motivation. The present is acting itself. The temporality of activity is, thus, motivatedly acting teleologically.³

The spatiality of activity is also a teleological phenomenon. Which places and paths compose a setting (i.e. are anchored in a given arrangement of objects) rests both on the activities that people perform in (or in relation to) that setting and on the ends they pursue in so acting. That, for example, a railing is a place to watch a horse race and a passageway is a path to the refreshment kiosks rests on (1) the practices of watching horse races in grandstands and of imbibing while at the races and (2) the ends that people pursue in carrying out these practices (seeing who wins, being seen at the races, satisfying hunger, etc.). The determination of places and paths also rests on motivation; the passageway, for example, can be a path to the washroom or a path to the refreshment kiosk depending on what leads someone to head down it. The teleological foundation of spatiality is reflected in the fact that people set up settings and locales with an eye to the activities that will be performed there and the ends people will pursue in performing these actions. In the end, teleology underlies spatiality because spatiality is the pertinence that objects around have for human activity, and the pertinence of the world around for activity ultimately rests on the matters for the sake of which people act.⁴

Both the temporality and the spatiality of human activity are teleological phenomena. The teleological structure of human activity is the future of activity and underlies place-path arrays. Human activity thus institutes and bears a timespace whose temporal and spatial dimensions are connected inherently – and not contingently as with objective space-times. Indeed, the two dimensions are coordinately instituted together. This timespace, I claim, is key to the organization of social life.

I stress that timespace is not a substitute for, nor is it an alternative or competitor to, objective space-time, in particular, the conceptions of objective social space-time mentioned above. Social life amalgamates activity timespace and objective spacetime: it is a temporalspatial spatial-temporal phenomenon. Myriad relations exist, moreover, between timespace and space-time. For instance, a transformation of what Erving Goffman (1959) called a back region into what he called a front region, or vice versa, can be understood as an objective temporal transformation of timespace: a coordinated nexus of ends, projects and places pursued amid or anchored at particular objects changes into a different nexus pursued amid or anchored at these objects. Similarly, a reorganization of the betting facilities at the race track designed, say, to increase efficiency can be described as an alteration of material arrangements and the spatialities anchored in them that is designed to change what people do when betting or to speed up those betting actions that survive the change.⁵ In ways such as these, social changes can be understood as alterations in commixtures of timespace and space-time.

38

• Ted Schatzki

Timespace and Society

Timespace, strictly speaking, is a feature of an individual human life. It is, however, a social feature of an individual life, for much of it derives from and depends on social phenomena. Indeed, the timespaces of different lives substantially depend on the same social phenomena, namely social practices. Because of this, the timespaces of different lives are partly the same and partly different.

Most actions that a person performs are constituents of social practices. By a ‘social practice’, I mean an organized manifold of doings and sayings. (For more on practices, see Schatzki 2002.) The doings and sayings that compose a practice are organized by items of four types: (1) action understandings, which are abilities to carry out, recognize and respond to particular actions; (2) rules, which are formulated instructions, directives, admonishments, and the like; (3) teleoaffective structures, which contain enjoined and acceptable ends, enjoined and acceptable projects and actions to carry out for those ends, and enjoined and acceptable emotions; and (4) general understandings – of matters germane to the practice.

The timespaces of (the lives of) the people who participate in a practice derive from the practice because its organization circumscribes the teleologies – the endproject-action orderings – of these people’s activities. A popular practice among visitors to Keeneland is betting on horse races. A variety of ends are deemed acceptable in betting practices, including maximizing winnings, being entertained, having fun, impressing a date and trying to beat the odds makers. Various projects and actions are enjoined or found acceptable in the practice for the sake of these ends, including studying the racing form, safeguarding a credit card with one’s spouse, waiting until the last moment to bet, betting only on horses with green silks, standing in long lines and putting aside 10% of each winning. In participating in betting practices, people tend to act for the ends and to carry out the actions that fall within this normative range. This is the sense in which the teleological structure of the practice circumscribes the futures of those participating in it. This teleological structure also – together with the actions that compose the practice and the teleological structures of other practices that are carried on at the track (e.g. people gazing, eating, spectating, excretion) – underlies the spatialities of betters lives. The past dimensions of their timespaces likewise overlap since participants in a practice often react to, or act in the light of, the same states of affairs.

Other components of practice organization also help shape participants’ timespaces. A sign (rule), for instance, might designate where people should line up before the betting windows open, just as an usher might tell people where they can stand to watch the race (another rule). Rules can also determine common pasts, as when the clerks who take bets are instructed to begin accepting them when a certain green light illuminates. A general understanding of courtesy, moreover, might pick out places where a person may stand to watch a race (and not obstruct others’ views), just as in Keeneland corporation practices a general understanding of customer service or of pursuing profit might determine ends and projects for track managers and employees. Practices vary in which components of their organizations bear greatest responsibility for the futures, pasts and spatialities of their participants lives.

Timespace and the Organization of Social Life

39

The timespaces of those who participate in a practice are partly common, partly shared and partly idiosyncratic. Participant timespaces are common when particular teleologies, motivations and place-path layouts are enjoined. Track employees are enjoined to provide good service to visitors and to shut off betting when a red light comes on, just as grooms, prior to a race, are enjoined to walk their charges in view of onlookers in the interior paddock. Enjoinments of this sort lay down common futures and pasts for the individuals subject to them; they also dictate common places and paths for these individuals’ activities. Common futures, pasts and spatialities also arise from the facts (1) that people often fall in with action regularities in a practice (participants encounter certain ends being regularly pursued, certain actions being regularly performed at certain places and people regularly acting for certain motivations) and (2) that in carrying out a given practice different individuals act in the same or similar material settings.

Participant timespaces are shared, meanwhile, when people act for the same end, react to the same state of affairs and understand the same places to be anchored at certain objects, but this sameness is not enjoined by practice organization. Nothing enjoins that a person aim to enjoy himself while at the track. On any given day, however, many visitors to Keeneland share this goal, just like they might share an understanding of a passageway entrance as a place to meet friends. Participant timespaces are idiosyncratic, finally, to the extent that people pursue ends, react to states of affairs and understand the world idiosyncratically.

As a person goes through her day, her actions bear futures and pasts and occur at places and paths that are parts of place-path arrays. She also thereby carries on this and that practice. Some of her futures, pasts and places will be common to and shared with the lives of other participants in the same practices. The organization, regularities and settings of a practice engender a net of interwoven timespaces, a net of interwoven jointly instituted futures-presents-pasts and place-path arrays. This net, incidentally, is a property of the practice. The activities of individual people are what possess futures and pasts and are performed at particular places and paths. As a whole, however, the net of interwoven timespaces that a practice’s organization, regularities and settings engender is a property of the practice and not of individual lives. In sum, the social character of timespace consists in the dependency of (1) the timespace of a person’s life and (2) the common and shared temporalspatial features of people’s lives on the social practices they carry out.

Actions and practices also bear properties of objective time and space. Performances of actions often take time, performances of different actions can be simultaneous or occur before and after one another, and performances mostly occur at locations in objective space. The objective temporal and spatial properties of a practice include the rhythms, sequences and periodicities of its constituent actions as well as the geometric distribution of the locations where these actions are performed. Although I cannot defend the following claim in this chapter, I contend that many of these objective properties derive from the timespaces of actions and from the practices that actions compose. In particular, it might be emphasized, the rhythms and periodicities of practices such as betting, watching races and observing horses in the interior paddock reflect the timespace nets instituted in, and thus the organizations of, both these practices and practices related to them. In this sense, ‘local’ rhythms and routines of consumption rest on features of practices as wholes. More ‘global’ rhythms and routines of consumption require the interrelation of many more ‘local’ or wider practices spread out in time and space. These broader rhythms and routines are underpinned by local rhythms and routines (among other things) and likewise rest on the organizations of practices. Examining these dependencies is beyond the scope of this chapter.

40

Ted Schatzki

As I have been writing, practices are carried on amid arrangements of objects. Promenading, betting, talking and watching races are carried out amid the arrangements of objects that form viewing stands, concessions, the trackside holding area, the interior paddock, and the passageways, staircases and doorways that permit movement between these. Practices, moreover, are tied to other practices and also bound up with other bundles of practices and arrangements more or less tightly or loosely. The practice–arrangement bundle at Keeneland on race day, for example, is bound up with (1) the bundles of the Keeneland corporation and of the taxi services that bring people to the track and (2) the bundles at Keeneland during annual horse sales or at other race tracks during their meets. The sum-total of linked practice– arrangement bundles at any moment forms a gigantic, intricate and constantly metamorphosing web that forms the overall site of social existence (see Schatzki 2002). This immense plenum also defines the total objective temporal and spatial spread of social life. Elsewhere (Schatzki 2002, 2003) I have argued that social phenomena can be understood as segments or configurations of this plenum of practices and arrangements. This claim entails that any social phenomenon consists either in a practice–arrangement bundle or in features of such bundles (racial prejudice, for example, consists in features of many bundles). What I want to argue in the remainder of this chapter is that interwoven timespaces form an infrastructure that pervades the practice–arrangement plenum, linking actions and tying practices together into the bundles that make up the site of the social. Stated in more familiar terms: timespace is crucial to the constitution of social phenomena. I will essay to make this claim plausible by sketching how timespaces underlie the coordination of action, the aggregation of practices and, in this sense, the integration of individual lives.

Timespace and the Organization of Social Life

41

Action Coordination

Although there is more to social life than coordinated actions, coordination is obviously central. Examples of coordination include the following:

1. After the fourth race meeting someone at the top of the stairs that descend to the interior paddock.

1. A couple taking turns betting on races while the other person talks with friends in their box.

1. The jockeys lined up on their horses in the starting gate.

1. Employees changing behaviour in response to a management decision to provide better customer service communicated to them by letter.

1. The actions of grooms, auctioneers, bidders, ushers and announcers at a horse sale.

The coordination of actions is explained by the interwoven timespaces of the actions involved. For instance, the meeting at the head of the stairs rests on a common past (the completion of the fourth race) and a shared spatiality (the stairs as a place to meet); the behaviour of the convivial betting couple arises from a shared future (acting for the sake of combining betting and being social), common and shared pasts (e.g. that the race is finished, that you bet last time) and a common or shared spatiality that encompasses boxes, aisles, betting windows, and so on; and the fact that the jockeys sit in a line on their mounts reflects common futures and spatialities.

I have been treating the interwovenness of timespaces as a matter of commonality and sharing. In the above employee–management example, track employees and managers partly proceed through common or shared place-path arrays. It is not obvious, however, how common or shared their futures and pasts are. Regardless of how divergent their futures and pasts might be, however, these futures and pasts will often not be independent of one another. The fact, for example, that management acts for the sake of improving visitors’ experiences is connected to the fact that employees have been acting out of indifference or disdain, or for the sake of heading home as quickly as possible. When people pursue ends and projects that differ from, but are not independent of, those that others pursue, I will say that their futures are ‘orchestrated’. The futures of the activities of the grooms, auctioneers, bidders and announcers at the horse sale are orchestrated. The meeting at the stairs might also be orchestrated since the people meeting might do so for different, but interdependent, ends. Pasts, too, can be orchestrated. The fact, for example, that at the horse sale grooms lead their charges into the show ring at a signal from an usher is not independent of bidders turning towards the ring as the auctioneer begins to describe the next horse for sale. In short, timespaces are interwoven, not just through commonality and sharing, but also through orchestration. Notice, incidentally, that the coordination of action via interwoven timespaces can extend across practices; in the case of the horse sale, for example, across the practices of grooming, auctioning, bidding and announcing. I return to this phenomenon in the following section.

42

Ted Schatzki

I claimed above that common and shared timespaces arise from (1) the organizations and regularities of practices and (2) common and similar settings. Orchestration, too, reflects these matters. Regardless, for instance, of whether the people meeting at the stairs do so for the same or interdependent ends, their ends are likely circumscribed by whatever practices they are carrying on (e.g. those of courtship, business, conviviality). The flow of events, too, contributes to the existence of shared and orchestrated timespaces. The people meeting at the stairs might be intentionally rendezvousing after bumping into one another earlier in the day or have accidentally run into each other on their way to meeting other people elsewhere. Myriad contingencies contribute to the interwoven timespaces through which actions are coordinated. Absent the interwoven timespaces, however, the coordination would not exist.

Coordination rests on interwoven timespaces. This means that such objective spatial-temporal features of coordinated actions as synchronized in the same location and sequenced in different locations (e.g. meeting someone at the top of the stairs and employees taking particular actions after management has made a decision) also rest on interwoven timespaces. At the same time, the interwovenness of timespaces occurs under the constraints of objective time and space. Nothing known can overcome or contradict the ‘march’ of objective time. Coordination must accommodate the fact of change and also conform to processes that conventionally function as markers of time such as the periodicity of environmental events (sunrises, animal migrations, seasons), the radioactive decay of caesium atoms, the turning of clock hands and the progression of digital numbers. Such processes are timing resources for managing coordination. The interwovenness of timespaces is also constrained by the materiality of things and their geometric distribution. This distribution determines where, in principle, places and paths can be anchored. The materiality and geometric distribution of things also constrains which places can be anchored at specific objects (a place to sleep cannot be anchored at a pen). Of course, within these underlying constraints, the use of objective time and space for purposes of coordination presupposes, and is often mediated by, interwoven timespaces. The use of clocks, for instance, presupposes the existence of temporalspatially interwoven lives whose further coordination it facilitates. Similarly, understanding a sunrise between two stones as seen from a specific vantage in a temple as signifying that people should gather to perform a particular ceremony presupposes common as well as shared futures and pasts.

To be distinguished from coordination is the phenomenon of harmonization. Harmonization exists when the actions of people who are simultaneously proceeding in the same or connected settings smoothly fit together through the contingent adjustment of each person’s behaviour to what others are doing. Examples are traffic movement, people waiting in a queue to bet, the stream of people from the viewing stands to the betting windows, and the milling about of people who are watching the parade of horses in the interior paddock. One could treat phenomena such as these as instances of coordination. I distinguish them from coordination, however, because they achieve no overall result. Or, rather, the result they achieve is the absence of conflict, in other words, harmony. Regardless of how it is classified, harmonization resembles coordination in depending on interwoven timespaces. In most cases, for example, harmonization rests on common and shared spatialities (e.g. the road as path to work) and shared and common temporalities (e.g. the common futures of getting to one’s destination and doing so safely). These identical spatialities and temporalities so sensitize people to one another that constant mutual adjustment almost automatically follows.

Timespace and the Organization of Social Life

43

The opposite of harmonization is often conflict: car collisions, arguments about people’s places in line, obstruction of crowd flow, people jostling for a view. Conflicts of this sort require interwoven timespaces – pursuing the same ends, reacting to the same state of affairs, the same place-path layouts. Conflicts of this sort are occasions when harmonization does not obtain because adjustments within common and shared timespaces break down. Many cases of conflict are not like this, however. Conflict often arises due to incompatible timespaces. For instance, conflict can arise because the same arrangement of objects anchors incompatible place-path arrays for different groups of people (as in disputes between developers and preservationists); or, more fully, because people, acting in partly shared and partly conflicting spatialities, pursue incompatible futures fuelled by divergent pasts. An example is disputes between Jews and Arabs concerning Jerusalem. I cannot pursue this line of analysis at present. The basic idea, however, is that conflict often results from the divided, divergent and/or incompatible features of either individual timespaces or the common or shared timespaces of different groups.

The Aggregation of Practices (and Arrangements)

A second key feature of social life is the aggregation of practices. Coordination is already a form of aggregation since it is a joining of actions through which a result ensues (e.g. a meeting at the head of the stairs comes off, betting coexists with conviviality, horses are sold). By ‘the aggregation of practices’, however, I mean practices hanging together in the constitution of social phenomena. Recall my claim that a social phenomenon is either a bundle of practices and material arrangements or features of such bundles. This claim implies that a social phenomenon embraces interconnected practices (and arrangements). Consider the following examples of a social organization, a social event and a social phenomenon:

44

Ted Schatzki