Paper short abstract:

The paper looks into certain absurd applications of clock time in Finland, where time is taken either too literally, or too figuratively, or frequently both.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws attention to the formation of the units of time used in establishing equivalences in Finland. More precisely, I look into the role of abstract clock time as "the quantitative aspect of labour as well as its inherent measure" (Marx 1859), but at the same time also as a malleable thing which can be bought, sold, or exchanged in various forms and measures. My ethnographic data comes from two case studies that concern time as a measure of value in Finland. The first one concerns a mutual help network known as the Helsinki Timebank, which continues to contest the Finnish Tax Administration's ruling over the taxation value of "banked" time. The second case concerns the neoliberal time accounting systems employed by the University of Helsinki; an accountants' "fiction" which nonetheless resembles the university employees' factual work times just closely enough to be a cause for upset, even worry for many. In both of these cases, time is used as the basis of very different types of "exchanges" or trades, assumedly because of its precise measurability, but ultimately also because the abstract nature of time allows its deployment towards complete equivalence. Looking into such balance-driven employment of time, this paper takes inspiration from Bill Maurer's (2005) call to engage with the "mathematical form of the equivalence function as a moral form".