Paper short abstract:

Based on an ethnography of a road in the city of Shenzhen, southern China, the paper addresses how lives are organised by a dominant capitalist temporal regime and how individuals negotiate their daily lives accordingly.

Paper long abstract:

The proposed paper is based on a 12-month ethnographic research of a nearly-30km road going through the city centre of Shenzhen, a coastal city in southern China. Ethnographically, the paper pays attentions to different rhythms embodied by different people on the road. Some people travel on the road as part of their daily journeys, while some work on the road. The intention for attending to these differentially embodied rhythms is to demonstrate the varying dynamics of the road, which is nonetheless held as one. The paper borrows Massey's spatial idea of 'throwntogetherness' to demonstrate how the road is held as one by the co-existence of differences.

The paper studies ethnographic portraits of two people - a taxi driver and a white-collared office worker. The paper demonstrates the daily routines of the taxi driver, Lao Zhang, who frequents the road and the surrounding neighbourhoods almost every working day and Xiao Zheng who travels on the road as part of his daily journey from home to work. Although the capitalist temporal regime structures urbanites' lives, the paper argues that such temporal regime also propels the pace of life, as demonstrated by the taxi driver. However, the paper also brings attentions to the importance of co-ordinations between individuals within the capitalist temporal confinement. Equally importantly, there are also daily practices of maneuvers that allow individuals to 'steal' time for personal reasons. Thus the daily temporal maneuvers become a mechanism to deal with the togetherness given by the capitalist regime.