Paper short abstract:

For Swedish second home owners time stands out as an important factor in relation to their choice of lifestyle. This paper will explore the second home, and practices related to it, as tools for understanding perception and management of time.

Paper long abstract:

Time stands out as an important factor in relation to the choice of a second home-lifestyle. For the participants of my ongoing study of Swedish second home owners between the ages of 30 and 45, living and working in the cities of Stockholm and Gothenburg, different ways of managing time are ever present issues. In the rural second home time is perceived differently than in the permanent city-dwelling. Time is conditioned by place, as well as space. When participants do ordinary every-day things differently in the summer cottage, like doing the dishes by hand for example, it impacts the perception of time. The space and the practicalities of the second home allows for "being in the moment". Time then seems to stretch. Chores can take longer, the pace is generally slower and the participants feel they are allowed to "just exist". In the second home, time is theirs to own. Sometimes time even seems to stand completely still. Participants leave the summer cottage and when they come back weeks later, they feel no time has passed at all. This paper will explore the second home, and practices related to it, as tools for understanding perception and management of time.

Paper short abstract:

Popular mindfulness courses offer to help people to improve their 'work-life-balance'. The 'good life' is conceptualised as a well-timed life with clear temporal boundaries. Practices surrounding this phenomenon can be interpreted as oscillating between self-care and self-optimisation.

Paper long abstract:

How do people deal with stresses and strains of their everyday lives that often seem to be caused by a lack of time or wrong ways of using one's time? Why do people feel that they have to manage their free time and learn how to use it effectively? A wide range of courses nowadays offers to help people to improve their 'work-life-balance' and ways of thinking and feeling about time through concepts like mindfulness and deceleration. They convey practical skills like meditation, Tai-chi or forest-bathing and offer space and time to reflect one's life and to make new (mental and bodily) experiences. The participants shall leave the beaten track and accustom themselves to new 'healthy' habits and routines.

I have conducted ethnographical research in such courses and can therefore draw upon empirical data that hints at ways of narrating and practicing time in my field. In my talk I will show how both providers and participants conceptualize time as a tool that can be used to clearly divide areas of life, e. g. working time and leisure time, family time and 'me time'. Discourses and connected practices about the need for temporal boundaries and the danger of blurred boundaries are constant features of the courses. On an analytical level, these narrations, practices, experiences, thoughts and sensations while seeking a 'good life' through new ways of using time and structuring the everyday life can be interpreted as oscillating between self-care and self-optimisation.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation focuses on the post-modern academics who seems to be eternally chasing time. It reflects on the time-poverty of an apparently intelligent community who do not have time to consider the long-term implications of an academic body which have been deprived of thinking time.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation focuses on the post-modern academics who seems to be eternally chasing time. Armed with advice about time management skills, academics spend endless time making "to-do" lists (which get refreshed every day) and crafting carefully composed automatic replies to e-mails to ensure that they save time not responding to unnecessary ones. Acdemics sit through endless committee meetings that are a waste of time while hoping to deal unnoticed on i-phones with relentless e-mail and student queries. Academic lives are governed by deadlines for grant applications and delivery of manuscripts but not monographs as take take too much time to write or even read!. The flexible hours of academia ensures that they have all the time in the world to give students more feedback and write stronger applications while their increasingly intricate electronic diaries are accessible to administrators who greedily fill the blank slots with more time commitments. The academic turbo lifestyle ensures that they ignore their inner body clocks and regularly travel to conferences in different time zones without every taking time out to recover. This contribution reflects on the time-poverty of an apparently intelligent community who do not have time to consider the long-term implications of an academic body which have been deprived of thinking time. PS: In case you hadn't time to read this fully, I have highlighted the key words in bold!

Paper short abstract:

This qualitative study attempts to describe how leisure time among women and men in Croatia is practiced and negotiated. Apart from perceptions and experiences, the nature and quality of leisure time, (e.g., autonomy, contamination and fragmentation) will also be examined.

Paper long abstract:

Leisure time is an important aspect of everyday life (Henderson and Shaw, 2006); it offers time to relax, recover, or refresh from other responsibilities, particularly those associated with paid and unpaid work (Mattingly and Bianchi 2003). Research has shown that women generally have less time, resources and opportunities for leisure than men (Deem 1986; Wimbush 1986; Wearing and Wearing 1988; Homa 1989) and a narrower range of options on where and with whom to spend it (Green, Hebron, and Woodward 1990). Based on semi-structured interviews, this study attempts to describe how leisure time among women and men in Croatia is practiced and negotiated. These findings are part of a wider study on relational gender identities in Croatia (GENMOD - HRZZ 6010) funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. Specifically, this qualitative study aims to show how this time is perceived (i.e., multiple meanings) and experienced (e.g., freedom, enjoyment or a sense of guilt or a lack of entitlement, etc.). Decisions about leisure time use and what these are based on (e.g., individual preferences, needs of the family, gendered expectations, etc.) are also explored. To further evaluate the nature and quality of leisure time, this paper also intends to highlight how autonomous is this leisure, its degree of contamination (i.e., how child-free or colleague-free is this time) as well as how fragmented or interrupted is this leisure? Negotiation of these leisure practices and its non-negotiable nature are also examined in this study.

Paper short abstract:

This paper takes diaries from topographical fieldwork in Spitsbergen from 1909 to 1932 as a starting point for discussing how time is done, kept and found in the everyday life of Arctic expeditions. The diaries were written by a topographer who spent long summers on expeditions to map the region.

Paper long abstract:

This paper takes diaries from topographical fieldwork in Spitsbergen from approx 1910 to 1930 as a starting point for discussing how time is done, kept and found in the Arctic. The diaries are written by a topographer who spent long summers on expeditions to map the region. The expeditions were part of Norwegian attempts to secure sovereignity in the region through mapping, naming and mining. But the diaries tell a story about keeping time through everyday practices. The sleeping bag is a home, the gas burner an expectation, the rifle a friend. In the arid landscape of Spitsbergen, where the sun shines all through the night of the Summer, the everyday things help doing, keeping and finding time in multiple ways. Things are used to track changes, to store time and to let time pass. Expeditions need to keep on track, to disicpline time, to use the avaiable times, but they also need to be fluid, to allow for a week of bad weather that keep the members of the expedition inside the tent. Discipline and fluidity, and the things that make time will be discussed in the light of theories of the multiplicity of times and the precarious coordination of everyday time.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the personal-experience narratives of immigrants who have moved to Scotland, this paper will - through playback and analysis of audio-recorded narrative extracts - examine how and why these narratives navigate time and temporalities.

Paper long abstract:

Focusing on the personal-experience narratives of immigrants who have moved to Scotland, this paper will - through playback and analysis of audio-recorded narrative extracts - examine how and why these narratives navigate time and temporalities. Through personal-experience narratives, immigrants relate their current interpretations and simultaneous imaginings of past, present, and future, recounting these together to better understand their lives through what has come before, what is now, and what may be. Narrated through this prism of 'now' and 'then' are their aspirations, fears, joy, regrets, and epiphanies. 'Now' and 'then' exist across multiple temporalities and geographies (e.g. calm childhood in 'home' country, current fast-paced working life in 'adopted' country, slow-paced retirement), while existing simultaneously in the current temporal imagination. W. F. H. Nicolaisen (1985) writes that considering and rehearsing the future is key to our lives, as we confront and attempt to cope with potential obstacles and opportunities in the future. This notion applies just as well to the present and past. By tracking changes in, and considering, recounting, and rehearsing these different time periods in our lives that each flow at their own paces, we not only prepare ourselves for obstacles and opportunities to come, but also (re)negotiate those obstacles and opportunities that come to us in our current lives or through our memories. With this in mind, this paper aims to simultaneously better understand our everyday interactions with and reactions to time, while also gaining an understanding of what it means to be an immigrant today.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how temporalities are structured and experienced by recruits in military service, based on my doctoral project about the reactivation of military conscription in Sweden. I will especially focus on how time is used and embodied as a disciplining tool.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores temporalities as experienced in military service, based on my doctoral project about the reactivation of military conscription in Sweden. Military service is no longer based on voluntarily engagement, instead young adults are summoned to do basic training and not able to choose or quit training according to their liking ("free will"). In the project, I investigate how these young adults understand this shift from voluntarism to conscription and especially their encounter with "hard values" such as obligation and obedience during the military training.

This paper focus on the various ways that time and temporality are structured by the military officers and experienced by the young recruits in the military setting.  

The question of practiced time is at heart of the military experience. In the everyday life for recruits, time is structured in a particular way which also is closely related to strategies for discipline. Officers telling the young recruits "you have three minutes to make your bed!" is one example of how time becomes organized in a rather different way from a more self-regulating form of time practice, that is common in many schools and homes. The paper will especially focus on how time is used and experienced (embodied) as a disciplining tool. Furthermore, in terms of temporality, the military experience can be characterized as "out-of-time" in relation to a temporality "at home", why I also explore whether this embodied military temporality is "brought back" and negotiated into everyday life at home.

Paper short abstract:

Organic food materializes multiple temporalities as it connects the past with the present while pointing to the future. Here, I explore how organic production and consumption can be analyzed as practices of time. Finally, I argue that organic food is dense with time. So how does time taste?

Paper long abstract:

Organic food materializes multiple temporalities as it connects the past with the present while pointing to the future. This can be noted in everything from how organic food is produced, marketed, sold, and finally consumed. Firmly rooted in soil, organic food is not "pumped up" with synthetic fertilizers. The food gets to grow at its own pace and this organic pace is what makes the food dense in terms of nutrients and flavor.

The appreciation of the slow growing of organic food can be interpreted as a critique of industrial food production and modern-day life that is increasingly dictated by speed and demands of effectiveness. In contrast, life in the past is often regarded as having been governed by a slower rhythm and seasonal changes. The slow growth of organic food is a projection of this past temporality.

Organic production and consumption concerns the present while also pointing towards the future. With its emphasis on taking care of the soil, the foundation of it all, organic agriculture evolves around sustainable practices to avoid compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. At the same time, consumers purchase organic food in the hope of avoiding present food risks that can lead to development of diseases in the future.

Here, I explore how organic production and consumption can be analyzed as practices of time. I argue that besides being nutrient-dense and having dense flavor; organic food is dense with time. So how does time taste?