Uses of Temporal Capital: Domestic Workers and Scheduling

Let me reiterate that temporal capital is the amount of time one has under one's control. It is not the amount of time one ostensibly has in any given amount of time, or the rate at which time passes in an objective and absolute fashion (24 hours per day). That being said, the concept of temporal capital to help us understand our experience of time can be used in a broad number of ways.

Indeed, the correlation between socioeconomic class and temporal capital is not straightforward at all. Other scholars the likes of David Harvey (1989), Robert Levine (1997), Ida Sabelis (2007), Pierre Bourdieu (1984), and Edward Hall (in the Silent Language) allude to the idea time is variable between individuals based on how much power they have, their position within the social stratum, their occupation, or their culture. While control over time correlated with class holds true some of the time, consider the following anecdote. A family friend whose elderly father is in the hospital told me that they hired two domestic workers to take care of her father. The domestic workers do not have to do much in the way of active care, as the father is bed-bound and the hospital takes care of most of his needs. The domestic workers spend a lot of their shift watching movies or messaging friends on the iPad that the family has purchased. In this case, these domestic workers experience rather high levels of temporal capital in a micro-level, as their time and physical location is controlled by the conditions of their employment, yet they are free to do what they wish on the mobile device.

Amy Jordan (1992) found that higher SES families tend to me monochronistic, meaning they have a set schedule - do homework from 5-6pm, watch TV from 8-9pm, go to bed at 9:30pm, whereas lower SES families tend to be polychronistic - there is more multitasking, and not everything has its own temporal spot or allocation. Families of lower SES, Jordan found, are more concerned with completing the task at hand, no matter how long it took. For example, they will finish a movie rather than cutting off the movie at a certain time in order to do the next thing. Jordan's main argument is that the value of time is perceived and felt differently given a family's SES, and is passed down and cultivated within the children. Temporal capital can be used to think about scheduling of time as well. There is a certain privilege attached to be able to control one's future, that is tied to a monochronistic way of scheduling. For example, if I am able to schedule my life next week, it means I retain control over my time as projected into the future - I am allowed temporal capital on a larger scale - one that spans days and weeks, as opposed to just minutes and hours. Ironically, if I choose to follow that schedule, my micro temporal capital disappears - I MUST be at a meeting for an hour next Tuesday, and then I must be at my computer finishing an article. Yet, within a broader perspective of temporal capital, I took control over my life by allowing myself to schedule in times to be productive and keeping to that schedule. In contrast, if I had less control over my own future, I may not be as concerned with scheduling far into the future, as I may not know if I will have next Tuesday from 3-4pm free to do as I please. So the "temporal orientation," as Jordan calls it, of monochronicity is not inculcated within me, and my value of time is not tied directly to productivity. Indeed, I may not be as concerned with making sure my temporal investment yields some form of productivity - I may write a paper for however long it takes me, taking YouTube breaks as often as I like. In this way, during that process of paper writing, I have more temporal capital, as I am free to do what I please.