Time and Social Theory, Chapter 5: Industrial Time and Power

Critical Analysis

In this text, the author describes the relationship between clock time—a controlled form of social time—and the natural quality of time. She concludes that when time is accepted as the artificial unit of measure, rather than something that exists as a quality only in its comparison to a task, it brings with it elements of control, power, and other questionable social norms and practices.

Adam argues that clock time is an artificial way of tracking time internal to itself, and has become unescapable; she explains that “as long as we remain part of a society that is structured to the time of clocks and calendars our activities and interaction with others can only escape its pervasive hold to a very limited extent” (107). Activities become measured against time.

This is evidenced in education, and it can be argued that this is where children become familiar with and accepting of this artificial construct. The author notes that “even the most cursory look at contemporary school life reveals that everything is timed”—that “layer upon layer of such schedules form the structure of our education system” (104-105). She continues to observe that school activities are allocated and structured for pre-set durations, and the durations dictate when and how learning occurs; the content itself is not the measure by which education is contained. This is pervasive, as “every single timing, synchronization, and allocation is in turn nested within a multiplicity of others, from an ‘educational plan’ down to the didactic detail of the time structure of individual lessons” (105). The goal is to instill and experience predictability—clock time, like “machine time,” is designed to the “ideal of invariability” (106).

From this perspective, it’s reasonable to expect students who come to design school to expect this form of planned, structured, organized schedule; they come to studio expecting clock time. It makes sense, then, that students struggle to make sense of the new feeling of time—that creative work is unstructured, and that expectations are to spend a lot of time in studio working. If instructors do not explicitly describe that they expect task-time, it’s reasonable to expect students to misunderstand the expectation, and to view the norms of studio as “more time spent is better.” Yet when clock time is seen as time, time becomes finite. It is a quantity, and so it can be added or diminished, and this means that—as a commodity—it can also be exchanged or spent; it gains a relationship to inequality, as one can have more or less time than others, and more or less control over this tangible unit of time. These units are not context dependent. They have no bearing on what they represent. A unit of time can be “spent” equally on any task, with no intrinsic relationship to the task. Students then are caught between their own expectations of clock time and the instructor’s expectations of task-time, with time itself disrupting the ability to achieve either.

In a working context, time as a valuable commodity should be optimized, and so “every second of the workers’ time has to be used to its fullest potential” (113). The commodity of time, unlike a commodity of currency, cannot be left to accumulate. It must be spent at certain times or it goes away and is squandered. Any “rhythm” of work loses its unique context; the time it takes to do any one task is the same time that is spent doing any other task. Students interpret this as a call for spending every waking hour in studio. This is likely not what instructors want; it’s more likely that instructors want students to view design activities as tasks, where time is constrained within the activity itself. Working through a design problem takes time—as much time as it takes—and instructors’ focus on presence can be seen as a call for a transcendence of the norms students have grown accustomed to. This transcendence, Adam argues, is used in the context of time measurement to indicate when one rejects the notion of clock time entirely, and returns to view time as something specific to a task. This requires control, and “not whether time is under the control of self or others but whether clock time has become related to as being time seems to determine whether or not time itself is controlled” (126).