Time, Consumption and Everyday Life: Practice, Materiality and Culture

Description

Has material civilization spun out of control, becoming too fast for our own well-being and that of the planet? This book confronts these anxieties and examines the changing rhythms and temporal organization of everyday life. How do people handle hurriedness, burn-out and stress? Are slower forms of consumption viable? This volume brings together international experts from geography, sociology, history, anthropology and philosophy. In case studies covering the United States, Asia, and Europe, contributors follow routines and rhythms, their emotional and political dynamics, and show how they are anchored in material culture and everyday practice. Running themes of the book are questions of coordination and disruption; cycles and seasons; and the interplay between power and freedom, and between material and natural forces. The result is a volume that brings studies of practice, temporality and material culture together to open up a new intellectual agenda.

Elizabeth Shove is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. Frank Trentmann is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. Richard Wilk is Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Indiana University.

"Every now and then a book appears which can truly be counted as an original. This is one of those books. Each chapter produces a different kind of sparkle but the overall effect is clear: to shine a light into a series of different kinds of social fractures and crevices that make up the use of time, thereby giving the lie to the idea of anything as simple as a notion like routine. The diversity of the book makes it a constant delight to read, the theme will surely be a stimulus to further work. Terrific." Nigel Thrift, University of Warwick. Co-Author of Times, Spaces and Places and Shaping the Day "This intriguing collection - striking for its contributions from a range of disciplines - offers fresh perspectives on time, both as an abstraction and as we experience it in daily life. These essays reveal the intersections of natural and commercial rhythms and routines, and illuminate their relationships to material objects. A stimulating and important book, Time, Consumption, and Everyday Life deepens our understanding of daily habits in contemporary consumer society." Susan Strasser, University of Delaware.