Community-Based Temporal Practices for Creating Change in Hostile Institutional Systems

Abstract

This article, based on an interview study with community changemakers working within hostile systems of higher education and legislative politics, builds upon scholarship that names and challenges normative time by offering a cultural rhetorics analysis of activists’ alternative, community-based temporal practices that are centered in relationships and prioritize participant needs over institutional mandates. We theorize community-based temporal practices based on the changemaking stories of our interview participants, especially moments when they encountered time-based obstacles and used community-based knowledges as workarounds. We constellate these stories about the material barriers of time, the way time is wielded by those in power, and how to prioritize relationships, thus illuminating temporal practices that can be used to challenge institutional systems.