The privilege of control and the constraint of presence: Fieldwork and ontologies of time

Abstract

The Asian Rural Institute (ARI)—a Christian, sustainable, nonprofit farm in Tochigi, Japan—keeps a strict schedule to ensure equality in job distribution and duration. Staff, participants, and volunteers must relinquish some control over their time and be present to do this work, two conditions that illuminate the privilege that many scholars have in their daily lives. As qualitative researcher, I was aware of some privileges that I brought with me but had not considered control over my work schedule one of them, until I was volunteering and researching at ARI. Implied in scholars’ work schedules are time ontologies, which are culturally and contextually specific. Time is both material and conceptual, meaning that although a day has a fixed length (a material condition), the way that we break up the day into hours and regions of the world into time zones, for example, is a product of thought and communication. With abstraction and standardization come issues of power and control. For researchers who work with communities in the field, it is worth considering time’s complexities to help navigate issues, such as power, ethics, relationships, research sites, and trust.