Abstract
This paper contributes to work on the social life of time. It focuses on how time is doubled; produced by, and productive of, the relations and processes it operates through. In particular, it explores the methodological implications of this conception of time for how social scientists may study the doubledness of time. It draws on an allied move within the social sciences to see methods as themselves doubled, as both emerging from and constitutive of the social worlds that they seek to understand. We detail our own very different methodological experiments with studying the social life of time in London, engaging interactive documentary to elucidate nonlinear imaginaries of space-time in London’s pop-up culture (Ella Harris) and encountering time on a series of walks along a particular stretch of road in south east London (Beckie Coleman). While clearly different projects in terms of their content, ambition and scope, in bringing these projects together, we show the ability of our methods to grasp and perform from multiple angles and scales what Sharma (2014) calls ‘temporal architectures’. Temporal architectures, composed of elements including the built environment, commodities, services, technologies and labour, are infrastructures that enable social rhythms and temporal logics and that can entail a politicized valuing of the time of certain groups over others. We aim to contribute to an expanded and enriched conceptualisation of methods for exploring time, considering what our studies might offer to work on the doubled social life of time and methods, and highlighting in particular their implications for an engagement with a politics of time and temporality.
Highlights
This paper contributes to work on the social life of time
In bringing together our two, very different, methodological investigations into the social life of time, we offer an insight into the diversity of what methods for studying time can encompass and can do
Reflecting the propositions of the introduction, our methods contribute to a broader understanding of what it means to research time, by engaging with the social life of time via an examination of aspects of the ‘temporal architectures’ of London
Summary
It focuses on how time is doubled; produced by, and productive of, the relations and processes it operates through It explores the methodological implications of this conception of time for how social scientists may study the doubledness of time. Rather than existing as an external backdrop, time emerges from and structures socio-political relations and power dynamics, including interactions between human and non-human actors In this sense, time is doubled; produced by, and productive of, the relations and processes it operates through. Performing, we use to refer to how such grasping is an active creation (rather than neutral observation) of time We elaborate these conceptual understandings of time and methods as doubled in the following two sections, which examine the methodologies and methods we developed in studying different aspects of London’s temporal architectures. We consider what these studies might offer to work on the doubled social life of time and methods, highlighting in particular their implications for an engagement with a politics of time and temporality
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