Time for Change?

Abstract

These books both explore issues of fundamental importance to those interested in the dynamics of work, employment and social integration and disintegration in contemporary societies. One is Australian and the other German perhaps an interesting polarisation in terms of the social centrality of the Protestant Work Ethic. Both are concerned with the impact of changing divisions of labour and the intensification of employment. Donaldson draws mainly on Australian data, but discusses this within the context of international research findings and employ ment patterns: Horning et al. base their discussion on interviews with German employees, but, paradoxically, scarcely allude to the German labour market or particular employment contexts and clearly perceive themselves to be exploring universal issues. Donaldson, from an essentially Marxist perspective, primarily considers macro-social evidence, whereas Horning et al. taking a phenomeno logical approach, virtually ignore social structure, focusing on a somewhat atypical selection of individuals to carry out what they refer to as 'open' and 'narrative' interviews about 'lifestyle'. Donaldson is thus primarily concerned with employees who have had employment flexibility thrust upon them, whereas the German team have selected employees who have chosen to opt for shorter working hours to allow personal flexibility. It is an interesting juxtaposition. The Australian study is concerned with the effect of 'non-standard' employ ment and employers' pursuit of workforce flexibility upon conditions of employment, job security and wider social relationships or, as the author puts it himself to 'explore the relations between the structures of patriarchy, class, time and the natural order ... I want to understand why it is that so many of us at the close of the twentieth century find ourselves so weary, so stretched, so frenetic' (6). Some of us might find the notion of 'the natural order' questionable, but the author has assembled an extraordinary range of evidence in order to explore the diversity of meanings and experience of time and argues that underlying this diversity, there is clearly a fundamental human need for 'free' time which allows for fluctuations in effort and life space. Did you know, for example, that patients in psychiatric hospitals appear to take 'time off' and exhibit fewer symptoms of mental illness on Saturday and Sunday, or that a disproportionately high number