What if time was not money? Towards a pluriversal understanding of time for sustainable consumption

Abstract

Facing the growing emergency of changing consumption patterns to address the environmental crisis, many scholars have been studying individual behavioural change. Acknowledging that consumption is not just an individual choice but a social practice – embedded in socioeconomic, material, affective and cultural configurations – recent work has broadened the understanding of how to address sustainable consumption. Even though sustainability issues are fundamentally time-bound, time is seldom conceptualised as a substantive element. This article aims to contribute to this debate by raising the importance of time understandings to address (un)sustainable consumption. In the first part of this article the idea that the dominant economic system has pervaded our imaginaries, our behaviours and interactions, including how we see and experience time, is discussed, drawing mainly on degrowth scholars. The main understandings of time that stem from the assumption that ‘time is money’ are highlighted through the metaphors of the clock, the arrow and the target. Drawing on a qualitative fieldwork carried out in Ireland in spring 2021 among people engaged in sustainable practices, three alternative understandings of time – the cycle, the flow and the link – are then brought forward and discussed. It is argued that these different time understandings are performative in that they open up opportunities for more sustainable consumption and that we should aim at a pluriversal understanding of time that could foster the evolution of social organisation and institutions, towards non-capitalist goals such as wellbeing and environmental preservation.