Exploring the changing temporalities of everyday life: multiple methods of attack.

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'Exploring the changing temporalities of everyday
life multiple methods of attack.'

• Dale Southerton (Sociology The Morgan Centre,
  Manchester University)
• Presentation for NCRM Research Methods Festival
  Researching socio-cultural change stream, 3 July,
  Oxford University.

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Introduction structure of the presentation

• A story from the freezer to the temporal
  re-organisation of daily life.
• A pet project on freezers an object biography
  approach
• Convenience and harriedness the contradictions
  and ambivalences of interviewees
• Checking my claims survey data
• Past lives analysing day in the life of
  diaries from the Mass Observation Archive.
• Conclusion multiple methods of attack and the
  importance of historical data.

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Defrosting the freezer(with Elizabeth Shove)

• Aim to understand the normalisation of the
  freezer.
• Methods anything cheap and easy participant
  observation content analysis of freezer cookery
  books interviews with kitchen producers and
  kitchen consumers.
• Found the freezer has become a time machine!
• Objects embody socio-cultural change a
  commentary on changing meanings and forms of
  daily life.

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From convenience to coordination household
interviews

• Interviewed 20 households located in a suburb of
  Bristol, England. Made no distinction between
  interviewing partners together or separate 30
  people were interviewed in total (7 couples and
  13 people alone).
• Random sample comprising single households,
  couples with and without children and
  respondents' age varied between 25 and 65.
• Interviews lasted on average 2 hours. I asked
• general impression of time squeeze
• detailed accounts of previous week day and
  weekend day,
• discussion of the rhythms of daily life.
• Interview data gets at the contradictions and
  ambivalences of temporal experiences.

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Hot cold spots coordinating moments of
togetherness
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Harriedness checking my claims (with Mark
Tomlinson)

• Health and Lifestyle Survey data first collected
  in 1984/5 to form a random sample of 9003
  respondents aged 18 or over and resident in
  private households in Great Britain.
• One question asked Indicate how well the
  description Usually pressed for time fits your
  life. Respondents had four options in reply
  not at all, somewhat, fairly well, very
  well.
• Taking these responses as the dependent variable
  in ordered logistic regression models, we
  analysed the extent that people reported feeling
  pressed for time in terms of social class, age,
  gender, life-course, hours worked, and
  consumption orientations.
• We also analysed the data in relation to a number
  of less commonly used variables the effect of
  shift work, going out to meet people, and
  omnivorousness.

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Some of the findings

• Only 25 of the sample reported the response not
  at all. The variables that correlated with
  higher scores of feeling pressed for time were
• Greater number of hours spent in paid work
• Professional and managerial occupations
• Working in a supervisory role
• Women in the same occupations as men
• Having young children made men feel more pressed
  for time when compared with mothers of young
  children
• working flexible hours as opposed to shifts
• frequently going out to meet people (as opposed
  to going out but without arranging to meet other
  people)
• omnivorous consumption orientations

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So what has changed?Day in the Life of
diaries from 1937

• Mass Observation began in 1937 with the
  aim of creating an Anthropology of
  ourselves.
• National panel of volunteers who responded
  on a regular basis to questionnaires and
  directives, which included writing
  day diaries.
• Diarists were asked to repeat the diary format
  on every 12th day of the month.
• Analysed the diaries from Saturday 12th June
• and Monday 12th July. Fourteen female diarists
• were selected on the basis of the legibility of
  diaries.
• Self-selective sample.
• Wide variations in what people recorded in their
  diaries.

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Some of the findings

• Women (and people more generally) in 1937 worked
  much harder in both paid and unpaid work
• The temporal rhythms of daily life were
  relatively rigid by todays standards and were
  collectively coordinated.
• Meal times (fixed around work patterns and same
  for everyone).
• Going out times (pubs), women washed clothes on
  same day and tended to be at the same stage of
  work so pop around next door while we hang out
  washing!
• The rhythm of housework Mondays wash day
  because Sunday roast, make a stew and cook at
  same time, warm to dry cloths if necessary, hot
  water so bath day).

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Conclusion

• Multiple methods of attack means
• Rummage around the Social Science toolbox and use
  varieties of methods to fit the set of unfolding
  questions/problems being addressed.
• Find the data that is out there and supplement
  with the collection of (inventive) new data use
  what is out there to inform research design.
• Allows us to look at varieties of data from
  different angles in order to build a picture (an
  empirically informed story) of socio-cultural
  change.
• Importance of empirically examining the past.