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Self-regulation and social syncronization

Orientation in time is a constant in life: people are continually responding to social conventions about timing. They share ideas about which times are appropriate to do something or to be somewhere, and use these to synchronize their lives with others. People eat when others eat, work according to set temporal patterns, and avoid certain places when ‘others’ control them.  As Norbert Elias (1984) already pointed out, self-regulation in time is an important social habitus that enables people to live in societies, that is, together. But social synchronization is also complex: various temporalities mingle and compete within communities and even within individuals, and in this complex temporal landscape, people can use specific conventions to perform differences. Celebrating a specific festival according to a specific calendar, for example, is not a neutral choice, but can be a performance of a specific identity. 

In this conference, we will explore people’s lived time, that is the concrete ways in which individuals experience the time at hand - the present, the recent past and the near future. The title lived time is inspired by lived religion, an approach from religious studies that examines religious practices as performed and experienced in everyday life, and studies how individual actors respond to religious norms and traditions. The time scales we focus on are those of hours, days, weeks, seasons and the year. How do people schedule conventional activities such as work, meals, rest or religious practices? How do they use time to make statements (consciously or unconsciously) about their place on their community’s social map? What do their working routines, liturgical schedules and temporal norms says about their values and relations to others? In what ways did people synchronize with others, and did these practices increase or rather transcend cultural, social or religious differences? How are temporal norms gendered?