Temporal Practices and Health in Everyday Life

In this presentation, based on a paper, we will introduce the novel concept of temporal practices and apply it to everyday health practices in households with young children. We suggest that temporal practices emerge at the (conflicting) intersections of unequal and dominant institutional rhythms, family histories and everyday (sensory) experiences. Temporal practices are directed at time and draw together unequally organized meaning, materiality, knowledge and emotion. While time has been a critical dimension in many practice-based approaches, and prior theories have considered time as an outcome of practices (Shove, Schatzki, Southerton), this paper uniquely focuses on practices explicitly concerned with or directed at time itself. We argue that temporal practices arise from humans' dual engagement with time: both as a subjective flow or immersive experience and as an object of intervention and management (Plessner, Wehrle). Moreover, the power of dominant institutional rhythms can resonate in every life yet also triggers dissonance, leaves daily life unbothered or triggers (micro political) attempts to change dominating rhythms. While temporal practices merit attention in themselves, they also bundle and delineate other practices.

Based on this conceptual frame, we collaboratively analyze the everyday lives of caretakers and children aged 0-4 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We ethnographically followed everyday health practices and now focus on the experience of sleep problems, tiredness and stress. We demonstrate how caretakers try to establish routines or improvise or seek help to mitigate immediate negative experiences and work towards desired futures both for themselves and their children. Particularly we attend to gendered ways of dealing with emotions and bodily experiences in relation to time scarcity. Applying the concept of temporal practices helps to go beyond the identification of contradictions between institutional rhythms and everyday life to show which patterns emerge when young families are negotiating temporalities.