ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a redressing of the balance personal by exploring various ways in which time shapes the ways in which health risks are developed and managed. It discusses the nature of time and explores the ways in which a specific form of time, abstract time, is embedded in the rational model of risk. The chapter examines the ways in which in health and health care this abstract time interacts with organizational time and personal time. It shows that abstract time is imposed upon actors' personal time and becomes a locus of power relations through which actors are expected or required to align themselves and be held accountable for their success in doing so. These different processes connecting time to risk and risk to time denote the socially constructed format of modern abstract time and attempt to rationalize the world through this standardized medium.
