ABSTRACT
In the course of this essay, moving toward a differentiated idea of time associated with different kinds of consumption activity, we have tried to draw attention to the importance of periodicity and synchronization of responsibilities. Halbwachs’s theory that the condition of their lives inhibits the poor from taking a long view is consistent with Oscar Lewis’s association of a pancultural, short time scale with poverty. We have also suggested that incorporation in a group lengthens the time span of decisions immeasurably, since a group expects to go on forever. By its very expectation, it can validate its time scale, since it causes funds to be streamed towards a distant future and so enables its expectation to be made actual. In discussing time, then, we have to take account of the self-fulfilling character of a short-or long-term view. The short view expects a curtain of uncertainty to foreclose on its longer-term decisions, but the very fact of everyone taking a short view creates that uncertainty which justifies their concern. The long-term view is self-fulfilling in the parallel way, as long as resources are channeled to the ends it foresees. If we made a list of all the generative tendencies that distinguish two consumption patterns of different scale, the self-fulfilling character of expectations about time would be one of the most significant. The result is that where there is a section of society which is only tentatively and sporadically engaged in the main productive system, time will always hang on its hands. A curious survey of the amount of rest taken in the day in Belgian and Peruvian offices showed an inverse correlation
between resting and education,2 as one would expect, but this does not imply that the more educated have the best ideas about how to occupy themselves. The same source quotes a sociological report on Sicily: “Their life is threaded through by poverty, sickness and despair, but rarely do they lack time for leisure,” and another on the life-style of Indian peasants in Peru: “Time losses are thus a heritage.” The fact of not being fully involved in the process of production explains the large amount of time hanging heavily on the poor, and this despite all the high-frequency household processing that might be thought to keep them busy. But it can also be argued that their not being heavily involved in consumption processes also gives them more time: this occurs because low involvement reduces the standards at which they expect to furnish their homes, polish the furniture, change their clothes, and serve their meals; and also because a small-scale social round is anyway less time-consuming. Staffen Linder notes that the socalled leisure classes are rushing around hectically trying to put more and more real consumption into a nearly fixed time slot. He is satisfied to explain it by the fact that productivity of working time is vastly increased while consumption time has hardly changed.3 This sort of explanation depends on the idea of an irrational consumer, to whom the economist cannot resist preaching a change of heart.
