Time/Space paper ideas:

  • see handout:
  • normative/non normative time: we have idea of when things are appropriate (ie appropriate age to have children, how long it should take to finish college, career speed, sequence, frequency etc). Right/wrong temporalities. Normative battles of how women's careers should act in relation to time
  • paper can be empirical - interviews with people (ie for the massage paper)
  • appropriate use of public spaces - homelessness. experimental ideas about public space
  • turn taking norms - waiting. cubing theory. airports, emergency services
  • stalls - temporarily occupied. control markers. how do you indicate that it's still yours? stall occupants swap in and out. overstay your welcome
  • form a theory and build on it
  • time as a sociological field - a lot of big sociologists have written on time, but still a lot of potential
  • "jazz age" - particular point in time serve as markers. Organize history by creating eras with markers (childhood, college, first marriage, first child, etc). "the nuclear age," the sixties, the seventies, etc
  • we use typification to deal with history, to deal with time passing. stereotyping of time periods
  • can analyze time tracks in two dimensions—the episodic and the continuous

see handout for graph/scale/continuum of humanistic <-> fatalistic and episodic <-> continuous

  • episodic: staccato, an encounter that has a start and an end, maybe occurs on a regular basis or multiple times, has a period to it. "let's go do it"
  • continuous: relationships, careers, marriages. starts and continues, has no set or expected end to it, ongoing
  • humanistic: "be who you really are," subjective, you're in control, expressive
  • fatalistic: compelled by outside forces, obligations, conformity rather than expression
  • determinate-ness vs. indeterminate-ness: is it determined already?
  • determinate-ness: prison sentences, class periods, college
  • indeterminate-ness: marriage, friendships, an "adventure"
  • side tracking
  • time panic
  • normative structures