Notes: Valerie Bryson “Time, Power and Inequalities, in “Time, Temporality and Global Politics”

Bryson regards care activities (care for household, children, elderly) as unpaid or underpaid work because it requires mental, emotional, and bodily effort, it requires skills and a good deal of time. Mostly women, still today, have the responsibility of such work. Many of them also have a paid job… θέλει δουλιτσα αυτή η περίληψη…

p. 109 (δεν δίνει βιβλιογραφία ή αλλες αποδείξεις για τη θέση της ότι αυτή η παλαιότερη αντίληψη του χρόνου επιμένει… αλλά anyway… still χρήσιμο)

while clock time ticked more slowly than digital time, an older, precapitalist time that cannot be rationally planned and controlled, inevitably still
persists in the rhythms of the seasons and our bodies, and in the often
unpredictable patterns and needs of emotional and caring relationships.
Today, these older times are increasingly subject to the logic of measurable,
commodified time, both clock and digital, as the relentless pursuit of short-term profit extends more vigorously into all areas of life in a world in which
‘Infants, human organs, sexualised bodies, intimate caring, sensual
pleasures, and spiritual salvation are all for sale’ (Peterson 2003: 78). In the
case of the natural world, the effects are potentially disastrous in terms of
sustainable agriculture and climate change; the effects on our human
relationships are also deeply damaging.
Caring for other people is an inherently relational and often open-ended
activity, while the tasks it involves are often determined by need rather than
by the clock (a child’s nappy has to be changed when it is dirty, not because it
is four o’clock). Many caring tasks are very much focussed on the here and
now, and attempting to speed them up can often be counter-productive (trying
to rush a child through eating breakfast may provoke a temper tantrum that
makes them even later for nursery). Care is also often repetitive rather than
with an identifiable end product (that nappy will soon need changing again); it
can involve a jumble of simultaneous activities, emotions and processes

As discussed above, the impact of such responsibilities cannot be fully
captured by time-use diaries, which are inherently tied to measurable clock
time.

My text below

Bryson is mostly referring to concrete examples, where a person or a thing is explicitly in need of care. A child needs a dipper change. The kitchen needs to be cleaned. Care does not fit in the neoliberal temporality and is devalued. And there are other forms of care, less explicit, less urgent perhaps that are devalued as well. Meeting with a friend to catch up is a type of care for the other person and for the relation itself… why isn’t this leisure time??… Putting ones attention on small everyday things is a type of care that requires time and effort. While it is devalued and it disappears perhaps the relations of humans change, the culture is affected