Nicola Spurling

Conceptualizing connections Energy demand, infrastructures and social practices

Problems of climate change present new challenges for social theory. In this article we focus on the task of understanding and analyzing car dependence, using this as a case through which to introduce and explore what we take to be central but underdeveloped questions about how infrastructures and complexes of social practice connect across space and time. In taking this approach we work with the proposition that forms of energy consumption, including those associated with automobility, are usefully understood as outcomes of interconnected patterns of social practices, including working, shopping, visiting friends and family, going to school, and so forth. We also acknowledge that social practices are partly constituted by, and always embedded in material arrangements. Linking these two features together, we suggest that forms of car dependence emerge through the intersection of infrastructural arrangements that are integral to the conduct of many practices at once. We consequently explore the significance of professional – and not only ‘ordinary’ – practices, especially those of planners and designers who are involved in reconfiguring infrastructures of different scales, and in the practice dynamics that follow.

Differential experiences of time in academic work: How qualities of time are made in practice

Increasing time pressures, an accelerating pace of work and the need to juggle an increasing number of competing demands are common experiences of academics working in contemporary universities. At the same time, notions of ‘time famine’ and ‘time squeeze’ have formed relatively long-standing topics of social science research and popular debate. This article draws together interviews with 15 academics based in sociology departments at four UK universities, with existing research on time, work and leisure to explore the social dynamics that underpinned these academics’ experiences. The paper argues that it is not only quantities of overall work, but the qualities of time made through everyday work, which are important for academics’ experiences of time. In particular, the paper identifies three key mechanisms that pull towards the fragmentation of daily and weekly schedules: work–leisure boundary making, organisational structuring of time and the intrinsic rhythms of practices. These mechanisms combined in different configurations depending on institution type and career stage, advantaging some and disadvantaging others. The paper provides an alternative to existing accounts about the effects of new managerialism and audit culture on academic practice, which focus on how increasing amounts of work ‘squeeze time’, and suggests that we should equally be concerned with how qualities of time are made in practice, and the effects of contemporary contexts on these processes.

Matters of time: Materiality and the changing temporal organisation of everyday energy consumption

This article seeks to reverse an emphasis in current discussions of peak demand and the times of everyday energy consumption, which suggest that the use of technologies, infrastructures and energy are patterned by temporal features of practice as against such materials being integral to practice temporalities. In an exploratory study of homes and daily lives between 1950 and 2000, materials are foregrounded in the analysis of daily routines and the temporal details of specific practices – doing laundry, keeping warm and keeping oneself clean. The article challenges prominent approaches by demonstrating the material co-constitution of practice temporalities, and thus of the temporal organisation of everyday energy consumption. This material co-constitution is argued for in two ways. First, the article reveals the material dimensions of commonly cited concepts of temporality from Zerubavel, which have previously relied on solely social explanations. Second, the article argues that understanding materials as integral to times of practice (and consumption) requires a new conceptual vocabulary with which to perceive, analyse and discuss such relationships. The article concludes by outlining an initial set of concepts identified through the historical study and discusses the relevance of the emergent framework to contemporary contexts.

Everyday futures : a new interdisciplinary area of research

With the rise of ubiquitous computing, the role of HCI and interaction design in making everyday futures is becoming ever more encompassing and profound. The articles in this Special Topic offer perspectives on how these implications might be researched, understood, and challenged.