Marking time in ethnography

Author(s): Sinikka Elliott, Josephine Ngo McKelvy and Sarah Bowen

Source: Ethnography , December 2017, Vol. 18, No. 4 (December 2017), pp. 556-576
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26359197

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Sage Publications, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Ethnography

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Ethnography’s Kitchen

Ethnography

Marking time in 2017, Vol. 18(4) 556–576

! The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions:
ethnography: Uncovering sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1466138116655360
temporal dispositions journals.sagepub.com/home/eth

Sinikka Elliott, Josephine Ngo McKelvy

and Sarah Bowen
North Carolina State University, USA

Abstract
In this paper, we reflect on how time is appraised, organized, and managed by a group of
researchers conducting an ethnography of 12 low-income families. We develop the
concept of temporal dispositions: perceptions and preferences around time that in turn
shape temporal practices. The concept of temporal dispositions encapsulates individ-
uals’ background and training, agency and reflexivity, and the dynamic nature of ongoing
social life and interactions through which temporal meanings may change or take on
new symbolic weight. Overlaid upon each of these are larger social structures and
power relations that affirm some temporal dispositions and stigmatize others. We
conclude by considering the implications for ethnographic fieldworkers. We argue
that analyzing the many ways researchers and participants navigate and perceive time
offers insight into unspoken temporal assumptions, ideologies, and inequalities.

Keywords
time, temporality, reflexivity, ethnographic method, social inequalities, disposition, tem-
poral orientation, power relations

As part of a team ethnographic study of low-income families’ food provisioning, a

researcher accompanied Marlene, a white 35-year-old mother, to her WIC appoint-
ment. WIC, or Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and
Children, provides food vouchers and nutrition counseling to low-income care-
givers of preschool aged children. After a 30-minute wait, Marlene’s four-year-
old daughter Jade had been weighed and her iron measured in a painful ordeal,

Corresponding author:
Sinikka Elliott, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, North Carolina State University, 10 Current Drive,
Campus Box 8107, Raleigh, NC, 27604, USA.
Email: sinikka_elliott@ncsu.edu

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Elliott et al. 557

only to be sent back to the waiting room before meeting with a nutritionist.
The researcher wrote in her fieldnotes:

We went back out the waiting room to . . . wait. I have heard this about WIC before,
and I wondered why the visits are in two parts. Why not transfer Marlene and Jade to
an office? Why not have them wait in the room and then have the counseling there?

Jade raises the topic of snacks again. She is whining and Marlene says, ‘I know, I am
hungry too.’ Jade switches to another game [on the smartphone] with a motorcycle on
a highway. She begins to whine about snacks again.

Marlene used her smartphone to occupy Jade, but it was hard to distract Jade
from her hunger. After a brief interview with the nutritionist, Marlene and Jade
were made to wait again, as their vouchers were being printed. The researcher
noted:

Back out in the main room Marlene tells Jade that we have to wait some more. Jade
says in an exasperated voice, ‘Again?!’ (I am thinking the same thing). We are now the
only ones in the room. It is about 5:30pm. ‘We are the last ones in the room,’ Jade
says. Marlene nods. ‘I always wanted to be the last one!’ Jade says cheerfully. Marlene
chuckles. Jade asks Marlene, ‘Did you?’ ‘Not really,’ Marlene replies. She adds,
‘You’re awfully cute.’ Then Jade asks what is taking so long.

During the months we spent conducting an ethnography of 12 low-income

families as part of a five-year project on food and families, we observed numerous
appointments that involved long stretches of and uncertainty about waiting.
Sociologist Megan Reid (2013: 743), following Bourdieu (2000), has documented
how low-income families, similar to Marlene and Jade, are routinely forced to
endure temporal domination, or ‘being made to wait,’ to demonstrate deservingness
for government benefits (see also Auyero, 2011). In the case of the WIC appoint-
ment, in addition to requiring ample waiting time, WIC counselors shuttled
families back and forth between rooms. Along with time, physical space, such as
the layout of the WIC office, is a fundamental aspect of organizing human life
(Dalsgaard and Nielsen, 2013; Gell, 1992; Munn, 1992). The concept of spatiotem-
poral domination captures both the spatial and temporal power dynamics at play
in this scene.
In addition to capturing a moment of spatiotemporal domination in her fieldnotes,
the researcher also suggested how the situation might be remedied – by transferring
Jade and Marlene to an office rather than having them return to the waiting room. In
doing so, she focused on how to make the process more efficient, rather than, for
example, more comfortable. The researcher’s approach reflects a particular way of
thinking about time that is common in western industrialized societies (and in the
social sciences). Time is often conceptualized as something scarce that should be used
rationally and productively (Adam, 1990; González-López, 2005; Wajcman, 2015).

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
558 Ethnography 18(4)

Our fieldnotes document numerous other moments when we wrote about waiting
and time use in ways that reflected our particular temporal understandings and
preferences. We encountered frequent challenges as we attempted to schedule
observations with participants who did not fully control their own time, due to
parenting and work obligations, among other things. Despite our awareness of
such constraints, our professional commitments and the increasing pace of higher
education (Hannerz, 2003; Noonan, 2015; Vostal, 2015) made families’ cancel-
ations and unpredictable schedules frustrating. Our perceived need to make the
most of our time in the field led us at times to focus on seeing things happen,
instead of valuing moments when time passed slowly and nothing seemingly of
note occurred.
In this paper, we analyze these temporal disruptions and conceptions as they
unfolded in the field and our fieldnotes. We develop the concept of temporal dis-
positions: unconscious perceptions and preferences around time, which in turn
shape temporal practices. Our analysis underscores the value of being attuned to
the ways that time matters and is marked by researchers, their academic disciplines,
and their research participants. Dispositions reflect and can reinforce social
inequality (Bourdieu, 1984; Lareau, 2011). Analyzing how researchers and partici-
pants navigate time offers insight into unspoken temporal assumptions, ideologies,
and inequalities.

Time and temporality in the literature

Time is multifaceted, encompassing physical, biological, social, and psychological
processes (Adam, 1990; Gell, 1992; Munn, 1992). It ‘can express and symbolically
represent a range of aspects, from human social life to growth and decay in the
environment’ (Adam, 1990: 43). Social scientists have long studied time, examining
how it is used or budgeted (e.g., Bianchi et al., 2000; Sayer, 2005), people’s orien-
tations in relation to time (e.g., past, present, and future) (e.g., Bourdieu, 2000;
Hitlin and Elder, 2007; Otto, 2013), and time over the life cycle or life course (e.g.,
Warren et al., 2002). More recently, social scientific work has examined the seeming
acceleration of time through technological innovation, such as the Internet (see
Wajcman, 2015). In all of these approaches is a tendency to view time as a ‘quantity
to be measured and a resource to be used and controlled’ (Adam, 1990: 103; see
also Wajcman, 2015). For example, in his influential article on waiting and power
dynamics, Schwartz (1974: 841) argued, ‘So far as it limits productive uses of time,
waiting generates distinct social and personal costs.’ While Schwartz is sympathetic
to the power imbalances associated with being made to wait, explicit in his ren-
dering is the notion that time should be used productively. Scholarly work often
reveals an assumption, moreover, that speed and perpetual motion are universally
desirable (Wajcman, 2015), and there is a tendency among scholars to set western
‘clock time’ as the standard against which others’ uses of time are measured (see
Adam, 1990; Gell, 1992; Munn, 1992). As Adam (1990: 126) observes, some of the
knowledge of what constitutes the ‘right’ time or the ‘correct’ use of time ‘is deeply

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Elliott et al. 559

sedimented and taken for granted . . . [with] shared meanings not necessarily avail-
able to us at a discursive level of consciousness’ (see also Otto, 2013).
A longstanding but less dominant social scientific approach to time focuses on
individuals’ subjective experiences of time (Adam, 1990; Barbalet, 2003; Bergson,
1910; Gell, 1992; LaRossa, 1983). González-López (2005) notes, for example, that
the Mexican immigrants she interviewed in California reported experiencing a lack
of time upon immigrating to the United States. But she also observes that time
carries heavy significance in US culture:

Americans use the expression ‘Thank you for your time’ to express their gratitude
after someone has spent ‘time’ helping them with a particular issue. In my years living
in Mexico, I never heard anyone use its equivalent in Spanish . . . In general, in
Mexico, people would use the expression . . . ‘Thank you for helping me.’ Socially
speaking, in capitalistic societies, ‘time’ seems to have a higher value than ‘help.’
Time means capital, time means money. (González-López, 2005: 158)

Thus, as González-López’s example shows, time is not simply a factual, quantifi-

able element. It can be experienced and understood in dramatically different ways
depending on a host of cultural, social, and biographical factors. Individuals’ ideas
about how time should pass and be spent (and controlled) may be more significant
to their temporal experience than the actual quantifiable amount of time itself
(LaRossa, 1983; Mills, 2000).
Bourdieu (2003) encourages researchers to be reflexive about how immersion in
a particular scholarly tradition encourages certain ways of viewing and analyzing
the world while foreclosing others. Mills (2000) argues that researchers should
reflect on how they experience the passage of time in the field while also keeping
in mind how participants perceive time. Particularly in anthropology, some scho-
lars have begun to reflexively analyze time within the process of doing fieldwork.
Work in this vein includes reflections about cultural conceptions of time or ‘time-
scapes’ (Otto, 2013) and discussions of boredom (Sjørslev, 2013), waiting
(Dalsgaard, 2013; Tan, 2009), episodic fieldwork (Whyte, 2013), and time pressures
in modern ethnography (Dalsgaard and Nielsen, 2013; Marcus, 2013). We contrib-
ute to this body of work by analyzing the intricate ways time is woven into ethno-
graphic research at all phases of the process, from project development and
coordination to the writing of fieldnotes. We argue that temporal dispositions do
not simply shape our analysis of what we experience and record in the field, they
are also critical aspects of how we approach the field and the decisions we make
therein.
In developing the concept of temporal dispositions, we build on existing con-
ceptualizations of individuals’ temporal preferences and perceptions. Some scho-
lars have used the concept temporal orientation to define individuals’ focus on the
present, past, or future (Hitlin and Elder, 2007; Otto, 2013). However, we prefer the
term ‘disposition,’ as articulated by Bourdieu (1977, 1984, 2000), because it high-
lights not only the role of unconscious assumptions, but also how power relations

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
560 Ethnography 18(4)

undergird people’s temporal perceptions and preferences. Thus disposition calls

attention to the social aspects of time and to the underlying inequalities informing
how individuals use and perceive time. Dispositions shape the way people
approach, use, and perceive time, but are not necessarily fixed or rigid. For exam-
ple, individuals may adjust their temporal dispositions in light of new information
or a novel setting. Thus the concept of temporal disposition captures the sediment
of one’s background and training (or, to use Bourdieu’s (1977, 1984) concept, one’s
habitus), individual agency and reflexivity (i.e., the ability of the individual to
reflect on and potentially modify one’s temporal dispositions), and the dynamic
nature of ongoing social life and interactions through which temporal meanings
change or take on new symbolic weight. Overlaid upon each of these are larger
social structures and power relations that affirm some temporal dispositions and
stigmatize others. For example, individuals who use their time strategically and
productively are valued in capitalist cultures organized around the pursuit of effi-
ciency and accumulation.
As we scheduled observations with families, we encroached on participants’ time
and encountered time pressures of our own, which led to scheduling challenges.
This experience of time manifested itself in our fieldnotes, where we wrote about
our temporal assumptions, preferences, and disciplinary pressures – what we call
temporal dispositions. Like many contemporary academics, we experienced time
constraints in conducting this ethnographic research (Hannerz, 2003; Marcus,
2013; Noonan, 2015; Vostal, 2015). The option to simply disappear ‘into the
field’ for a year or two at a time is no longer viable for most ethnographers
(Hannerz, 2003; Sjørslev, 2013). Despite the autonomy that academics enjoy com-
pared to many other professions, ‘surveillance, quantification and measurement of
academic output’ (Vostal, 2015: 74) put pressure on the academic enterprise to be
productive and efficient. Thus researchers may approach the field with a degree of
temporal instrumentality (Sjørslev, 2013). Fieldworkers may ask themselves, for
example, how they can maximize their time in the field even while they minimize the
time spent in the field.
For the ethnography analyzed in this paper, we used a team-based approach in
order to divide our time in the field among a number of researchers, which was a
valuable way to share the time demands of ethnographic research (Snow et al.,
2010). Researchers set ‘the agenda in the data gathering process’ (Mills, 2000: 116),
however, and our temporal dispositions shaped the research protocols. For exam-
ple, we organized our ‘visits’ (the observations) with families around particular
events, such as a meal or naptime. This sometimes meant that both we and the
families shared a perception that something should happen during the observations,
imposing a temporal purposefulness and structure that may not characterize typ-
ical family life. In the analysis that follows, we reflect on how time is appraised,
organized, and managed by a group of researchers conducting an ethnography of
low-income families. Our analysis of the many temporal dimensions of ethnog-
raphy reveals perceptions of time that go beyond measuring time use or subordin-
ation via waiting. We argue that future research should consider how time, and, in

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Elliott et al. 561

particular, temporal dispositions, are woven into research, including data proto-
cols, collection, and analysis.

Methods
Between April and December 2013, our research team conducted over 250 hours of
ethnographic observations in the homes of 12 low-income mothers and grand-
mothers. This fieldwork took place in three counties in North Carolina, two
rural and one urban. The observations were part of a larger study on families,
food, and health involving multiple types of data collection, including in-depth
interviews, fieldwork, time diaries, and surveys, collected over a five-year period.
We have worked hard to keep in touch with participants and to build durable
relationships with them outside of data collection activities. These efforts include
sending monthly newsletters, engaging them via social media, and hosting commu-
nity events for which we offer transportation and childcare services.
For the ethnographic observations, the team of seven researchers included four
graduate students, one part-time research staff member, and two professors. To
help families develop stronger relationships with researchers, we assigned one lead
researcher and two backup researchers to each family. The lead researchers gener-
ally conducted eight of the 12 observations, while the two backup researchers
typically conducted two observations each. For the three families that spoke pre-
dominantly Spanish, only a lead and a backup researcher were assigned, because
we had only two native Spanish-speakers on the research team. Our intent was
primarily to observe but also to interact with families, although our level of inter-
action varied according to the families and the fieldworkers. In some instances,
researchers became quite involved in families’ routines, playing with children and
helping with chores. It often took time for these relationships to develop, however,
and backup fieldworkers had fewer opportunities to cultivate these connections.
Each set of observations started with an initial intake visit; the lead researcher
met the family in their home, introduced the research project, and asked about
upcoming planned events, such as doctors’ appointments or birthday celebrations.
We scheduled observations around and often aimed to include these events. The
majority of the observations centered on family practices, such as families’ morn-
ing, afterschool, and evening routines, which, given our research interest in food,
were timed to include breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We also accompanied partici-
pants on their major monthly shopping trip, additional activities such as Women,
Infants, and Children (WIC) or doctors’ appointments, and children’s school lunch
when applicable. We conducted an interview during an ‘appreciation party’ held at
each family’s home for the 12th observation. We provided the food for the party
and ate with each family; this marked the end of our time with them.
Observations lasted between one and four hours, with an average of two and a
half hours. We strove to make two to three visits per week for five weeks. Our goal
was to finish all 12 families’ observations over the course of a nine-month period.
Once we had scheduled the observations, we gave families a calendar with the dates

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
562 Ethnography 18(4)

and times we had discussed together, a checklist of events we wanted to observe,

and researchers’ contact information. Fieldworkers also called or texted families to
confirm the appointment 24 hours prior to each observation and ended each obser-
vation with a verbal reminder of the next visit.
During the observations, we jotted overtly in a notebook and sometimes used a
digital recorder to record specific conversations. We wrote detailed fieldnotes
within 48 hours of each observation. For this analysis, we coded instances in the
fieldnotes of boredom, temporal uncertainty, and discussions of time as it related to
scheduling and rescheduling the family visits. In the section below, we analyze the
ways the researchers’ ideas about time, as well as the time pressures we experienced
and created, shaped the research protocols and data collection.

Temporality and ethnography

In what follows, we reflect on the significance of time in an ethnography of 12 low-
income families. As we entered the field, we encountered various challenges related
to time and physical space. Two-thirds of the families were an hour’s drive away
for the research team, and there were time pressures associated with scheduling and
completing each family’s observations. In the US, moreover, the home is con-
sidered a haven from the outside world. Entering this so-called private space cre-
ated additional emotional and logistical dilemmas. Our research protocols and
researchers’ temporal dispositions also influenced what we witnessed and how we
thought and wrote about time. These filtered into our fieldnotes. Our analysis
highlights the value of paying attention to these many dimensions of temporality
in fieldwork. In the spirit of critical reflexivity, we highlight moments of disjuncture
rather than times when things went smoothly. In doing so, we risk portraying our
research in a more negative light than is perhaps warranted. However, as scholars
who have benefited from other ethnographers’ reflections, we offer this account in
the interest of sparking conversation about the temporal dynamics of fieldwork.

Scheduling challenges and temporal disorganization

We knew from our previous interviews that families had complex and demanding
schedules (Bowen, Elliott, and Brenton, 2014). Even so, our labeling of events to
observe in terms of ‘morning routine,’ ‘afterschool routine,’ or ‘bedtime routine’
reveals our own temporal dispositions, which projected a certain level of regularity
about participants’ lives that reflected our fairly systematized lives. In fact, the
amount of temporal uncertainty in families’ lives caught us off-guard and made
it difficult for some families to schedule observations. For example, at the intake
meeting, one researcher assessed the work schedule for Illana, a black, 28-year-old
mother of one:

When I asked about her work schedule, Illana replied, ‘It’s backwards as hell.’ She
then explained that she works every weekend, and her hours are typically 6-2pm or

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Elliott et al. 563

12-8pm. Her days off are usually Tuesday and Wednesday or Wednesday and
Thursday. In general, her schedule varies and she always knows her schedule by
Wednesday. Illana felt more comfortable only scheduling the two [of the five upcom-
ing] visits and checking in later in the week when she knew her schedule.

Illana’s typical work schedule changed from week to week, frustrating Illana and
making it difficult to plan observations in advance. This difficulty coordinating
time with others – what Wajcman (2015: 75) calls temporal disorganization –
increasingly characterizes modern life, in which ‘flexible working hours, 24/7 work-
ing time, and contract work’ are the new norm for many. Unpredictable work
patterns, like Illana’s, also diminish temporal autonomy, or the ability to control
one’s time, which, scholars argue, is more important than how time is spent
(Wajcman, 2015). Our protocol to schedule several visits in advance with each
family assumed a degree of temporal autonomy that many families simply did
not have.
Illana’s family was not the only one with a challenging work schedule.
Moreover, some families also struggled with uncertainty around transportation.
Families also did not always have a working phone. The following excerpt comes
from the fieldnotes for the intake visit with Wanda. Wanda and her husband
Marquan are black, in their 20s, and reside with their two preschool-aged daugh-
ters in one of the rural counties we studied.

Wanda’s cell phone is currently disconnected, but when I spoke with her on
Wednesday she promised me that it would be reconnected by Friday. As of late
Friday afternoon, she still did not have a phone. We had arranged to do the intake
after she got off work [at a fast food restaurant]. She told me she never works past 5
p.m. because her mother, who looks after the girls during the day, has a night job (!).
So Wanda implied she was quite regimented with her work schedule. I asked her if
I could come at 5:30 and she said that would be fine.

It takes just over an hour to get to Wanda’s, so I left work at 4:30, leaving a message
for Wanda on her mom’s phone letting her know I was on my way. At 5:20, Wanda
phoned me to say she was just getting off work.

Ultimately, Wanda did not arrive home until 6:30 p.m., which was not an uncom-
mon pattern. Although Wanda initially said she worked seven days a week from
nine to five, in reality her schedule varied quite a bit. Many times she was asked to
stay late or take a coworker’s shift. Other times her hours were cut in half.
Furthermore, because Wanda worked an hourly job, the number of hours
worked each week directly affected her wages. In order to negotiate occasional
days off and maintain her hours, she felt pressure to be agreeable, which often
meant going to work and staying late with almost no advance notice.
Wanda occasionally expressed frustration about her unpredictable work sched-
ule, a situation shared by 66% of US food service workers (Bureau of Labor

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
564 Ethnography 18(4)

Statistics, 2015) and one that is increasingly common, especially for low-wage
workers (Wajcman, 2015). Marquan’s shifts at another fast food restaurant also
varied, and he worked two shifts in a row whenever the opportunity arose.
Although we had hoped to schedule several visits in advance during the first
visit, this proved impossible since Marquan and Wanda would not know their
work schedules until the beginning of the next week, when they were posted.
The fieldworker wrote:

The person at work who does the scheduling, whom Wanda refers to as ‘the girl,’ has
done half her schedule; she should know more early in the week but it is hard to tell
because ‘lots of people aren’t coming in right now.’ (Wanda seems proud that she
meets her work obligations, annoyed that others do not, and worn down by the
scheduling vagaries.)

Another aspect of Wanda and Marquan’s life that created a great deal of temporal
uncertainty was the fact that they relied on family members for rides, because they
did not have a working car. During one observation, the researcher arrived at
8 a.m. to observe the family’s morning routine. Wanda had explained that her
brother, Rob, would be picking them up at 8:30 a.m., and that he would drop
Wanda off at work before taking the girls to their mother’s for breakfast, which
was 30 minutes away from their home. Instead, it took over an hour for her brother
to arrive. As the wait grew longer, Wanda grew anxious. The researcher wrote:
‘Wanda calls Rob on her phone. ‘‘Where are you?’’ Rob must have told her he is
still 15 to 20 minutes away, because she repeats this incredulously.’ Finally, just
after 9:30 a.m., Rob arrived. We found it necessary to adjust many of our proced-
ures to take into account the temporal complexities and uncertainties of the
families’ lives, and to try to avoid adding to them.

Strategizing to control time

Although fieldwork, with its requisite degree of hanging out and getting along, may
not appear to be work, it is, in fact, very much work (Sjørslev, 2013). And it is
temporally engendered work that produces anxiety about missing out, not keeping
up, and being belated (Marcus, 2013). In our fieldnotes, we at times saw a clash
between the relative fluidity and unpredictability of family time and fieldworkers’
spatiotemporal demands. One aspect of these demands was to get the work done on
time. By asking the families we observed to complete the observations within a
specified amount of time and to give us advance warning of mundane errands, we
were asking a lot of them. We also felt pressure to keep our research agenda on
track, given our multiple, contingent stages of data collection. Moreover, we timed
the observations so that the fourth visit would coincide with the family’s big gro-
cery shop (which typically occurred just after they received their monthly SNAP
benefits, also known as food stamps). These constraints meant that we did not have
a lot of flexibility in our schedules.

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Elliott et al. 565

The fieldnotes reveal that fieldworkers’ concerns about time management some-
times resulted in frustration when families changed, canceled, or forgot scheduled
observations. One researcher recounts the shuffle of getting into the field at the last
minute when the participant, Samantha, a white, 34-year-old mother, lived almost
an hour’s drive away:

At the intake, I had asked Samantha to give me a call a day or two before she thought
she would be grocery shopping. Since she shops weekly ‘as needed,’ we hadn’t been
able to schedule a shop [ahead of time]. At about 10:40 on Friday morning, she called
me and said that she was planning to go grocery shopping at noon [an hour and 20
minutes later]. I groaned inwardly because it takes me 45 minutes to get there [to her
home], which meant I was going to have to leave in about 20 minutes to give myself a
safe buffer – not a lot of lead time. I also knew that we prefer not to have the first
observation be a grocery shop; I explained this and asked if she thought she might
be shopping next week, too. She said she didn’t know, and that this shop was going to
‘be a big one’ because she didn’t have much in the house, so I told her I’d definitely be
there. I asked, ‘You said noon, right?’ and she said it would be noon or ‘maybe a little
earlier’ because [her son] Tremaine was at therapy and she would go straight from
there. I gathered up my things while we worked out that I would meet her at the Super
Wal-Mart on [a main highway].

Samantha’s bare pantry and limited free time dictated that she go grocery shopping
that day. Meanwhile, temporal details and planning were much more salient in the
researcher’s mind for work-related reasons such as the preferred sequence of obser-
vations, travel time, and mental preparation for fieldwork.
One of our protocols was the use of phone calls and texts to confirm and remind
participants of our upcoming visits. At the interviews we conducted at the conclusion
of each family’s observations, families said they liked the researchers’ flexibility and
the reminder calls and texts. However, these reminders also posed challenges for
researchers because they sometimes led to last minute changes and even cancelations.
This was the case when scheduling with Samantha, who routinely canceled when she
received a reminder text. In strategizing to complete an observation with Samantha,
the lead researcher decided to forego the reminder on one occasion:

I was starting to get frustrated and anxious about getting in another observation soon.
Before I left, I debated sending another reminder. I was pretty concerned that
Samantha would not be at home when I arrived, but I also worried that if I said
anything, it would give her the opportunity to cancel. Since we had settled on the time
just the previous day, I decided to just drive out there and hope for the best. . . . I
pulled up to Samantha’s house several minutes before [the appointment time] and –
surprise – no car in the driveway.

Eventually the fieldworker reached Samantha by phone. Samantha explained that

she had gone to pick up a prescription, which needed to be taken on a full stomach,

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
566 Ethnography 18(4)

and was now on her way to a fast food restaurant not far away. She invited the
fieldworker to join her.
We aimed to minimize the burden our research placed on families by emphasiz-
ing the flexibility of the observations and providing reminders. Yet some research-
ers, feeling pressure to ensure that families completed their observations in a timely
manner, engaged in strategies, such as foregoing the reminder text, in an effort to
gain temporal control. This temporal strategizing was also the case in an observa-
tion with Tara, a white, 26-year-old mother who routinely canceled observations.
About her attempts to confirm a scheduled visit, the researcher wrote:

This observation, mom’s lunch, was scheduled for 11:30. I texted Tara the morning of
the observation, then set off for her home. I had scheduled another meeting nearby at
9:00, then planned to hang out until the observation. Around 10:00, I got a text from
Tara: ‘I will be home at 12:30 [one hour later] is that ok u can come then.’ I told her
that was okay, and asked her to text me if she got there earlier. Unfortunately, at
12:11, as I was getting ready to leave for her house, I got another text: ‘Can u be here
at one [a half hour later] I am running a lil behind please.’ By this point, I was getting
annoyed. I asked if she was at home or somewhere else, to make sure she wasn’t
misunderstanding me. She replied that she was at her sister’s house, because she had
taken her to the hospital [the night before]. I asked her to be there by 1pm, and
explained that I had already left, to try to make sure that it would really happen at
one. She agreed.

When the researcher arrived at Tara’s house, Tara explained that her sister had
gone to the Emergency Room because she had gone into labor the previous even-
ing. The researcher realized that the circumstances had been extreme and that she
may have contributed to Tara’s stress. Yet given her prior commitments and how
far away Tara’s home was from her main office, as well as Tara’s tendency to cancel
observations, the researcher had pushed ahead instead of clarifying what was going
on. These reactions illustrate not only the temporal and spatial constraints and
demands on researchers, but also how those demands at times led us to prioritize
making an observation occur, even if it was difficult for the participant. Tara’s
pleading tone in her texts suggested a power imbalance between researcher and
participant. In an effort to gain temporal control and make the observation
happen, the researcher capitalized on this power dynamic, an aspect of temporal
domination (Bourdieu, 2000; Reid, 2013).
The fieldnotes, however, also contain many examples of moments when field-
workers worked diligently and patiently to accommodate families’ oft-changing
schedules, including rescheduling numerous times. Especially given our awareness
from the previous year’s interviews of the temporal demands and uncertainties
families faced, we had made it a priority and ethical commitment to be flexible
with families. In fact, we had begun thinking about the issue of temporal autonomy
in terms of social justice (Brooks, Elliott, and Bowen, n.d.). Yet, as the examples

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Elliott et al. 567

above illustrate, despite our goal to work collaboratively with families, occasionally
fieldworkers strategized ways to gain some measure of control over families’ time in
an effort to limit their own sense of temporal disorganization.

Developing field protocols, imposing temporal dispositions

The ways we described and organized our visits with the families also reflected
particular temporal demands and expectations. We developed our research proto-
cols with a particular kind of temporal experience in mind: that we would go to
families’ homes to observe certain events, whether that was a family meal or getting
the children ready for school or going grocery shopping with the family. Our
protocols made sense to us, given that we wanted to observe a variety of family
interactions around food. However, the way we described and organized our visits
around ‘events’ had unintended consequences. For instance, although all of the
families we observed said that, over time, they began to forget we were in their
homes, some families appeared to perform the event we had requested to see. One
researcher described observing a meal that the family may not have had, if not for
the planned observation. When the researcher arrived at the home of Ciara, a
black, 24-year old mother of three-year-old DeAndre, Ciara was engaged with a
client in her hairdressing business in the living room as her son’s bedtime
approached. After walking through Ciara’s home and greeting each family
member in this multigenerational household, the researcher wrote:

I went back to the living room where Ciara and her client were still watching [the talk
show] ‘Maury.’ I was becoming a tiny bit concerned because I did not get the impres-
sion that Ciara would be preparing a main meal or anything for that matter, any time
soon. Ciara asked her mother, Aphra, to heat up the leftovers from last night, along
with the white rice, in case DeAndre wanted some of that too. . . . Finally, last night’s
leftover [tacos] were heated up. It was almost 7pm when Aphra served dinner and
Ciara was insisting on DeAndre going to bed at 7:30pm. Ciara could not eat because
she was still doing the girl’s hair and still had at least a quarter remaining. When
DeAndre finished eating, it was 7:15pm and Ciara was happy because he would still be
able to go to bed early. As I prepared to leave, Aphra handed me a small plate with a
taco on it. I wasn’t expecting that from her. ‘I just had to. That’s Ciara’s creation,’
Aphra tells me. I thanked her and Ciara, since she prepared it, and sat back down to
eat. Aphra went on to say that Ciara knew we were coming, so she cooked the night
before instead because she wouldn’t be able to [during the scheduled observation].
I always wondered about how families prepare for us coming to observe.

In this evening visit, the researcher was anxious when Ciara did not prepare dinner
as expected, which was the purpose of the ‘main meal’ observation. Not having
time to prepare on the day of the visit, Ciara had made a meal the previous day.
Our protocol for the main meal involved seeing food being prepared and then

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
568 Ethnography 18(4)

eaten, but this assumed a certain sequence of events that did not necessarily capture
the realities of the families’ lives. Even though Ciara and her family did not follow
this sequence, it was clear that she had made an extra effort to create a meal ahead
of time because we had communicated that as an expectation.
Similarly, in her interview, Wanda told us that having the observations orga-
nized around events imposed a rigidity around her family’s schedule, which was
usually very fluid and flexible. She explained:

I didn’t know if I was messing you guys up with my schedule, you know, having to
work over and saying you could come at this time and getting my days mixed up.
Then I had to give you a time limit of, you know, okay we’re gonna eat lunch at this
time and we’re gonna take a nap at this time and we’re gonna eat dinner at this time,
and so it was just being on a schedule. I had to be on a schedule for you guys!’ Cause
usually we just, I try to cook around my schedule or when Marquan gets home, if we
even eat.’ Cause sometimes I get home tired and don’t eat. I usually don’t fix, like, a
whole meal because the kids, they’re real picky eaters, so they’ll just eat, like, plain
macaroni noodles. So I’ll just fix something small [for them].

By describing being put on a schedule, Wanda revealed her efforts to conform to

our scheduling expectations, rather than challenging them as some other families
did. In fact, during both of the evening meals we observed for Wanda’s family,
Wanda cooked a large meal. Wanda admitted in the exit interview that both of
these meals were out of the ordinary. Wanda, more than most of the women we
observed, indicated that she modified her behavior during the observations.
Families (and some researchers) also held the expectation that once the event we
had scheduled to see was over we would leave, sometimes causing confusion and
discomfort. In our list of events that we hoped to observe, we included ‘mother’s
lunch,’ because we wanted to see what the mothers in our study did during the day,
when their kids were generally at school. For those mothers who were employed,
we asked to come on a day when they were not at work. These observations were
intended to be scheduled at times when mothers’ lives were less dictated by work
and childcare demands. However, our fieldnotes revealed how our temporal dis-
positions framed our intuitions and interactions in these observations. For exam-
ple, one researcher spent time with Illana on a weekday afternoon. After Ilana had
hung laundry to dry outside, eaten lunch, and watched TV, both Illana and the
researcher were at an impasse as to what should happen next. The researcher wrote,
‘Next, Illana looked around the home with a blank face, as if not knowing what to
do next. I thought that might have been a good time to leave.’ Not only did the
researcher intuit that Illana felt compelled to do something for this visit, the
researcher felt like she should leave if nothing was going to happen. There was
an unspoken agreement that there must be something to observe for the observa-
tion to be productive.
The ‘morning routine’ offers another example. One researcher conducted this
observation with Becky, a white, 27-year-old mother. During the observation,

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Elliott et al. 569

Becky helped her school-aged sons get ready for the bus, but then signaled that the
observation was over:

[After the boys left] Becky looked at me, too, and then back to Uncle George and said
(at him but I think really to me), ‘Well, I’m real tired.’ I got the hint and asked ‘Are
you going back to bed now?’ She said ‘Yeah,’ almost sarcastically, smiling and facing
me but with her eyes on the door. I said, ‘Okay, I don’t blame you, I’d want to, too.’ I
said thanks and let myself out.

The researcher intuited from Becky’s cues that it was time for her to leave and that
the observed event had occurred. She tried to make the most of an awkward situ-
ation by offering Becky a justification for these signals, when the researcher usually
was the one to decide when to leave the field.
In general, organizing visits around particular events, such as breakfast or nap-
time, gave some families the impression that they needed to perform the event for us
and that, once the event was accomplished, we should end the observation and leave.
In hindsight, we came to see that this was a perception often shared by both research-
ers and family members. Researchers themselves often felt uncomfortable and unsure
about how long to stay during any given observation. If an event, such as a meal,
happened very quickly, should the researcher then leave? Family life can be intimate
and private. What happens when someone starts to go to sleep with a researcher
observing? And, crucially, if not much seemed to be going on, was it time to leave?

Feeling bored in the field

Our temporal dispositions not only shaped the research protocols we developed, but
also how we wrote about certain events in the fieldnotes. In particular, fieldworkers
often privileged more productive and efficient uses of time over unstructured time.
For example, we observed Becky during a time when her elementary-school-aged
boys were at school. We had scheduled this observation with the intent of observing
Becky’s time when it was less structured by childcare demands. Becky relaxed on a
couch, playing on her cell phone. Yet the researcher grew impatient:

At 1:08 (yes, absolutely nothing changed between 1:02 and 1:08), another car passed
on Becky’s road, and again, Becky lifted her head to look out the window. I told
Becky that I would go since an hour had passed. (What I didn’t say was, an hour has
passed, plus nothing has really happened and I have a lot to do today.) I think she was
probably relieved that I was going, so she could fall asleep. She again apologized for it
being boring, and I told her that was not a problem, and sometimes it’s good to just
sit, especially since I have done a few things in the last few days (like moving an
apartment) that have made me really sore.

Although the researcher reassured Becky that boredom is fine and even good, she
expressed irritation about how boring the observation had been and noted that

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
570 Ethnography 18(4)

she had ‘a lot to do,’ thereby contrasting her own busy schedule with Becky’s
inaction. Whereas having abundant time used to be a mark of social status in
Western cultures, now ‘a busy, frenetic existence . . . denotes high status’
(Wajcman, 2015: 61). It is notable that both Becky and the researcher saw doing
nothing, the observation itself, as boring, a waste of time, and something apology-
worthy. They shared an expectation that something should happen during our
visits or else the observation had not been spent productively.
Other researchers also wrote critically of unstructured family time. For example,
during an observation in Wanda and Marquan’s home, Marquan looked after his two
daughters with a well-worn ‘Smurfs’ DVD while waiting for Wanda to return home
from work. The girls had clearly seen the DVD many times and paid it little attention.
This visit was the first time the fieldworker in the passage below had met Marquan and
his children, informing her comfort level in interacting more with the family. The
fieldworker expressed discomfort in her fieldnotes about the passage of time:

I feel bored. . . . Qianah (2) is now fooling around on the side of the couch, just out of
Marquan’s view. Marquan tells her to get up from there. I chuckle to myself. Qianah’s
clacking hair beads circumvent any attempt at stealth. Maylee (3) stretches across
Marquan’s lap and then sits on his leg like riding a pony . . . bouncing up and down on
her father/horse. Marquan tells her, ‘Maylee. Stawp!’

I realize that these fieldnotes may be boring. If so, then I am doing a good job of
conveying how boring the whole situation felt. I do not say this to suggest that I
wished I wasn’t there, but to convey how boringness can be awful to endure . . . I write
in my notebook, ‘A continuous cycle of boredom, movement, commands.’

Ethnographers are at work when they are in the field; this may generate an expect-
ation about the productive use of time, such as documenting interesting and relevant
goings-on. The clash between the fieldworkers’ expectations and actual events may
have made them more conscious of time (Bourdieu, 2000). Moreover, fieldworkers
are often expected to be highly attuned to the minutiae of the moment. The ‘highly
conscious and reflexive conduct’ (Flaherty, 1993: 402) of researchers may have the
effect of drawing out the passage of time (Bourdieu, 2000).
The above researcher’s preference for the productive use of time also extended to
her depiction of the participant’s parenting practices. Marquan was using a par-
enting style characterized by unstructured free time, what Lareau (2011), in her
bestselling ethnography of US family life (first published in 2003), terms the
‘accomplishment of natural growth’ in contrast to the concerted cultivation
model of parenting, which involves much more planning and intentional inter-
actions with children. Lareau argues there are social class differences in parenting
styles, with working class and poor parents less likely than middle-class parents to
engage in concerted cultivation. Despite growing concerns about children’s lack of
independence and heavily scheduled lives (Baird et al., 2012; McMillan et al., 2013;
Schooler et al., 2011), ideas about the value of concerted cultivation still hold

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Elliott et al. 571

currency in the US and may have disposed the researcher to view and characterize
what she observed as boring and unproductive.
Lareau (2011) documents how middle-class children with highly structured lives
did not know how to entertain themselves when faced with unstructured, free time.
The children we observed, in contrast, were often very good at managing their free
time. For example, while Claudia, a 37-year-old Latina mother of four, cleaned and
worked through her bills, a researcher noted feeling impressed by her one-year-old
son’s ability to play on his own: ‘I thought that he did a really good job of playing
solo.’ Nevertheless, researchers consistently wrote about family time in ways that
suggested adults should be much more involved in actively directing children’s time
and that time should be spent productively and, when it was not, it was boring or a
waste of time. One fieldworker wrote about the creativity of Rashan, Tara’s four-
year-old son, in the face of a boring afternoon, but it was the researcher’s feelings
of boredom, not necessarily his, that she observed:

Rashan wandered slowly back into the living room, wearing a pair of women’s sun-
glasses. ‘No!’ Tara exclaimed, but she immediately returned to [texting on] her phone.
Rashan kept the glasses. He took them off and began rubbing the lenses with his
finger. He looked up at the cartoon. It was something about Tom Thumb. In my
opinion, this was a VERY boring cartoon, but I never liked Looney Tunes. Tara
continued texting, with one of the dogs asleep on her lap. Rashan moved to the floor
and continued watching the cartoon. He was still holding the glasses. Tara coughed,
looked up at me, and then went into the back room. She seemed to be talking to
whoever is back there. I wondered who it was, and why they wouldn’t come out – did
they not want me to see them? Did Tara want me to leave? I had now been at the
house for an hour and a half, and I was bored. I decided I would leave around 3:00.
To no one in particular, Tara said, ‘I’m exhausted.’ She stared blankly into the middle
of the room and looked like she wanted to go to sleep. Rashan returned to the recliner
and was absent mindedly playing with the sunglasses and watching TV. Tara put her
head in her hands and closed her eyes. Rashan sat down in the recliner and began
watching TV. Again, I was struck by how boring this was, especially for Rashan. I
don’t think she had tried to engage him in conversation at all since I arrived – i.e.,
asked him a question about something or told him a story. I thought that Rashan had
coped with the lack of attention (and no toys) pretty well.

Studies suggest that downtime and boredom are important in the creative and
problem-solving process (Baird et al., 2012; McMillan et al., 2013; Schooler
et al., 2011). In our fieldnotes, however, boredom was largely characterized as a
negative aspect of family life (Barbalet, 2003), even when children or parents did
not seem to perceive it this way. The fieldnotes do not suggest Rashan ever articu-
lated feeling bored; instead, he played contentedly.
In analyzing moments when researchers wrote of being bored, we also found
that references to boredom were routinely accompanied by comments indicating
anxiety and insecurity on the part of the researchers about their presence in the

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
572 Ethnography 18(4)

families’ homes, specifically regarding how they were being perceived, what was
and was not permissible to see, and whether families were looking forward to the
researcher leaving. Above, for example, the researcher wrote in her fieldnotes, ‘Did
Tara want me to leave?’ The awkwardness expressed in our fieldnotes about
‘invading’ people’s personal space by observing them at home may have heightened
researchers’ perceptions of the passage of time. Emotional responses in the field
offer insight into larger dynamics and fieldworkers may perceive and characterize
the field in ways that correspond with their emotions (Kleinman and Copp, 1993).
Although some fieldworkers had met families in the previous year (during the
interviews) and were able to develop stronger relationships with families over
the course of numerous visits, some researchers only visited families two times
over the course of five or so weeks. This meant they had fewer opportunities to
gain rapport with and feel embedded in the families, heightening their sense of
discomfort and awareness of the passage of time.

Marking time in ethnography

This paper analyzes moments when time is marked in ethnography. The research
team, comprising seven researchers, spent nine months conducting observations in
the homes of 12 low-income families. For each family, we strove to visit 12 times
over the course of five weeks. Our analysis reveals how the temporal dispositions of
the research team shaped the ways we conceived and organized the family visits as
well as wrote about time in the fieldnotes. Temporal dispositions encompass the
constraints and demands individuals feel around time, the kinds of assumptions
people make about time, and individuals’ preferences when it comes to time use.
Researchers’ frustrations with mothers’ oft-changing schedules, and their boredom
in the face of unstructured time, uncovered value judgments about how time ought
to be spent and managed. We argue that paying attention to these judgments offers
analytic insight into dominant beliefs about time (e.g., that it should be used pro-
ductively) as well as insight into modern time pressures.
In our efforts to carry out the research, which often involved driving long dis-
tances to families’ homes in order to view families’ interactions around food, we
necessarily had to schedule when we would be with the families. Yet this imposed a
structure and predictability that may not characterize some families’ time. It also
crafted a purposefulness around family life that led us to prioritize ‘things happen-
ing’ over the unstructured and seemingly boring aspects of family life. Researchers
should be attuned to their expectations around time as well as their emotional
responses: anger, boredom, and anxiety were all emotions that fieldworkers rec-
orded experiencing when time did not pass in ways we imagined, organized, or
preferred. As other fieldworkers have observed, documenting and reflecting on our
emotional responses can provide deeper understanding of processes in the field and
yield analytic insight (Kleinman and Copp, 1993).
Temporal dispositions are largely invisible, yet can have important implications
for research. The findings reported here highlight a range of implications. First,

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Elliott et al. 573

researchers need to check their temporal dispositions when conceiving and orga-
nizing a research project. Our ideas about how time should be spent may pro-
foundly influence our expectations and the research protocols we develop. In
using the concept of temporal dispositions, we do not mean to imply that our
preferences towards time are unchanging or deterministic; dispositions form a
body of practical knowledge that individuals may draw on but do not determine
behavior (Bourdieu, 1977, 1984). People may have different temporal responses in
varying situations. However, our analysis suggests the value of being attuned to
temporal dispositions. We argue that critical reflexivity about time should be
employed not simply in the field but also as fieldworkers contemplate and figure
out the logistics of entering and leaving the field. Of course, an important aspect of
fieldwork has always been the unexpected: we often do not know where or when
insights will arise and they may come with distance from the field. Ethnography
involves a steep learning curve. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to revisit
the families in this study a second time, one year later (in the intervening year, we
conducted in-depth interviews with families and kept in touch through community
events and newsletters). As of this writing, all 12 families have agreed to allow us
back into their lives, and we have visited eight families thus far. This new round of
fieldwork has allowed us to implement the lessons learned from our initial time in
the field. Recurring fieldwork, the opportunity to return again and again to
the field, is also a temporal strategy (albeit one that may be increasingly a
luxury) that can enhance fieldworkers’ understandings of the symbolic and
power dynamics at play in the field as well as our imbrication in them (Sjørslev,
2013; Whyte, 2013).
Second, our analysis highlights further dimensions of the implications of time
demands on researchers. With an increasing emphasis in higher education on effi-
ciency and productivity, more fieldworkers may find their time in the field limited
or fragmented and will need to develop strategies to account both for less time and
more time pressures, including being aware of how such pressures may influence
research decisions. Efforts to maximize our time in the field may lead to feelings of
frustration when nothing seemingly of note occurs and to craft a research agenda
that imposes temporal expectations on others. Fieldwork is work and, as such,
researchers may approach it with a certain degree of instrumentality, especially if
we are anxious about making the most of our time in the field. Our ‘fieldwork by
appointment’ protocol allowed us to be strategic about our visits, but it also meant
that we experienced each visit as highly consequential because we had only a
limited number of preset times with families. Researchers should also push back
against bureaucratized time pressures and make a case for the continued value of
temporal autonomy in research. In addition to researchers’ temporal autonomy, it
is important to be mindful that those we research may face temporal constraints
and precarity of their own. Ethnographers need to think about the implications of
this for research design. By scheduling our fieldwork, we were able to avoid over-
burdening families by limiting and coordinating the time we spent with them,
especially in the private space of intimate family time. Yet scheduling in advance

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
574 Ethnography 18(4)

was hard for some families and some families felt put on a schedule by us, sug-
gesting the project protocols had restricted their temporal autonomy.
Finally, fieldworkers should pay attention to how temporal dispositions may
lead us to characterize and make sense of time in ways that, for example, reflect our
disciplinary training and upbringing and potentially reinforce social inequality. In
the spirit of reflexivity, we must turn a critical eye not just to our own temporal
dispositions, but also our discipline and larger society, both of which are replete
with ideas and value judgments about how time should proceed and be used
(Adam, 1990; Gell, 1992; Wajcman, 2015). When people’s dispositions align with
dominant ideologies and institutions, we may be less aware of them. Fieldwork can
bring powerful assumptions about time to the fore, but only if we notice (Otto,
2013). Our ideas about time do not simply shape our analysis of what we see and
record in the field, but also how we approach our time in the field, including how
we schedule and make decisions about when to enter and leave the field. We urge
researchers to be reflexive about the scheduling process and their perceptions of
time when conducting research with participants, because conducting an ethnog-
raphy requires finding time in our own lives as well as the lives of others.

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the families who participated in the study and the research team whose
efforts made it possible. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Ethnography
Mini-Conference at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society in New York,
NY, USA, 28 February 2015.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article: This material is based upon work that is supported
by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under
award number 2011-68001-30103.

References
Adam B (1990) Time in Social Theory. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Bowen S, Elliott S and Brenton J (2014) The joy of cooking? Contexts 13(3): 20–25.
Auyero J (2011) Patients of the state: An ethnographic account of poor people’s waiting.
Latin American Research Review 46(1): 5–29.
Baird B, Smallwood J, Mrazek MD, Kam JWY, Franklin MS and Schooler JW (2012)
Inspired by distraction: Mind wandering facilitates creative incubation. Psychological
Science 20(10): 1–6.
Barbalet JM (1999) Boredom and social meaning. British Journal of Sociology 50(4):
631–646.

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Elliott et al. 575

Bergson H (1910) Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness,
trans. Pogson FL. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Bianchi SM, Milkie MA, Sayer LC and Robinson JP (2000) Is anyone doing
the housework? Trends in the gender division of household labor. Social Forces 79: 191–228.
Bourdieu P (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu P (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu P (2000) Pascalian Meditations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu P (2003) Participant objectivation. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9:
281–294.
Brooks E, Elliott S and Bowen S (n.d) Time insecurity: How precarious time shapes the food
practices of low-income mothers. In: presented at the Southern Sociological Society
Annual Meeting, (accessed 13 April 2016).
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2015) Food and beverage serving and related workers. In:
Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2014–15 edition, US Department of Labor. Available
at: www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-serving/food-and-beverage-serving-and-relat
ed-workers.htm (accessed 29 August 2015).
Dalsgaard S (2013) The time of the state and the temporality of the gavman in Manus
Province, Papua. Social Analysis 57(1): 34–49.
Dalsgaard S and Nielsen M (2013) Introduction: Time and the field. Social Analysis 57(1): 1–19.
Flaherty MG (1993) Conceptualizing variation in the experience of time. Sociological
Inquiry 63(4): 394–405.
Gell A (1992) The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and
Images. Oxford: Berg.
González-López G (2005) Erotic Journeys: Mexican Immigrants and Their Sex Lives.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Hannerz U (2003) Being there. . . and there. . . and there!: Reflections on multi-site ethnog-
raphy. Ethnography 4(2): 201–216.
Hitlin S and Elder GH Jr (2007) Time, self, and the curiously abstract concept of agency.
Sociological Theory 25(2): 170–191.
Kleinman S and Copp MA (1993) Emotions and Fieldwork. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Lareau A (2011) Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, 2nd edition. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
LaRossa R (1983) The transition to parenthood and the social reality of time. Journal of
Marriage and Family 45(3): 579–589.
Marcus G (2013) Afterword: Ethnography between the virtue of patience and the anxiety of
belatedness once coevalness is embraced. Social Analysis 57(1): 143–155.
McMillan RL, Kaufman SB and Singer JL (2013) Ode to positive constructive daydreaming.
Frontiers in Psychology 4: 1–9.
Mills M (2000) Providing space for time: The impact of temporality on life course research.
Time & Society 9(1): 91–127.
Munn ND (1992) The cultural anthropology of time: A critical essay. Annual Review of
Anthropology 21: 93–123.
Noonan J (2015) Thought-time, money-time, and the temporal conditions of academic free-
dom. Time & Society 24(1): 109–128.
Otto T (2013) Times of the other: The temporalities of ethnographic fieldwork. Social
Analysis 57(1): 64–79.

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
576 Ethnography 18(4)

Reid M (2013) Social policy, ‘deservingness,’ and sociotemporal marginalization: Katrina

survivors and FEMA. Sociological Forum 28(4): 742–763.
Roy DF (1959) Banana time: Job satisfaction and informal interaction. Human Organization
18(4): 158–161.
Sayer LC (2005) Gender, time, and inequality: Trends in women’s and men’s paid work,
unpaid work, and free time. Social Forces 84(1): 285–303.
Schooler JW, Smallwood J, Christoff K, Handy TC, Reichle ED and Sayette MA (2011)
Meta-awareness, perceptual decoupling and the wandering mind. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences 15(7): 319–326.
Schwartz B (1974) Waiting, exchange, and power: The distribution of time in social systems.
American Journal of Sociology 79(4): 841–870.
Sjørslev I (2013) Boredom, rhythm, and the temporality of ritual: Recurring fieldwork in the
Brazilian Candomblé. Social Analysis 57(1): 95–109.
Snow DA, Bany JA, Peria M and Stobaugh JE (2010) A team field study of the appeal of
megachurches. Ethnography 11(1): 165–188.
Tan GG (2009) Senses of waiting among Tibetan nomads. In: Hage G (ed.) Waiting.
Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, pp. 66–75.
Vostal F (2015) Academic life in the fast lane: The experience of time and speed in British
academia. Time & Society 24(1): 71–95.
Wajcman J (2015) Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Warren JR, Hauser RM and Sheridan JT (2002) Occupational stratification across the life
course: Evidence from the Wisconsin longitudinal study. American Sociological Review
67: 323–346.
Whyte M (2013) Episodic fieldwork, updating, and sociability. Social Analysis 57(1): 110–121.

Author Biographies
Sinikka Elliott is an Associate Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State
University. Her research focuses on inequality, family, gender, and sexuality.
Her recent publications have examined sex education, the politics of home cooking,
and the lived experiences of black mothers of teens. She is the author of Not My
Kid: What Parents Believe about the Sex Lives of Their Teenagers (NYU Press,
2012). She co-directs Voices into Action: The Families, Food, and Health Project.

Josephine Ngo McKelvy is a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology at North Carolina State

University. Her work is at the intersection of family, inequality, and the life course.
Her dissertation examines age identity and family formation among Millennials. She
was a research assistant for Voices into Action: The Families, Food, and Health Project.

Sarah Bowen is an Associate Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State

University. Her work focuses on food systems, local and global institutions, and
inequality. She has conducted research in the United States, Mexico, and France.
She is the author of Divided Spirits: Tequila, Mezcal, and the Politics of Protection
(University of California Press, 2015). She co-directs Voices into Action: The
Families, Food, and Health Project.

This content downloaded from

118.69.43.74 on Tue, 12 Dec 2023 07:56:25 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms