The temporal gaze: the challenge for social theory in the context of GM food

The temporal gaze in socio-environmental theory can take many forms. Time may be added to existing approaches without disturbing the status quo of theory and methodology. Alternatively, focus may be on the time–space of socio-environmental existence or typologies constructed of the complexity of socio-environmental time. Finally, phenomena, processes and events may be conceptualized as timescapes. Through the focus on genetic modification of foods, the paper demonstrates the pertinence of this timescape perspective for social theory and socio-environmental analyses. A thorough-going temporal gaze is important because a) such reconceptualization forms an integral part of rethinking the social sciences' relationship to nature and environmental matters; b) the implications at the level of theory tend to be glossed over and ignored; and c) it is central to changing practice at the level of public and personal action. The paper thus uses a timescape perspective to set out substantive and conceptual issues that present some of social theory's challenges for the new millennium.     

Mediated reunions in adoption: findings from an evaluation study

In Canada, there are long waiting lists of adopted persons and birthparents seeking information or actual reunions. In the province of Quebec, the government authorized a pilot project, involving a fee-for-service program and use of contract social workers to supplement agency staff as intermediaries in the reunion process. This article reports on the project's evaluation and provides birth-parents' and adoptees' responses to reunion. A survey of clients who used this service found a high level of satisfaction. There were, however, some significant differences between birthparents and adoptees as well as between those who were searching and those found.     

Psychiatric patients' perceptions of waiting time in the psychiatric emergency service

Recent customer service surveys have indicated that patients in the Psychiatric Emergency Service (PES) are increasingly dissatisfied with the "waiting" time connected with expanded services. This study examined the impact of six interventions that altered the environment of waiting patients and their resulting perceptions of time spent in PES. The interventions were communication (three styles), relaxing music, educational videos, and recreational activities. Each intervention was conducted for 7 days, followed by 7 days of no intervention. Patients completed a Time Assessment Tool that measured expectations of, perceptions of, and satisfaction with waiting time. These data were compared to actual time, as reflected on the log maintained in the PES. In general, environmental interventions reduced patients' perceived time, compared to no intervention. Significantly, interacting with patients with caring and concern consistently resulted in a reduced perception of waiting time, compared to the other interventions.     

A state of limbo: the politics of waiting in neo‐liberal Latvia

This article presents an ethnographic study of politics of waiting in a post‐Soviet context. While activation has been explored in sociological and anthropological literature as a neo‐liberal governmental technology and its application in post‐socialist context has also been compellingly documented, waiting as a political artefact has only recently been receiving increased scholarly attention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a state‐run unemployment office in Riga, this article shows how, alongside activation, state welfare policies also produce passivity and waiting. Engaging with the small but developing field of sociological literature on the politics of waiting, I argue that, rather than interpreting it as a clash between ‘neo‐liberal’ and ‘Soviet’ regimes, we should understand the double‐move of activation and imposition of waiting as a key mechanism of neo‐liberal biopolitics. This article thus extends the existing theorizations of the temporal politics of neo‐liberalism.     

A methodology for estimating ambulance requirements

Provision of adequate size of Ambulance fleet is a matter of concern for any hospital. For estimating ambulance requirements queuing analysis was used in this study. In this analysis incidence of long waiting times rather than mean waiting times were taken as the basis for estimating ambulance requirements in keeping with the desired service level.     

Temporality in social movement theory: vectors and events in the neoliberal timescape

ABSTRACT

Existing theories of social movements have a weak conception of temporality, which is generally tied to truncated protest waves or else to micro-scale sequences of interaction. Neither approach enables an understanding of continuity and change in the content and form of social movements over longer periods. This article develops a new conceptual terminology intended to bring temporal sensitivity to our understanding of the interplay between movements and their socio-political environments. Vectors highlight evolving patterns of interaction that carry ideas and action orientations into a range of social settings over a period of decades. Examining the interplay of different vectors, and accounting also for the unfolding character of historic events, enables the apprehension of an overarching timescape within which movements move. This theoretical approach is illustrated with an examination of three significant periods of transnational contention associated with the Alter-Globalization, Anti-War, and Occupy movements. Analysis of vectors that shape discourses of conflict, organizational preferences, and practices of individual autonomy explain dynamics of continuity and change across different movements, each of which is shaped by a dynamic neoliberal timescape.

Abbreviation CBDM: Consensus-based Decision Making; ICT: Information and Communication Technology; IFI: International Financial Institution; IMF: International Monetary Fund; WTO: World Trade Organisation     

Waiting on Others: Gender in the Medical Waiting Room

In this article, I describe how gendered interactions and power dynamics play out in medical waiting rooms. While people are spending time idle, waiting for the next thing to happen (i.e., to check in, to see the doctor, to pay), social processes continue to occur and reinforce these gendered interactions and dynamics. Using data collected from ethnographic observations of medical waiting rooms in the Midwestern United States, this article illustrates that waiting offers another opportunity to understand the subtle ways that gendered expectations and hierarchies are perpetuated. Patients, their friends, and families do gender in medical waiting rooms through the amount of auditory and physical space they take up and the ways in which they behave and respond to the actors and expectations in this space.     

Warten auf Amtsfluren

This article analyzes waiting and the situation of waiting in bureaucratic organizations. First, five central features of waiting are characterized: centrality of time, goal orientation, enforced passivity, serial isolation and event contingency. The different modalities of waiting resulting from social figurations and cultural and societal contexts are distinguished. In a second step hallways and waiting rooms in government offices are investigated in terms of the territorial allotments and demarcations imposed by bureaucratic power. These rooms and public spaces are considered as both sources of and repositories for the waiting clients’ emotional responses. This then leads to a phenomenological analysis of empirical situations of waiting as investigated through participatory observation in various administrative government offices in Berlin. Here interest centers on the situational negotiations and impression management of the actors as well as on the emotional coloring of waiting by the uncertain nature of its outcome.     

Exploring the underpinnings of impaired strategic decision-making under stress

The present study sought to examine the underpinnings of impaired strategic decision-making under stress. In contrast to previous laboratory-based research, we conducted a quasi-experiment in a real life stress situation. Specifically, we used the beauty contest game and compared the performance of a group of participants who were exposed to a real-life stressor (waiting to attend an exam at a university class) with a control group of participants who were not exposed to stress (waiting to attend a regular lecture at a university class). Furthermore, about half of the participants were instructed to write down what they believed another participant had assumed the average number in the beauty contest game to be and which target number she (or he) had chosen accordingly. The results showed that stress impaired strategic reasoning in the beauty contest game. Importantly, even when only including participants who understood the rules of the game in the analyses, stress still increased the numbers chosen in the beauty contest. Furthermore, we found that participants in the stress condition were significantly less likely to base their chosen number on their belief about other players’ choices. Hence, stress not only impairs understanding of the math behind the beauty contest game but also the degree of strategizing per se.     

Image concerns in pledges to give blood: Evidence from a field experiment

We use a field experiment to study how social image concerns affect a commonly used strategy to attract new donors: pledges to engage in a charitable activity. While waiting for their appointment, visitors to a local government office are offered sign-ups for blood donations in a crowded waiting room. We randomly vary the visibility of the pledge to donate and the organization for which blood donations are solicited (charitable vs. commercial). Our setting provides natural variation in who observes the pledge. We do not find that visibility increases pledges to donate. Exploring heterogeneity in treatment effects, we find that visibility increases pledges when participants are observed by friends or family. Almost all subjects renege on their pledge.     

Designing centralized waiting lists for attachment to a primary care provider: Considerations from a logic analysis

Access to a regular primary care provider is essential to quality care. In Canada, where 15 % of patients are unattached (i.e., without a regular provider), centralized waiting lists (CWLs) help attach patients to a primary care provider (family physician or nurse practitioner). Previous studies reveal mechanisms needed for CWLs to work, but focus mostly on CWLs for specialized health care. We aim to better understand how to design CWLs for unattached patients in primary care.In this study, a logic analysis compares empirical evidence from a qualitative case study of CWLs for unattached patients in seven Canadian provinces to programme theory derived from a realist review on CWLs. Data is analyzed using context-intervention-mechanism-outcome configurations.Results identify mechanisms involved in three components of CWL design: patient registration, patient prioritization, and patient assignment to a provider for attachment. CWL programme theory is revised to integrate mechanisms specific to primary care, where patients, rather than referring providers, are responsible for registering on the CWL, where prioritization must consider a broad range of conditions and characteristics, and where long-term acceptability of attachment is important. The study provides new insight into mechanisms that enable CWLs for unattached patients to work.     

“The clock has been ticking,the calendar pages turning,and we are still waiting”: Infertile couples' encounter with time in the adoption waiting period

In this paper, the authors draw from sociological explorations of time and narrative theory to interpret the problem that time posed for 37 infertile couples waiting for a child to adopt. We also address their emotional and behavioral responses to their problematic encounter with time. The adoption waiting period can be usefully conceived of as a: a) temporal irregularity in social life; b) temporally unmarked transitional stage in the passage to parenthood; and as a c) special kind of social construction and product of the imagination. Confronting empty time, waiting couples humanized time spent in waiting and maintained hope by creating a temporal framework for the waiting period. They established a timeline, plotted the end of the wait, and created a rhythm for the duration of the wait. Short-waiting couples were able to maintain a sense of making progress toward their goal of a child. Long-waiting couples increasingly felt as if they were standing still or moving away from their goal. The findings contribute to the understanding of temporality in infertile couples and affirm the uncertainty and discomfort that the lack of temporal order can engender.The study described here, The transition to parenthood of infertile couples, is supported by Grant #NRO1707 from the National Center for Nursing Research, National Institutes of Health, 1988–1993. The authors thank the QS reviewers for their helpful critique of an earlier draft of this paper.     

Open Days Making Family Therapy Accessible in Working Class Suburbs

This paper describes the development of a project dealing with the problems of offering therapy in a context of long waiting lists and high levels of child abuse and violence. The project involved the provision of an “Open Day” where clients could gain access to therapists for a “one-off” consultation within one week of referral. The paper evaluates the results of the project and explores some further implications for therapy.     

How Many Highly Skilled Foreign-Born are Waiting in Line for U.S. Legal Permanent Residence?1

While the United States welcomes foreign-born students and trainees and, less warmly, temporary workers such as H-1B visa holders, it places an array of requirements, obstacles, and delays upon persons who would like to make the U.S. their permanent home. The number of people in the queue for legal permanent residence (LPR) is, however, difficult to ascertain. This paper estimates the number of highly skilled foreign-born persons waiting for LPR via the three main employment-based categories, separately by whether they are living in the United States or abroad, as well as the number of family members. We find that as of the end of FY 2006 there were about half a million employment-based principals awaiting LPR in the United States, together with over half a million family members, plus over 125 thousand principals and family members waiting abroad. These numbers dwarf the visas available annually – 120,120 plus any not used in the family preferences – suggesting that the long delays in gaining legal permanent residence are a visa number problem, not an administrative processing problem, as many believe. The backlog thus cannot be eliminated without a large change in public policy. The delay in gaining legal permanent residence could contribute to the decision of many highly skilled foreign-born to leave the United States.     

Public good and private good valuation for waiting time reduction: a laboratory study

In a laboratory experiment, subjects were endowed with money and waiting time. Preferences for waiting time reduction were elicited with salient rewards both as a private good and as a public good. The allocations of the public good that were theoretically predicted by the Nash equilibrium and the Lindahl equilibrium, respectively, were computed from the individual private good valuations and compared with the subjects?? actual contributions. We found a significant positive correlation between private good valuations in terms of willingness-to-pay and public good valuations in terms of voluntary contributions. Group contributions to public waiting time reduction significantly exceeded the non-cooperative prediction and were close to the socially optimal level. However, for a majority of subjects, the Lindahl equilibrium was not able to predict the observed contributions.     

The perception of pleasantness in a product of collective use: the bus shelter

This article presents a study on the identification of a setting whose arrangement of attributes could lead to the perception of pleasantness of a bus shelter: a product that should welcome people while waiting for the bus. Two different bus shelters typologies in the city of Porto Alegre, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, were evaluated, where four attributes were under consideration. The relation between the shelters subject of the study and the surroundings was significant for defining the attributes. The setting with curve shaped cover, bench, rear wall, and surrounding vegetation was considered the most pleasant one. The seats and the rear wall were associated with the practical function of the product while the curve shaped cover and the surrounding vegetation were associated with the aesthetical function according to the participant users.     

Chuck and Pierre at the Welfare Office1

After an ethnographic vignette that encapsulates the typical trajectory of an applicant to welfare benefits observed during a year of collaborative fieldwork, this brief essay will put to work Tilly’s notion of “invisible elbow” and Bourdieu’s understanding of waiting as a strategy of power in order to clarify the cultural dynamics of a welfare waiting room in the age of neoliberalism.     

The Impact of Assessment Procedures on the Relationship between Paper and Pencil and Behavioral Indicators of Social Skill

This study investigated the relationship between paper and pencil measures and molecular behavioral indicators of social skills in three widely used assessment options. A total of 221 students engaged in either a get acquainted or role play interaction, in which they were given instructions and knew they were being observed. A third group engaged in a waiting period interaction, in which they were given no instructions to interact and had no knowledge of being observed. Results showed that subjects in the get acquainted and role play situations scored higher on several measures of social skills than those in the waiting period situation. In addition, there was most variability in the measures of social skills in the waiting period situation. In general, trait measures exhibited poor correspondence with behavioral measures of social skills in all situations. However, state paper and pencil measures of social skills exhibited strong correspondence with behaviors in the waiting period, but not in the get acquainted or role play situations. Implications for the assessment of social communication skills through commonly used assessment procedures are discussed.     

Singlehood,Waiting, and the Sociology of Time1

This article explores how a temporal analysis of singlehood can contribute both to new conceptualizations of singlehood as well as to the study of social time. Prevalent interpretations of waiting single women offer a useful case study as they highlight the temporal organization of social life. Waiting is examined as an interactive setting representing and producing societal symbols, timetables, and collective schedules. Furthermore, this particular form of waiting is mostly featured as an unexpected delay and, accordingly, strengthens the widespread understanding of singlehood as a temporary and transitory life phase. Based on a content analysis, this article seeks to theorize some of the temporal aspects of singlehood, analyze its discursive implications, and study how it reflects and structures dominant discourses of family and social life.     

Work,Refuge, Transit: An Emerging Pattern of Irregular Immigration South and East of the Mediterranean

Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEM) countries have recently turned into receivers of migrants, but they have neither the institutions nor the policies that would allow them to integrate migrants. Therefore, most migrants in SEM countries found themselves in irregular situation. Using a variety of statistical sources, official and non‐official, the article establishes that out of 5.6 million immigrants living in SEM countries in the mid‐2000s, a minimum of 3.6 would be in irregular situation. They belong to three categories: approximately 2 million migrant workers attracted by SEM labour markets where they are employed in the informal sector with no work permit, 1.5 million de facto refugees who cannot obtain the status of refugee and are waiting for resettlement in a third country or return to their homes, and less than 200,000 transit migrants initially bound for Europe, which they are unable to reach for lack of visa. While their reasons to be stranded in the SEM differ, these three categories share the same vulnerable conditions, with no legal access to work, services, or protection.