Heather Menzies

Janice Newson

No Time to Think Academics' life in the globally wired university

Keywords: academics, creativity, global economy, on-line technologies, pace, temporal order

This article reports on a study of how Canadian academics use on-line technologies to deal with increasing demands and time pressures. The results suggest that, in struggling to manage conflicting organizational and temporal priorities, academics are adopting practices to manage these conflicts which adversely affect the quality and content of their teaching and research. Moreover, these changes in practice are integral to reconstituting the temporal and organizational order of universities so they can function as nodes in the wired global economy. Academics are urged to vigorously champion temporal practices which allow time for reflection and the 'deep presence' required for creative intellectual work.

Introduction

The 'ivory tower' has been breached. The university is no longer a refuge from the hustle-bustle, a slow zone for reading and reflection, critical dialogue and knowledge creation -to the extent that it ever was. Some research we have carried out not only confirms what others have documented about academics' increasingly stressed state, as Canadian universities have been restructured and have become nodes in the wired knowledge economy [START_REF] Kinman | Working to the Limit[END_REF][START_REF] Kinman | Working to the Limit[END_REF]. It also develops the proposition posed by [START_REF] Ylijoki | Conflicting Time Perspectives in Academic Work[END_REF] that the 'conflicts in temporal perspectives' (e.g. between 'scheduled time' and 'time-less' creative time) 'are closely linked' to profound organizational shifts in universities. These shifts have been associated with concepts such as 'value for money' [START_REF] Cassin | The Professoriate and the Market-driven University: Transforming the Control of Work in the Academy[END_REF], 'managerialism' [START_REF] Newson | The Decline of Faculty Influence: Confronting the Effects of the Corporate Agenda[END_REF], 'the knowledge industry' [START_REF] Polster | From Public Resource to Industry's Instrument: Redefining and Reshaping the Production of Knowledge in Canada's Universities[END_REF], 'academic capitalism' [START_REF] Slaughter | Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University[END_REF], 'the new public management,' and the transformation of relatively autonomous, self-governing academics into 'managed professionals' and 'state-subsidized entrepreneurs' conforming to the 'fast-zone' tempo of business and politics [START_REF] Pels | Unhastening Science[END_REF].

Our research not only sheds a light on these linkages and how the changed temporal and structural order of the university campus is accompanied by significant changes in academics' practices. It shows the impact this is having on the quality of teaching and research. The research also reveals how academics are themselves participating in these changes, thus helping to co-produce, through changed temporal and organizational practices, a new 'social in motion' [START_REF] Thrift | Thick Time[END_REF]) and a different 'metaphysics of being' [START_REF] Adam | Minding Futures[END_REF]. Yet, having identified their participation and agency, the research also explores the struggle many academics seem to be engaged in over the conflicting temporal and organizational priorities within the wired university environment, and some of the personal initiatives they are taking in response. We end with some thoughts on negotiating personal, organizational and public policies to support, and even renew, the academic vocation and the university as an institution of public culture.

The research involved a detailed survey of academics' time and the quality of their work life mapped against their use of new information technologies in a context of significant shifts in universities' funding arrangements. Follow-up interviews probed some of the paradoxes and contradictions the survey results uncovered -for example, that while most respondents felt better connected, especially nationally and globally, many also felt more isolated; and while considering themselves more productive, many also felt that they were becoming less creative. The research has completed its pilot-project phase, with around 80 questionnaires completed and 20 follow-up interviews done. The results are rich and compelling enough that we want to give them broad exposure here.

The Social-organizational Context: Retrenching, Retro-fitting and Repositioning 1

Over the past two and a half decades, in response to successive shifts in government funding policies, Canadian universities have significantly shifted from being the public serving, collegially governed, nation-building institutions that emerged during the post-Second World War period of expansion. 2 They have reinvented themselves as institutions more integrated with the global knowledge economy. This reinvention has not happened all at once. It has not only been cumulative. Each layer of adaptation and each new initiative has rested upon and interwoven with others, with mutually reinforcing effects.

The retrenchment layer began around the mid-1970s, as federal and provincial levels of government gradually reduced their funding for education, health and social programmes. At first, universities responded to funding shortfalls as short-term fiscal crises which had to be handled until things returned to 'normal'. Over time, it became evident that 'under-funding' had become the new reality.

As fiscal pressures increased, so too internal tensions were exacerbated. The task of controlling and overseeing the budget became a determining feature of university decision making. Correspondingly, the role and tasks of 'management' began to occupy the institutional centre while the role of collegial governance through academic bodies such as faculty councils and senates became increasingly marginalized. 3 In the early 1980s, a powerful idea began to infuse higher education policy that for universities to survive fiscal retrenchment, they needed to reposition themselves to secure new sources of funding. Organizations such as the newly founded Corporate-Higher Education Forum, the Canadian Manufacturers Association and the (now defunct) Science Council of Canada argued that mutually beneficial partnerships between universities and private sector corporations would rescue universities from their funding woes while enabling Canadian corporations greater access to cutting-edge science to advance their competitive position in the globalizing economy. In response, Canadian universities began to orient their programmatic objectives toward the economic and political priorities of external agents who could provide additional, albeit marginal, sources of funding.

Over the course of the 1980s and early 1990s, a range of changes in universities' institutional practices 'retro-fitted' them for their new and expanding role in promoting economic innovation and competitiveness. On the one hand, the expanding managerially oriented apparatus of decision making and universitycorporate linking arrangements reinforced each other and wove together. As government funding became less reliable, universities needed to exist within new and constantly fluctuating budgetary configurations. For this, universities developed an extensive tool-kit of performance-based measures and systems for monitoring and supervising the activities of academics individually and collectively. Cost-efficiency, productivity and accountability to real or putative external paymasters in terms of quantifiable, business-like 'deliverables' became the predominant criteria for assessing and making decisions about 'worthwhile' expenditures of money, time and energy. On the other hand, universities needed to develop tools for attracting and managing contractual partnerships with corporate clients. For this, mission statements, strategic plans, and advertising campaigns became the institutional instruments for shaping and representing their research and teaching priorities as attuned to the needs and objectives of these potential funders. By the mid-1990s, universities had made the necessary cultural shifts and developed the institutional capacity to function as more permeable, multi-purpose, and networked knowledge businesses. 4 Since 1996, the federal government has infused a massive jolt of research funding through the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Canada Research Chairs programmes -$4.5 billion -into these newly emerging 'knowledge businesses' in ways that push them further down a market-focused path. 5 Threequarters of this funding must secure 60 per cent matched funding from research partners who, more often than not, are private sector corporations. Added to this, in 2002 the presidents of Canada's universities signed an agreement with government committing their universities and researchers to doubling their research productivity and tripling their commercialization performance by 2010.

Finally, the substantial restructuring that has occurred in Canadian universities since the 1980s has been significantly enabled by information and communications technologies (ICTs). These have been a key element in 'retro-fitting' universities to function as externally guided, strategically minded, productiondriven knowledge businesses. As our research confirms, these technologies range from specific tools, such as instructional software, listservs and chatdiscussion groups for students, to an Internet-connected networked environment allowing global collaboration among academics and new non-academic partners, web-based teaching and administration and comprehensive data collection to serve both on-campus and off-campus reporting requirements. It is not surprising that the increasingly networked, boundary-crossing university would so rapidly embrace these technologies as essential 'tools of the trade' for doing academic work. It also makes sense that, in keeping with prevailing policy rhetoric, many advocates of technology-mediated teaching, global connectivity and 'the wired campus' have promoted the turn to technology, not only as the 'cutting edge' of higher education in a fast-paced globalizing world but also as an efficient way of responding to the many opportunities and demands that confront universities and their faculty.

The Findings

Our research not only confirmed academics' widespread use of the ICTs in everything from research, preparing and teaching classes, to administration (largely self-serve now since the cutbacks in support staff) and communicating with students, friends and colleagues locally and internationally. 6 Academics seem to have adapted to the medium to the point that it is fast becoming a comfort zone, though fraught with anxiety and contradictions.

Clearly, they like many things about the new university environment. It's increasing the exposure of their work, especially to national and international colleagues (nearly 60% reported this, the women more so than men). It's increased their collaborative projects not just a little but a lot. 7 They also feel that it's made them more productive (55% of women and 42% of men reported this). And it's increased their connections with students, colleagues and friends, seemingly without jeopardizing their sense of being in touch with them; although there's ambivalence here and even a hint of contradiction. It's also increased their sense of being part of university decision making, though just as many indicated that this had decreased. On the other hand, 51 per cent said that it had not allowed them to have more control over their work schedule. Sixty per cent (71% of the women, 50% of men) feel that it's increased expectations of what they can accomplish. Nearly 40 per cent (45% of the women, 31% of men) reported feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of opportunities to which the new environment exposed them. And 43 per cent (40% of women, 47% of men) reported that it uses up their time solving technological problems.

It is clear, then, that there are many things academics do not like about the new environment. In the most decisive response in the questionnaire, 69 per cent said that they do not thrive on the time pressures and fast pace of it (56% of women indicated this, compared to 81% of the men). Not surprisingly, the respondents reported many of the most common symptoms of stress, from sleep deprivation (53% of women, compared to 42% of men) to new allergies or food sensitivities (26% of women, compared to 6% of men), short-term memory loss (45% of women compared to 25% of men) and problems concentrating (37% of women compared to 19% of men). Interestingly, while the women also reported more stress in personal relationships, from strained relations with family (26% compared to 11% of men) to strained relations with colleagues (34% of women compared to 19% of men), the men reported far more incidents of road rage and its variants (22% of men, versus 5% of women).

Stress is an important personal and public-health issue in itself, and deserves urgent attention. However, echoing others' speculations, we see it here as a symptom of some fundamental contradictions involved in the pursuit of efficiency through time compression [START_REF] Sabelis | Hidden Causes for Unknown Losses[END_REF]. In particular, we explore this through two related themes: first, academics' ability to be present with themselves and others and, second, their ability to be socially and intellectually engaged in a way that will yield original knowledge, rather than a higher publication rate.

Presence and engagement

A number of contradictory findings led us to focus on this aspect of academics' existence. For example, despite reporting enhanced connectivity and collabora-tion with others, 34 per cent of our respondents reported feeling isolated (40% of women compared to 22% of men). We specifically asked whether they 'are able to stay centred in yourself, to know what matters to you' in a wired environment where they are increasingly accountable to multiple outside and corporate-linked actors and subject to their demands and pressures. The results were equivocal. Thirty-four per cent said that this ability had decreased, 29 per cent felt it had increased and 37 per cent said it hadn't changed. On the other hand, a startling 65 per cent reported that their ability to follow through on informal, personal/professional commitments (possibly off line and off campus in the community) had decreased. As well, 57 per cent said that they felt like they were 'reacting, not acting on my own initiative' on occasion, and another 19 per cent said they felt this way frequently. Forty-five per cent reported feeling anxious about keeping up with work demands and expectations frequently, and another 12 per cent reported feeling this way chronically. In a similar vein, 47 per cent feel as though they're fighting to keep control on occasion and another 20 per cent feel that way frequently. Moreover, 58 per cent reported that their ability to stay focused on their work had decreased, and 42 per cent reported that their susceptibility to being distracted by all the information and communication coming at them had increased.

These findings suggest a significant degree of 'temporal alienation,' which Ronald [START_REF] Purser | Contested Presents: Critical Perspectives on "Real-time" Management[END_REF] defines as a 'loss of situated presence in time' (p. 163), and which we interpret here to mean presence with others and to one's self.

A professor of organizational behaviour at one university reported having 'fewer and fewer coffees with colleagues who are right in the building and . . .

[now] more short conversations with people I would never have contacted before. So I'm trading one for the other.' 'Quantity for quality?' she was asked. 'Yes', she said. 'It is very superficial and there is no real depth of communication, but if it weren't for that there would be none.' She went on to say that she's losing her political consciousness because 'there's no one to push me and develop me . . . and say, that's good as far as it goes, and have you thought about . . .?' As a result, she said, 'I have less confidence in my own analysis . . . It's almost back to those pre-consciousness days. We are living in that isolation and not having any validation.'

A professor of English at another university misses the long, late-night phone calls she used to have with close colleagues and friends now that everyone has answering machines and communicates through email: 'there's the absence of voice and all of the lateral thinking that goes on when you actually have a real conversation, instead of just a focused interchange . . . the actual isolation from people in a local community has increased enormously'.

A professor of occupational therapy at yet another university echoed this theme: 'I feel very connected to people I don't expect to see. But what I do find is that people I expect to see, like my colleagues who are in the same building, I may not see.' When she does see them is at meetings. But then, 'I find I'm often, now, lately quiet in meetings, when I'm not by nature quiet. And I think part of it is because I'm now with people who I only see at meetings! And so, it's like meeting quasi-strangers . . .'

A professor of social work at the same university worried that as she and others become habituated to email communication, a more superficial level of social engagement can become the cultural norm: 'It is a stilted dialogue.' She was asked, 'does it move you away from spontaneity?'. 'Yes, and that's not all. Sometimes we think with our mouths. But on the other hand, we're so pressured to give a response that we type up something and send it out because of the pressure for a response, so that doesn't improve it.'

Elsewhere, a professor of film studies lamented that this pressure serves as an alibi for non-presence: 'It is easier if everyone is anonymous. It makes it easier to refuse social interaction. It makes it easier to turn people into things and to just not be creating a humanistic environment.' This has particularly acute implications for women, she thinks. 'We women have always been the embodied subject and technology seems to be erasing our presence in the world . . . That's how we exist -as an embodied subject. And I feel technology is just damaging our sense of authenticity that way -authentic subjects who interact.'

A professor of engineering at yet another university likes how the 'log-on classroom' allows shy students to at least start opening up. However, he also quickly invites students to his office once they've broached something substantial: 'With email, you can't read the person's mode of thinking. So I say, let's have an appointment.' Face to face, he continued, 'I can see if they are communicating with me, if they understand what I am saying, if the point is getting across, if the problem or issue is worth elaborating more. I can't see that through email.' Finally, he added, his racial and ethnic-minority status makes him sensitive to being misunderstood. He feels free to be more fully himself when he's face to face, likes the freedom of being more spontaneous, he said.

A professor of political science who tele-conferenced into committee meetings for the years he was on a satellite campus ended up feeling that his participation was largely a sham. He was staying 'briefed' he said, but not engaged meaningfully in decision making. As colleagues told him when he returned to the main campus, 'you weren't here; you weren't around'.

The themes of elided presence and of perceived loss of spontaneous, sustained dialogue with people to whom you can be real warrant further study and discussion in themselves. They also bear watching for what they predict about a possible shift in academics' sense of themselves and their work, a theme we have framed as a possible shift from knowledge creation to knowledge production, more narrowly focused on gathering data, processing information and packaging it as knowledge, with more business-like, instrumental action crowd-ing out the time and pace that the mental and social habits of reflection and critical dialogue require.

Knowledge creation, or production?

Academics' ability to stay focused and their susceptibility to being distracted, discussed earlier, clearly affect the ability to think critically and create original knowledge. The survey also included questions probing intellectual engagement. For example, an overwhelming majority (65% of both men and women) reported that they are not reading as deeply and reflectively as they used to or as they want to. Nor are they reading as broadly and inter-disciplinarily as they used to or as they'd like to. Instead, they are scanning, mining sources for selective bits of information. ('I am reading for specific information . . .'). In response to suggestive statements such as 'I don't have enough free chunks of time in which to think', 51 per cent indicated that they did not, reinforcing one of the significant findings of an Icelandic study of academics, which documented a loss of what they called 'timeless time' for research and reflection (Ylijoke and Mantyla, 2003). As well, a significant minority (28%) identified with the phrase, 'I can't slow down enough to be in touch with myself and my innermost thoughts' and, in the same proportion, the statement 'Everybody I know is too busy to just talk'. As a kind of summing up, they were asked to consider Marcel Proust's lament for a quality of being in time that allowed for deep memory association. Forty-one per cent said that their capacity for this level of original/creative thinking had decreased, and fifteen per cent, that it had increased.

Overall, we think that the findings on this theme reinforce Ida Sabelis's (2002) concerns about time compression: not just what gets left out, including the time for reflection and dialogue, but also how difficult it is to decompress, thus decreasing what she considers to be the most important aspect of communication: 'the expression and exchange of meaning' (p. 93). The interview comments flesh out these concerns, and their implications for the future of learning and knowledge creation.

A professor of English described sitting at her computer with several windows open at once and simultaneously having new emails signalling on her screen: 'So you have all these things going on, and in my mind it is almost the perfect match for attention deficit disorder . . . By the time you are a couple of hours into your email you have lost it. You're skimming, fragmenting . . .Your life is so fragmented. All these emails are coming -"get back to me before my meeting".'

The professor of occupational therapy quoted earlier described having been involved in an international book project that was three years behind schedule: 'We tried to do a lot of it by email, and sending our chapters to each other and talking about it, but we didn't put real fire into this book until I went over to Australia for six weeks. So it's a really interesting illustration, because email made it possible for us to work together, but somehow it didn't help us to get the work done.'

A professor of mathematics and statistics at yet another university commented on how the fast-paced productivity push toward getting the next grant; publishing the next paper drives out the time for creating a social space-time of shared learning and knowing:

We are becoming loners . . . We are creating in our offices . . . because we have more access to information and we have tools to do things faster, but we are not sharing with other people to become more sociable. That is the contradiction . . . For example, it used to be they had a weekly seminar and every professor would come and show what they were doing. Everyone commented. This has stopped. There are no weekly seminars anymore because people have said that they don't have time . . . [But now, she finds] The big questions aren't being asked anymore.

I feel that we are giving students the wrong idea about what learning is. I think the students are now coming to believe it's just reading a lot, being familiar with a lot of information, trying to get information somehow. We are not teaching them to use that information, to process it and then to create something. I think that in this sense, that is what they call passivity. If they are passive, they don't create.

A biology professor at another university echoed this concern, worrying at how much both how teachers teach and how students do their work has devolved into 'modules' that students alternately ingest or cut and paste into assignments. 'But learning isn't about the details of what you are learning, I think. It is more fundamental . . . The important point ultimately is just to get the students to think. It doesn't matter, it could be biology. Thinking about how biology works as opposed to knowing little bits about biology.'

The professor of engineering quoted earlier talked about how important faceto-face dialogue is to convey to students that one is always creating knowledge afresh, not just replicating it prescriptively. For example, he said, 'how to deal with a design problem on line. In many ways it is trial and error. Even defining the problem, it isn't really an absolute. We say the structure could be very rigid or very flexible. We can solve the problem this way, or this way. You know what I mean? . . . The problem is open-ended. If it is closed, innovation is meaningless.'

Interpreting the findings through the lens of temporality

Clearly, the changes affecting universities through the combined effects of retrenching, repositioning plus retro-fitting have included a radical change in temporality. From the evidence of the survey and the follow-up interviews, this change, while linked to the organizational structures and related routines of universities, has resonated through the routines and rhythms of academics' daily life. To grasp its importance, particularly with a view to developing an agenda for research and policy action, it's useful to identify some of the particular ways in which this cultural transformation is manifest, for instance through temporal frameworks, through temporal-social practices and through the shaping power of temporal rhythms.

Dick [START_REF] Pels | Unhastening Science[END_REF] provides a useful overview of the shifting temporal coordinates on which universities now run. In what he calls the 'social triangle' of discourse in the public sphere, he locates the university in the 'culture/science' node (p. 21). He argues that its reputedly tempered pace traditionally had a mitigating influence on the otherwise faster time frames and pace associated with business and the market economy, occupying the second apex of his triangle, and on politics/the state, occupying the third. Now, however, the macro influences of globalization and the 'fast' subject positions of the new economy (Thrift, 2000b: 674) combined with 'the imperatives of academic entrepreneurship and self-generated funding' -features of a repositioned and retro-fitted academia -are breaking universities out of their own largely autonomous temporal framework, and integrating them with the faster and more presentminded ones associated with business and politics. As our research documented, this is clearly happening, with ICT networks and their users playing a decisively enabling role. Moreover, academics are adapting to the shorter time lines and new 'infrastructural routines' associated with the wired campus, often willingly and for their own self-interest.

Our research also sheds light on the changing temporal practices associated with the networked, on-line campus. Not only is time compressed. It is fragmented and then recombined as many-layered moments through multi-tasking. As discussed, this has consequences, ranging from the suppression of timeconsuming activities like reflection and memory [START_REF] Sabelis | Hidden Causes for Unknown Losses[END_REF] to temporal alienation. While [START_REF] Purser | Contested Presents: Critical Perspectives on "Real-time" Management[END_REF] links this explicitly to a shifting temporality, arguing that the loss of presence happens as people 'embody' and 'obey' the mechanical or digital rhythms of clock time, Nigel [START_REF] Thrift | Thick Time[END_REF] perceptively adds a layer of useful complexity by discussing how temporal practices are diffused more broadly through organizational innovations like productivity measures and the application of logistical reasoning to expediting the flow of goods and information.

Instrumental rationality, of which logistical reasoning is a variation, essentially 'takes the world largely as given and attempts to find means of living ever more productively and efficiently in it' (Hassan, 2003: 229). It's thinking focused on the how of things rather than the why. It trades in data (givens) over the more experience-based stuff of interpretation. While historical critiques of instrumentalism, associated with the Frankfurt School for example, didn't speculate about the role of time [START_REF] Hassan | Network Time and the New Knowledge Epoch[END_REF], we would argue that it runs on clock time: not only an externally determined and regulated time, and a time of isolated moments, of instrumental observation, of data analysis and so on, but a time that can be optimized by standardized processes and speed-up, driven by others. Its service to business and industry has been one of the hallmarks of capitalism, epitomized in the phrase 'time is money'. As it was then, in the days of factory-like rational bureaucracies, so it likely will be now as global digital networks embody instrumental reason in their systems and software, and extend the efficiencies of particular managerially oriented innovations throughout public life. 'Results' and 'expected outcomes' are achieved more quickly. Performance and delivery are made faster, no matter what the 'deliverables' might be, be they student job placements or time-sensitive research reports.

Our research yielded shifts in thinking, from interpretation toward instrumental productivity. Our academic respondents have shifted a lot of their focus to self-serve administration, fund raising, report writing and technology problem solving, and their social interactions have shifted from spontaneous conversations with local well-known colleagues to brief, focused, task-specific exchanges with many near-strangers.

If instrumental reasoning is the grammar of a new temporal systems order, the bits and bytes of digital communication are its language. The relevant point here is that it is a language of standardized abstractions delinked from the particulars of place and people, their embodied experience, stories and memories. And while it still takes time for people to key this language onto the screen, or click and drag it from one file to another, the abstract immateriality of the medium means that its scope for embodied presence is minimal and its capacity to invoke the rhythms of dialogue, nil. Partly, this is due to another temporal aspect of the wired university environment, namely that communication is instant. This is the novelty of 'real time', making digital networks hyper-efficient from an instrumental point of view but potentially dangerous from a human and cultural point of view. As Ronald [START_REF] Purser | Contested Presents: Critical Perspectives on "Real-time" Management[END_REF] argues, in its deft collapse of action and reaction through simultaneity, the real time on which digital networks operate models a reality characterized by Hannah Arendt as the 'means-ends paradigm ' (p. 156). This view of what's real is focused entirely on bringing about the desired result. Purser argues that time of any duration longer than an instant is immaterial, an obstacle to be removed. Yet the effect of this -what one interview subject referred to simply as 'the pressure to respond' -is for people to 'fall back on learned routines and unconscious cognitive biases', in short to 'perform'. In Thrift's (2000b) characterization of life in the globalized new economy, where everything is a 'blur of change', a permanent state of 'emergency bordering on chaos' and every advantage 'temporary', the watchword is 'performability'. This means, as the word suggests, performance to script and specifications, delivering on prescribed deliverables and maximizing whatever advantage is available now, now, now. For academics, this implies getting grants, producing knowledge, and accumulating publications, patents and other results -not necessarily authentic original knowledge, oriented to the public good.

Moreover, this performabilty dynamic can be habit forming, and can fundamentally shape the consciousness, or habitus, 8 of all participants, including academics. For example, nearly 30 per cent of our respondents affirmed, 'I can't slow down enough to be in touch with my innermost thoughts', displaying Sabelis's concerns about the inability of chronically time-compressed people to decompress and, as [START_REF] Pels | Unhastening Science[END_REF] recommends, to generally 'decelerate' or 'unhasten'. Academics, like others 'repositioned' as actors in a globally networked world, can 'become entrained to the rhythms of the dominant economic order' (Purser, 2002: 157) and its quick-click, real-time beat.

It's true to the point of being a truism that we are all rooted in the 'rhythmicity of the cosmos, the seasons and the times of the body' (Sabelis, 2002: 11). Nonetheless, rhythms based on social convention have so eclipsed natural rhythms, particularly in the 'socially integrative role' which rhythms play, that many primal rhythms are residual to the point of being vestigial. Moreover, as the staccato, now-this, now-this beat of real time augments the metronomic, externally regulated beat of regulated and scheduled time and permeates the social environment, there is a danger that the sense of rootedness in anything embodied and physical will become that much weaker. Accordingly, the social habits, the temporal practices and social rhythms associated with embodied reflection, memory and dialogue may wither as well.

The academics we interviewed are wise, therefore, to ask what kind of temporal and cultural practices they're modelling to their students as they practise the processing of information rather than its interpretation through dialogue, and performance-to-specifications ways of thinking rather than open-ended innovation. As Helga [START_REF] Nowotny | Time: The Modern and Postmodern Experience[END_REF] notes, 'new knowledge arises under changed conditions of creation and in changed structures of organization' (p. 87).

The English professor quoted earlier commented on the cost-efficient shift from face-to-face seminar discussions to electronic chat groups at her centre-ofexcellence university: I worry about the computer and the screen and the absence of embodiment, [and] that the people who are going to make it through the system and arrive at decisionmaking places are people who have an absolute disdain for the human conditionfor the human body! Does one want people in policy making, making decisions about one's health . . . who are so immune to, or who need so little inter-human action?

A professor of biology makes a point of keeping his office and lab doors open, and frequenting the public spaces across the campus: 'I think the students need to see you as a real person, someone who is in a lab or coffee room or in the halls . . . Students need to realize that academia is a part of society. It is part of what our lives are about,' he said. In short, it seems that he's modelling what Barbara [START_REF] Adam | Timewatch: The Social Analysis of Time[END_REF] calls being 'an implicated participant' in the world (p. 141). In turn, by getting students talking, and having some continuity with them from one course to another, he says, they get 'a sense that they matter . . . By [my] being interested in what they have to say, being interested in their ideas, they ask questions, even if they are afraid they are what they call "stupid questions".'

The professor of engineering at the same university quoted earlier also takes time to meet and talk with students. He does this to model being open-ended in one's thinking as an engineer. 'Doubt,' he said, 'you can't make that electronic.' A professor of film studies at the University of Regina talked about the importance of modelling speaking with one's own particular voice as a way of encouraging students to find their own. 'The way the new generation goes about doing research, with absolutely no depth,' she said. 'The kind of things they will search out on the internet -switching from this to that. But there's just no depth to their sense of what you do with all this material. How do you focus?' And so she tells students to come see her, where she helps them find that focus by getting them talking and, by listening to them stumbling to express themselves, helping them realize that 'what you have to say is important'.

Conclusion: Implications for Research and Policy

Perhaps the biggest lesson to be drawn from our analysis of the changed temporality of academics and their work is the importance of time to understanding/ analysing organizational and social change. Not only is the body a 'bio-political terrain' (Thrift 2000a: 46), but so also are organizations like universities, and the social environment in general, including the one in which research and policy debates take place. They are landscapes and timescapes rooted in bodies that remember and experience life through all their senses.

A second lesson is that the medium is the message. If the goal of the university in a democratic society is to affirm the importance of critical thinking, dialogue and original knowledge creation in academics and their students, then the debate about the changes in universities and academic work which we have described, and decision making on appropriate policy responses, must be broadly, democratically participatory, with all that this implies in temporal terms. As the interview comments suggest, academics who had chosen or gone along with on-line communication for practically everything are now choosing to set limits and, in returning to sustained face-to-face communication in, for example, brainstorming with students, are rediscovering the benefits of that attuned in-depth engagement. We might anticipate, therefore, that in an inclusive debate about the changing university environment, as academics and administrators take the time for face-to-face dialogue, they might more vigorously champion measures to uphold these temporal practices in organizational policy. Equally, as academics, personally and collectively, take the necessary steps to restore presence deep enough for reflective dialogue, they might discover a refreshed originality in their own work, which would inspire more people to read and talk about it.

Notes

1. An expanded discussion of this material can be found in [START_REF] Newson | The University on the Ground: Reflections on Canadian Experience[END_REF][START_REF] Newson | The Corporate Linked University: From Social Project to Market Force[END_REF]. 2. In the 1950s and 1960s, federal and provincial governments in Canada committed increasing levels of funding to expanding existing and new universities to serve two primary objectives: developing a highly skilled labour force to aid Canada's economic development and educating citizens to fulfil their democratic role in society. 3. George Keller's book, Academic Strategy (1984), was an influential intervention during this period, advocating a shift in universities from 'administration' to 'management'. Keller described the advantages of 'management' as being more assertive, fast acting, strategically oriented and externally focused than traditional university administration which took direction from the internal considerations and priorities of collegial bodies. 4. Claire Polster (University of Regina) coined this term. 5. Claire [START_REF] Polster | A Break from the Past: Impacts and Implications of the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Canada Research Chairs Initiative[END_REF] has written the definitive analysis of the CFI and CRC programmes and their implications for Canadian higher education. 6. And again, using individual tools such as email and listservs, web-based searches and course postings, but habitual use of the Internet-connected wired university environment for daily administrative routines to collaborative research and other projects with academic and non-academic partners around the country and around the world. 7. Here as elsewhere, there was a significant gender difference, with 37 per cent of women reporting 'a lot' compared to 22 per cent of the men. Generally, women's responses showed some of the most dramatic extremes, both embracing new benefits through ICTs and sensing the contradictions more acutely. See [START_REF] Menzies | Time, Stress and Intellectual Engagement in Academic Work: Exploring the Gender Difference[END_REF] for a more extensive gender analysis. 8. Drawing on both Bourdieu's original coining of the concept and Christopher [START_REF] Gosden | Social Being and Time[END_REF] modification of it, we consider habitus to be a fluid habitat for the mind and consciousness, a sort of 'sedimentation of past practice in the human organism so that it unconsciously guides future practice' (Gosden, 1979: 117).

TIME & SOCIETY16(1)

MENZIES & NEWSON: NO TIME TO THINK


Pablo Brañas-Garza

Lourdes Espinosa-Fernández

Rafael Serrano-Del-Rosal

Effects of Gender and Age on Retrospective Time Judgements

Keywords: ageing, continuous time, gender, retrospective

This study provides additional empirical evidence for research concerning the effects of gender and age on retrospective time judgements using data obtained from a Spanish database with more than 40,000 individual observations on time estimations. Statistical analyses were performed using the Levene F-test and the t-test of variances and means, respectively. The most important results of the study are as follows: (a) differences in time estimation in relation to gender largely depend on the age groups analysed, with greater differences observed in the younger age group; and (b) although there are some differences regarding age, they are related to certain age groups, particularly the youngest age group.

Introduction

Time is one of the important dimensions that controls our lives and the larger part of our behaviour. The ability to perceive and accurately estimate the passing of time is fundamental to adapting adequately to the environment which surrounds us [START_REF] Block | Human Aging and Duration Judgments: A Meta-analytic Review[END_REF][START_REF] Pouthas | Le Temps de la Conscience, la Conscience du Temps[END_REF].

The way in which subjects estimate time has become a key question in the literature. Time can be estimated either prospectively or retrospectively. In the first case, prior to beginning the task, individuals are aware that they have to pay attention to the passing of time. However, in retrospective situations, participants are unaware that they will be asked to judge the duration of a time period until after the fact. In each situation, time is estimated by means of different cognitive processes. In prospective situations, attention is directed at the passing of time, meaning that time is estimated by processing temporal information. In contrast, in retrospective situations, attention is directed at processing non-temporal information, and time estimation is therefore based on remembering the information processed during the estimation interval [START_REF] Zakay | The Evasive Art of Subjective Time Measurement: Some Methodological Dilemmas[END_REF].

Questions such as 'How long did your favourite TV programme last?', 'How long was your last meeting with your boss?' are examples of retrospective situations requiring time estimations. In these cases, the task not only involves an exercise in computation, but memory as well. Thus a question such as 'How long have you been waiting for the bus?' demands that at least three tasks be performed: calculating the arrival time or the 'starting point' (see A in Figure 1), calculating the time when the bus was caught or the 'ending point' (see B in Figure 1), and calculating the difference between both magnitudes.

The different skills used by people to estimate the passing of time will influence their behaviour in various facets of their lives. For example, many goods and services have a temporal component which highly influences the perception and thus the evaluation of the good. Take, for example, purchasing a book through a website. The delivery time of the item is a crucial ex ante variable which affects our decision to buy the book on one of the many online bookstores available on the web. And more importantly, once we have bought and received the book, it is our perception of the delivery time and not the delivery time itself which affects our decision to buy another book at the same bookstore or to switch to a different one. A similar line of argument applies, for example, when having dinner out. Our perception of the queuing time will affect our decision to have dinner out in the same restaurant again or to go to a differ- Think now of several people trying to schedule their weekend. Their arrangements might involve leisure time, household duties and other activities. Again, the way they organize their weekend activities, that is, which activities will be accomplished and which will be postponed, will largely depend on the perceived duration of similar activities in the past. Thus, we find that people with the same available time react in different ways depending on their perception of time. In fact, several individual temporal dimensions that are affected by one's ability to estimate the passing of time (e.g. scheduling, punctuality, time buffers etc.) have been identified in the literature (see Francis-Smythe and Robertson, 1999 for a review). Hence, an analysis of individual time judgement will be crucial for our understanding of the dimensions that shape individuals' 'Time Personality'.

In a review of the literature, we have found many studies that identify the variables that affect or influence the time estimation task. These variables refer to both aspects of a methodological type and those related to the characteristics of the person estimating time. Factors of the methodological type include, among others, the methods used to carry out estimations (production, verbal estimation, reproduction and/or comparison), 1 the paradigm used (prospective or retrospective), the duration of the interval that must be estimated and the type of interval (if it is either a 'hollow' interval or has stimulating content, or on the contrary, presents some kind of stimulus or requires that the subject carry out some type of task). As regards personal characteristics, variables such as age, sex, activity level, education, expectations, motivation or personality characteristics, among others, have all been shown to be important in estimating time (e.g. [START_REF] Eisler | Cross-cultural Differences in Time Perception: Comparasion of African Immigrants and Native Swedes[END_REF][START_REF] Angrilli | The Influence of Affective Factors on Time Perception[END_REF].

Given that there are a large number of variables that can affect the time estimation task, study results largely depend on the type and design of the study and the methodology employed (for a review see [START_REF] Marmaras | Factors Affecting Accuracy of Producing Time Intervals[END_REF][START_REF] Block | Prospective and Retrospective Duration Judgements: A Meta-analytic Review[END_REF]. This makes it difficult to extract conclusions from the different studies and even more so if they do not adequately describe the exact methods used [START_REF] Zakay | Time Estimation Methods, Do They Influence Prospective Duration Estimates?[END_REF][START_REF] Block | Human Aging and Duration Judgments: A Meta-analytic Review[END_REF].

Sex and age are two of the most commonly studied variables regarding time estimation. However, the results in relation to gender are quite confusing. Whereas some studies have found significant differences between men and women when carrying out different time estimation tasks (Bell, 1977;[START_REF] Delay | Time Estimation in Humans: Effects of Ambient Illumination and Sex[END_REF][START_REF] Rammsayer | Sex Differences in Time Perception[END_REF][START_REF] Eisler | Time Perception: Effects of Sex and Sound Intensity on Scales of Subjective Duration[END_REF][START_REF] Hancock | Estimation of Duration and Mental Workload at Different Time of Day by Males and Females[END_REF][START_REF] Espinosa-Fernández | Age-related Changes and Gender Differences in Time Estimation[END_REF], others have not [START_REF] Roecklein | Sex Differences in Time Estimation[END_REF][START_REF] Marmaras | Factors Affecting Accuracy of Producing Time Intervals[END_REF]. Where differences were found between men and women, the general result has been that men are more accurate and homogeneous in their estimations than women [START_REF] Block | Sex Differences in Duration Judgments: A Meta-analytic Review[END_REF].

Differences in time estimations have also been found with age. In a metaanalytic review [START_REF] Block | Human Aging and Duration Judgments: A Meta-analytic Review[END_REF] it was found that older adults gave larger verbal estimates and made shorter productions than younger adults, although they made comparable reproductions.

In this article, we study both effects jointly. Despite the potential interest of this type of study insofar as it could provide additional evidence for experiments examining these effects independently, little research has been done along these lines [START_REF] Block | Sex Differences in Duration Judgments: A Meta-analytic Review[END_REF]Espinosa-Fernandez et al., 2003). From the methodological standpoint, a retrospective paradigm and a verbal estimation method are used here. According to [START_REF] Brown | The Psychophysics of Retrospective and Prospective Timing[END_REF], the retrospective paradigm offers at least two advantages over the prospective paradigm:

1. The average time under the retrospective paradigm seems to be more clearly related to the manner in which we normally perceive time since we rarely keep a constant eye on the clock or count while we are doing a task.

According to these authors, retrospective procedures thus have a greater ecological validity. 2. Retrospective procedures can reveal the effects of variables which are not manifested in prospective methods, but which affect time measurements. The saying 'time flies when you're having fun' implies that there is a difference in our perception of the duration of an interval depending on whether the events are interesting or boring. If we use the prospective paradigm instead of the retrospective paradigm, these events may not show a differential effect, since focusing attention on the time or using some counting strategy could minimize or even eliminate the difference in time estimations, in spite of the existing differences in the material presented.

We analyse data taken from a survey (this is explored in detail in Section 3) in which individuals were asked how long they had to wait before entering the doctor's office. Respondents were asked to give a numerical value (in minutes) to this time judgement. The database contains 40,000 observations. Two-thirds of the observations involved a time task in which the starting point (A in Figure 1) was known. In other words, respondents knew the time of their appointment and simply had to calculate the difference between the time that they should have entered and the time that they actually entered, that is, the time that elapsed between the two. In this case, the time judgement was limited to guessing the actual moment of entry to the doctor's office.

The remaining observations correspond to individuals who went to the doctor's without an appointment and therefore did not have an exogenously fixed reference point or starting point (see Figure 1). One-third of the sample belonged to this group.

The most significant results of our study are as follows:

1. Sex differences in time estimations mainly depend on the age group analysed, with greater differences observed in the youngest group; 2. Although there are some differences regarding age, these are related to certain age groups, especially the youngest ones; 3. The existence of a reference point, that is, the fact that the starting point is known or estimated, seems to be of little importance in time estimation.

The rest of the article is structured as follows. The difficulties involved in measuring time are examined in Section 2, while the database is described in Section 3. Finally, the results are discussed in Section 4 and conclusions reached in Section 5.

Measuring Time

Young [START_REF] Young | Cycles in Social Behaviour[END_REF] found that 'clock' or analogical time becomes continuous as a result of successive divisions. However, due to its particular nature, an analogical clock fractionally differentiates time and only through the continuous fragmentation of periods of time is it possible to perceive time as a continuum.

Unfortunately, fractioning time is not a simple task, especially when taking into account the bounded rationality of individuals. When individuals are asked to perform tasks involving computations in the continuum, they tend to simplify these tasks by using strategies such as 'round numbers' or 'prominence numbers'. The former strategy refers to the fact that individuals tend to round off magnitudes when performing operations. For example, the conversion from euros to dollars is usually done on a one-to-one basis even though the actual exchange rate varies daily. This 'rule' of equivalence between currencies is not due to a lack of information (current exchange rates can be easily found in any newspaper), but rather to the convenience of performing simple and straightforward calculation tasks.

The theory of prominence numbers is somewhat more complex. Based on a study by [START_REF] Albers | On the Prominence Structure of the Decimal System[END_REF], [START_REF] Selten | Descriptive Approaches to Cooperation[END_REF] found that individuals encounter difficulties when performing numerical tasks in intervals of less than 10 units, while intervals of 2.5 are virtually impossible. Faced with this difficulty, individuals seek 'convenient' intervals to perform these tasks, which then become the determinant interval of their calculations. For example, suppose an individual is asked to calculate how tall Reinhard Selten is. First, the individual must set an interval, for example between 100 and 200 cm. Second, he will fix a middle point, say 150 cm. If there is no reason to think that Reinhard Selten is neither shorter nor taller than this middle point, the process will conclude. However, if the individual thinks, for example, that Reinhard Selten is taller, he will go back and fix a new interval, say between 150 and 200 cm. A new middle point of 175 cm will then be set and the individual will again decide if Reinhard Selten is shorter or taller. If the individual does not think so, he will stop. However, if the individual thinks Reinhard Selten is taller, he will recalculate the interval once again, setting it at 175-200 cm, and so on until there is no longer any reason to carry on.

Note that the new interval (175-200) is less 'manageable' as it contains decimal numbers, making the task more difficult. However, there is an additional problem. Could we have arrived at the same point if the initial interval was 160-90? The answer is probably not.

This example illustrates the complexity of measuring magnitudes. Let us return to the example of the bus given earlier. If an individual wants to know how long he has been waiting for the bus, he must first know when he arrived at the bus stop (starting point or A in Figure 1) and when he boarded (ending point or B). Only when both times have been estimated (hereafter α for A-estimated and β for B-estimated), will it be possible to calculate the time elapsed between both points.

When calculating the starting point (α), we encounter a similar problem to that involved in estimating Reinhard Selten's height. When did the individual arrive at the bus stop? Suppose the interval is set between 4 and 5 pm, the middle point would then be 4:30. If there is no reason for the individual to think that he arrived before or after this time, he will stop. But, if he thinks that he arrived before 4:30, he will go back and recalculate the interval, and so on. The same problem occurs when estimating the ending point (β). However, one last calculation remains to be done: the difference between both points: TJ = βα (see also Sub-section 3.1). 2 In short, a simple question of the type, 'How long did you take?' implies calculating when you started, when you finished and the difference between the two.

All of these operations or timing tasks make time estimation particularly complex. Given this complexity, individuals tend to use simple rules to facilitate their calculations. By using a methodology similar to that of prominence numbers, [START_REF] Brañas-Garza | Estimating Time by Counting Hands[END_REF] have demonstrated that most respondents in the database use multiples of 5 when estimating time. Nevertheless, we should not overlook the fact that, in addition to these chronometric calculations, the time estimation task is influenced by different types of variables as we have already stated. These variables refer to both the methodological characteristics of the context in which estimations are made and the characteristics of the person who performs them.

Database and Preliminary Considerations

Database

The database used in this study, 'Improving Patient Satisfaction', was compiled by the Institute of Advanced Social Studies (CSIC) in Spain with funding from the Department of Health of the Regional Government of Andalusia.

The sample was randomly selected from a representative population in the region of Andalusia. Between May 2000 and June 2002, 46,757 users of the region's public health care service were personally interviewed at the entrance to health centres. Each questionnaire consisted of 50 questions regarding the quality of service, user satisfaction with the treatment received by health care professionals, hospital facilities and so on.

Prior to analysing the data, it should be stated that there are two ways of arranging to see a general practitioner or paediatrician, by appointment or by number:

• The appointment system: patients previously request an appointment (by phone) for a set time and date. Note that the queue is not managed by a physician, but by a non-health-care staff member. Therefore, personal characteristics and individual health status do not affect the individual's position in the queue. • The number system: patients arrive at the health centre and 'queue up' until they are attended to. In this case, appointments are given on a strictly firstcome, first-served basis. 3 Henceforth, the first group will be referred to as the 'appointment' group, while the second group will be referred to as the 'number' group. Of the sample population in the database, 66.4 per cent belonged to the 'appointment' group, while the rest belonged to the 'number' group.

Variables

Question P40 of the survey asked individuals who had made an appointment, 'How long did you have to wait from your given appointment time until you actually entered the doctor's office? -X minutes.' For individuals who had not made an appointment Question P43 asked, 'How long did you have to wait from the time you arrived at the centre until you entered the doctor's office? -X minutes.' Given the difficulties associated with making time judgements (TJ) as seen earlier, we found that:

1. Respondents with an appointment (Question P40) knew their appointment time or the time that they were supposed to enter. Therefore, the starting point (A in Figure 1) was known. In order to estimate their waiting time, respondents were required to calculate the moment that they actually entered (β must be estimated by guessing) and subsequently compute the waiting time by calculating the difference between the ex ante and ex post entry time (TJ = β -A). 2. Respondents without an appointment (Question P43) faced a more complex problem. Not only did they have to calculate β, but also perform a similar task to estimate α (which is not given) After estimating both times, the difference was then calculated: TJ = βα.

The gender variable was included in Question CL1. Special importance was not given to obtaining an equal number of observations from men and women as the survey was designed with the objective of reproducing real user frequency at the health centres. However, little disparity was observed as 61.1 per cent of the observations corresponded to women (see Table 1A for descriptive statistics).

The CL2 question corresponded to the age of the respondents. As in the question above, little importance was given to equal proportions across ages. Nevertheless, all age groups were well represented (see Table 2A for descriptive statistics).

Finally, a total of 46,757 individuals were interviewed (including respondents with an appointment and those with only a number). These respondents gave waiting times in terms of time intervals, t ∈[0, 300] minutes. Given that the majority of the population is to the left of the interval, we decided to limit the sample population to respondents who gave times that were less than or equal to 100 minutes, t ∈[0, 100], leaving us with a total of 45,697 observations.

Additional questions

The research developed throughout the study is fundamentally based on the following two points:

1. The information collected from question 40 and question 43 refers to the time that the respondents said had elapsed. In other words, we do not know the real time, only the estimations given by the respondents themselves. 2. The objective of the study was to compare the population distributions which resulted from controlling the characteristic to be analysed (for example, gender). Using parametric tests, we were able to determine if these characteristics affect time estimation and whether or not the subjects came from the same population. That is, we analysed if this characteristic was significant.

This method might have been questionable had the sample been small, for example 100 subjects. Had this been the case, individuals with different characteristics would have waited for different periods of time. For example, all the women in the sample (50 if they comprised half the sample) would have waited longer than the men. However, given that the sample was randomly selected from a representative population of more than 40,000 observations, this situation is virtually impossible in statistical terms. Before examining the results of the study, the following issues should also be considered:

1. A large majority of the respondents (43,740 or 95.7%) used round numbers when estimating their waiting time, that is, numbers ending in 0 or 5. 2. Out of the respondents, 40,845 used clock numbers (i.e. 0, 5, 10, 15, 30 and 60 minutes). In other words, 90 per cent of the respondents used analogical (discrete) time schemes (see [START_REF] Brañas-Garza | Estimating Time by Counting Hands[END_REF] for a detailed analysis of this type of measurement).

In order to achieve the greatest possible homogeneity only the last group representing 90 per cent of the sample will be examined. Thus, statistical problems such as empty cells will be avoided and the study will be more general. Therefore, the sample will be limited to 40,917 observations. Finally, prior to the analysis that follows, we will examine both samples (appointment and number) to determine if they do, in fact, have distinct distributions. The subjects in the 'appointment' sample waited, on average, for 19.43 minutes (SD = 17.12), while those in the 'number' sample waited an average of 25.14 minutes (SD = 20.34). In order to compare variances, a Levene 4 test was used (F = 670.33), indicating that the variances were different (p = 0.00). The t-test 5 of means also verified that the distributions were different (t = -28.15; p = 0.00). Hence, the observations did not come from the same population. This result is perfectly plausible if we consider that the use of reference points simplifies time estimation and leads to greater accuracy.

In the section that follows, the effects of gender and age on time estimation will be examined with relation to individuals with and without a reference point.

Results

Gender differences

Before discussing our results, we will briefly examine other findings supported in the literature. The meta-analytic review by [START_REF] Block | Sex Differences in Duration Judgments: A Meta-analytic Review[END_REF] on retrospective time studies shows that sex differences do indeed exist. Women, in particular, were observed to overestimate time to a greater degree than men. Using a prospective analysis, [START_REF] Espinosa-Fernández | Age-related Changes and Gender Differences in Time Estimation[END_REF] obtained the same gender bias in five-minute estimations, while [START_REF] Peters | Time Allocation in Times of Structural Transformation: A Synchronic View on (Gender) Differences in The Netherlands[END_REF] shows that time-allocation decisions are also different for males than females.

Thus, previous research shows that females overestimate more than males.

Now we check if our data confirm this idea. We use the two samples: Appointment (when subjects have a previous appointment, that is, A is known in terms of Figure 1) and Numbers (subjects who do not have an appointment and therefore must wait in a queue, meaning that α is estimated). The descriptive and statistical analysis of the gender effect for both samples is shown in Table 1A and 1B respectively.

The vast amount of available data has led us to suppose, without any strong assumptions, that these data follow a normal distribution. With this distribution at hand, we may explore gender differences in two parallel ways.

Gender deviations with respect to the average

This part of the analysis allows us to determine whether or not females cause any gender bias, whereas gender deviations with respect to the variance illustrate gender-related skills, if any, when performing the timing task.

Let us now focus on gender effect on variance (Table 1B). The message is clear: both the appointment and the number sample indicate that the variance is different for males and females. In both cases, the Levene F-test rejected the equality of variance, indicating that there are, in fact, differences between men and women in accurately estimating time.

Thus, when comparing female/male variance (in both the appointment and the number sample) we may conclude that men are somewhat more skilful at performing timing tasks.

Given the large size of the sample, we were able to make some alternative sub-samples in order to determine if the effect continued to be ambiguous, or if it was possible to observe clearer differences. If the sample size is reduced to the response interval time, t ∈[0, 60] 6 minutes, differences in variance among females and males persist. The latter is even more evident if the interval is further reduced, t ∈[0, 30]. 7 In sum, regardless of the interval and the existence (or not) of reference points, males are more accurate in timing task.

Let us now analyse gender effect on average (the so called gender bias). Table 1B shows that there are weak differences caused by gender in both samples (the t-test is only significant for α = 10 per cent in both the appointment and the number samples). Thus, gender bias is not so evident. Interestingly, when the interval is reduced (60 minutes 8 and 30 minutes 9 ), gender bias prevails only within the appointment sample. That is, when subjects perform timing tasks in 'small intervals' with reference points, males estimate time differently than females.

To summarize, when the time intervals are very large, men and women estimate in a different way. These differences prevail in smaller intervals when estimations include a reference point for guessing time; otherwise, there is no gender bias.

Ageing differences

Evidence suggests that age affects time estimations. However, following [START_REF] Block | Human Aging and Duration Judgments: A Meta-analytic Review[END_REF], it should be noted that the age effect wholly depends on the method employed. For example, when a verbal method of estimation is used, elderly individuals overestimate, while the opposite occurs when using the production method. 10 According to [START_REF] Fraisse | Perception and Estimation of Time[END_REF], the tendency of elderly individuals to underestimate is related to a loss of the neuronal capacity needed to perform these tasks. Thus, elder subjects may be less skilful at estimating time.

However, learning theory suggests the contrary. Subjects learn throughout their whole lives and their own experience may be extremely helpful. Thus, older individuals may possess certain skills in implementing their own rules of estimation; rules that have been perfected throughout their lives.

We will now check how age affects time estimations. We use the intervals proposed by [START_REF] Espinosa-Fernández | Age-related Changes and Gender Differences in Time Estimation[END_REF] to classify individuals in relation to age. 11 The descriptive statistics are shown in Table 2A, while a summary of the tests is given in Table 2B.

Table 2A shows the average values by age group for individuals with a reference point (the starting point A is known) and without a reference point ('number' sample) to estimate waiting time. These averages are graphically illustrated in Figure 2 for both cases. As can be seen, there are several peaks, meaning that there does not exist a clear pattern relating age to time estimation.

Both young individuals between the ages of 10 and 30 and the elderly (older than 81) give longer estimations. The same thing occurs with individuals between 41 and 50 years of age. It is interesting to note that the lower values correspond to individuals between the ages of 31 and 40, whereas the remaining groups have intermediate values (see Figure 2).

The results of the statistical analyses are summarized in Table 2B (Sample 1). The rows show the comparisons between successive categories, while Columns 2 and 3 analyse the Levene test and the t-test (where NR accepts the null hypothesis, R is the full rejection, R* significant for α = 5% and R** for α = 10%).

Within the Appointment sample (see Sample 1) we observe that whereas there are differences when subjects are under 50 years of age, no further significant differences arise for the 50 and above age group.

To sum up, although there are certain differences between age groups, no specific pattern regarding time estimation was observed. Therefore, this finding cannot be generalized as a negative trend associated with age. This result is, on the whole, in accordance with the findings by [START_REF] Block | Human Aging and Duration Judgments: A Meta-analytic Review[END_REF].

Similar results were found for the Number sample: there is no pattern of association between age and time estimation without a reference point. The results are basically the same with very few differences: there are differences when subjects are under 60, whereas no further significant differences appear for older subjects.

In sum, the only difference observed between Samples 1 and 2 was that young individuals behave differently. However, these differences do not provide much insight into the relationship between age and time estimation.

Finally, all the tests in Table 2B (Samples 1 and 2) and Figure 2 show that there exist certain differences between the young, adults and the elderly when estimating time. Taking into account that this relationship is neither decreasing nor increasing, it can be said that for some reason (we do not know why) certain age groups estimate time in a different manner. The tendency of the young, adults and the elderly to make longer estimations could be explained by the greater neuronal capacity of younger individuals, by the fact that adults are largely occupied (and, therefore, by the higher opportunity cost of their time) and finally, by the accuracy of the rules used by the elderly which have been perfected over time. Interestingly, these effects are independent of the existence of a reference point.

Age and sex

The prospective study by [START_REF] Espinosa-Fernández | Age-related Changes and Gender Differences in Time Estimation[END_REF] jointly analyses the effect of age and sex on time estimation skills. However, little research along these lines has been done from a retrospective approach. Given that the database used here permits this type of comparison, we will analyse sex and age jointly in this last sub-section. Using the results from previous sections, we will limit our study to three age groups: under 31, 31-60 years of age and 61 and above.

The results of the statistical analysis are shown in Tables 3A and3B. First, we focus on the effect of age in the group of women. Sample 1 is studied in Columns 2 and 3, while the second sample is studied in Columns 4 and 5. Our comparisons are restricted to young women, adults and the elderly.

The results of the first comparison, young women vs. adult/elderly women, are evident: significant differences occur in time estimation between these age groups. It is clear that differences arise from the younger group of females. The differences in time estimation between younger and older women could be due to the different social conditions in which they live. For instance, older women (in contrast to younger ones) are more involved in family life and in the specific time experience of multiple times. They are more connected to quotidian temporal work (see, for example [START_REF] Davis | Women, Time and the Weaving of the Strands of Everyday Life[END_REF].

In short, differences in time estimation (with or without a reference point) across ages were only observed between young women and adult/elderly women.

When we compare age groups of males, we observe different results. Interestingly (and according to Section 4), the existence or not of a reference point plays a key role among males. Within the sample of subjects with appointments, there are differences when comparing young men and adult/elderly men. However, these differences were not observed when comparing adult men or adult women with elderly individuals.

The other sample of males (without a reference point) does not show any ageing effect. No significant differences were found between young men and adult males in time estimation, or between adult males and elderly males.

As can be seen, this result is analogous to that shown graphically in Figure 2. Thus very high values were observed for young individuals, while average values (either above or below the mean) were observed for the remaining age groups.

The populations in the above age groups (the young, adults and the elderly) are classified in Table 3B in order to once again explore gender bias. The following is a summary of some of the results:

• In the group of young individuals (under 31 years of age), significant differences were observed between men and women (for a value of α 5%);

• In the adult group (30 < age < 61) gender biases in time estimation were not observed; • Finally, no gender bias was found in the elderly age group.

In sum, gender biases in time estimation with or without a reference point (A) occur at a young age. However, from the age of 30 and above, this gender effect does not exist.

The lifestyle of the youngest individuals is, no doubt, a factor that affects the way in which they measure time. These results are practically identical to those analysed in the previous section. A gender bias was only observed in the group of young individuals, while no differences were found between men and women in the other age groups.

Conclusion

The objective of this study was to provide additional empirical evidence for the study of gender and age in time estimation using a retrospective paradigm. With this aim, a Spanish database with more than 40,000 individual observations on time judgements was used. Two-thirds of the observations corresponded to respondents who used a reference point (starting point) when estimating time, whereas the rest performed estimations with no reference point.

The sample was broken down by group according to the effect to be studied. The resulting distributions were then analysed statistically and compared using the Levene F-test and the t-test to determine the variances and means, respectively. The most significant results of the study are as follows:

1. Differences in time estimation related to age are relative. The most significant differences were observed when comparing young individuals and those older than 30 years of age; 2. There does not appear to be a clear relationship between age and time; 3. Gender bias is more pronounced in young individuals than in adults, regardless of the existence of a reference point.

These results are restricted to the specific methodology employed in this study.

Recall that we have used the retrospective paradigm (the subjects did not previously know that they would be asked to estimate time) and the verbal estimation method. In these situations, memory plays a key role, since the time that is estimated is, in reality, remembered time. Individuals follow different procedures when making time estimates in these situations. On the one hand, and following the model by [START_REF] Ornstein | On the Experience of Time[END_REF], individuals record and store input in their memory during a given time interval. Thus, the greater the amount of information or input that is processed, the longer the duration estimate. According to [START_REF] Block | Temporal Jugments and Contextual Change[END_REF] and [START_REF] Poynter | Judging the Duration in Time Intervals: A Process of Remembering of Experience[END_REF], the number of contextual changes that have occurred during the estimated interval is more important than the amount of input that has been processed and stored. As Poynter points out, in the absence of 'temporal receptors' that respond to a temporal stimulus, humans are aware of the passing of time through their perception of changes in the number, magnitude and significance of the events in an interval. The processing of these stimuli or events gives rise to temporal referents in one's memory which are used to reconstruct the duration of an interval. In addition to these memory referents, other factors that intervene in retrospective estimations include the information gained from previous experiences that is available to the subject in similar situations. If an event finishes (in this case when the waiting time to enter the doctor's office is up) later than expected, the time estimate will most likely be longer than if it finishes earlier than expected, in which case it will be shorter. A similar experience happens to many of us when we are bored and it seems as if time passes much more slowly, giving rise to longer duration judgements. Indeed, the differences found in our study in some age groups may be a reflection of the differential performance of some of these factors. It is interesting to note that after a given age, from 50 to 60, significant differences in duration judgements were not found between the groups. Furthermore, it is a well-known fact that the older one is, the more likely one is to visit health centres. This would lead to a greater understanding of the context and the situation, as well as greater experience and more opportunites to put one's expectations to the test as regards waiting times at the doctor's office. As a consequence, the duration judgements in these age groups are homogeneous.

On the other hand, given that data on actual waiting times were not available for our study, we only used the estimations made by the subjects themselves. Therefore, we cannot establish with any certainty whether the subjects overestimated or underestimated the interval. Following [START_REF] Brown | The Psychophysics of Retrospective and Prospective Timing[END_REF], we stated in the introduction that one of the advantages to retrospective paradigms is the greater ecological validity of the results. Thus, our study contributes to a better understanding of real-life situation. Nevertheless, we are aware of the fact that our results would have been more valuable had we known the real waiting time; an aspect that we intend to take into account in future studies. Future research projects will also include: (a) retrospective time task studies under lab conditions; (b) applications of the retrospective method for discrete variables (colours, race, etc.); and (c) the development of simple learning models to approach how subjects learn to estimate time.

Notes

We acknowledge the enormous effort and patience that the editor, Carmen Leccardi, devoted to this article in a number of sequential rounds and revisions. We also acknowledge the work and ideas of Antonio J. Morales in the first stage of this research. Gualberto Buela-Casal put us in contact with Lourdes Espinosa and, as result, the article improved dramatically. Pablo Brañas-Garza acknowledges financial support from DGCYT (SEJ2004-07554/ECON) and Rafael Serrano del Rosal from DGCYT (SEJ2005-06099/SOC). Martha Gaustad revised the English grammar.

1. Production method: the subject must define, in an operative manner, an interval of a given duration that has been verbally established by the experimenter. Verbal estimation method: the experimenter defines a time interval in an operative manner and the subject must verbally estimate its duration in seconds and/or minutes.

Reproduction method: the experimenter defines an interval in an operative manner and the subject must then operatively reproduce an interval of the same duration.

Comparison method: this is a variation of the reproduction method. The experimenter presents two intervals consecutively and the subject must judge their relative duration, saying which is the longest and which the shortest of the two. 2. Note that when the individual knows ex ante the initial reference point (starting point or A) the problem is simplified. In order to perform time judgements, two possible strategies can be used: (a) estimating the ending point (β) and the difference between this point and A (which is known), TJ = β -A; and (b) using a shortcut: the subjective evaluation of the time elapsed without calculating the above difference. 3. This system is gradually being replaced by the appointment system and only occurs in health centres that have not yet established an appointment system. 4. Levene's test is an F-test of the hypothesis that all factor standard deviations (or equivalent variances) are equal versus the alternative that the standard deviations are not all equal. 5. The t-test assesses whether the means of two groups are statistically different from each other. This analysis is appropriate for comparing the means of two groups. 6. Interval [0,60]. Appointment sample: the Levene test weakly rejects the equality of variances (F = 3.25, p = 0.07). Number sample: the Levene rejects (F = 7.36, p = 0.00). 7. The first 30-minute interval: Appointment sample: the Levene test rejects (F = 2.82, p = 0.09); using the Number sample it also rejects (F = 3.75, p = 0.05). 8. Interval [0,60]. Appointment sample: the t-test strongly rejects the equality of means (t = 2.77, p = 0.00); Number sample weakly rejects (t = -1.67, p = 0.09). 9. The first 30-minute interval: Appointment sample: strongly rejects (t = 5.69, p = 0.00); Number sample strongly accepts (t = -0.02, p = 0.97). 10. See also the recent paper by [START_REF] Aapola | Exploring Dimensions of Age in Young People's Lives: A Discourse Analytical Approach[END_REF]. 11. There are two differences between the classification scheme proposed by [START_REF] Espinosa-Fernández | Age-related Changes and Gender Differences in Time Estimation[END_REF] and the one used in this study: (1) the 8-10-year-old and 11-20-year-old groups were merged into one sample group as there were very few observations available for the first group; (2) due to the availability of data, a new category was added for > 81-year-old individuals.

  FIGURE 1 Retrospective Time Judgement

  FIGURE 2Ageing effect (Sample 1 and 2)

TABLE 3 A

 3

	) Ageing effect by gender group
	Age group	Appointment	Number
	< 31 vs. 31-60
	Male	F = 2.76 (0.09)	T = 4.26 (0.00)	F = 5.22 (0.02)	T = -1.56 (0.11)
	Female	F = 4.66 (0.03)	T = 3.84 (0.00)	F = 1.53 (0.21)	T = 2.32 (0.02)
	<31 vs. older
	Male	= 7.59 (0.00)	T = 4.31 (0.00)	F = 0.30 (0.58)	T = -0.48 (0.63)
	Female	F = 31.91 (0.00)	T = 2.95 (0.03)	F = 20.69 (0.00)	T = 3.16 (0.00)
	31-60 vs. older
	Male	F = 1.30 (0.25)	T = -0.08 (0.92)	F = 11.24 (0.00)	T = 1.34 (0.17)
	Female	F = 16.53 (0.00)	T = -0.88 (0.37)	F = 15.60 (0.00)	T = 1.01 (0.30)
	B) Gender effect by age group
	Male vs. female	Appointment	Number
	Age group	Levene	t-test	Levene	t-test
	10 to 30 years old

TIME & SOCIETY16(1)

BRAÑAS-GARZA ET AL.: GENDER AND AGE ON TIME JUDGEMENTS


Book Review

Barbara Adam, Time. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7456-2778-1, 184 pp.

To the series Key Concepts of Polity Press, Barbara Adam has contributed with a stout book on time. In the last 20 years the topic of time has attracted a much broader attention in the social sciences as can be deduced from the journal Time & Society. This makes the subject itself, however, rather complicated while it raises so many different issues. Adam has nevertheless taken a courageous initiative to identify key concepts related to time itself. In other publications like Time and Social Theory (1990) and Timewatch (1995) she has already clearly shown she can not only master the field of time studies but bring forward her own points of view. In the 1990 publication she stated that 'time is always social time because only humans regulate and organise their lives by time. Only they conceptualise time. Only they use, control, allocate, and sell their time. Only they lead an "in time" existence and create their own histories and futures ' (p. 154). This definition includes that our views on time in the social sciences, as Adam stresses, cannot be separated from those in the natural sciences. Similar to the views of Norbert Elias, this topic is again recurring in her latest book where she intends to abandon that traditional dualism of natural and social time 'in favour of a more reflective and reflexive, synthesising perspective on the subject matter ' (p. 104).

For her latest study she has taken a broad perspective, offering a journey to see time through many different lenses. The first lens is composed of myths and stories, ritual interactions and power relations. She depicts a landscape for the reader to wander in. The key issue in those ancient cultures is the temporality of being, which confronts each individual with the immemorial, existential issues of life and death. In those ancient cultures time was deified, like heaven, underworld, paradise, death and the cycles of renewal. Based on physical data of moon, sun and stars -the earliest ways to shape cultural forms of time reckoning -the Egyptians put the gods Osiris, Isis and Horus in charge of the three seasons associated with flooding, sowing and harvesting of the Nile delta. The priests were the first who began to name and number particular moments of time to be respected in social life. Their knowledge about time provided them with a very powerful position, but in those ancient cultures and empires time stayed embedded in events, phenomena and processes.

Before moving into the modern world system that began in the 16th century to illustrate how time became reduced to a more profane topic she extensively deals with different time theories as developed by Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Kierkegaard, Bergson, Husserl, Einstein, Heisenberg, Heidegger, Mead and Schutz, who were all, generally speaking, inspired by the Greek authors who dealt with permanence and change, motion and order. When Newton published The Principia in 1687, the clock had permeated the life of science. Newton was interested in the operational value of time as measure of motion, but he was not concerned with time in its own right. Neither was Marx, who did never focus on time per se. His theory of surplus value, however, provides the key to understand the development of industrial capitalism. Value is created by the processes of production and thus by the technologies that enter into these. All surplus value is derived from labour employed and exploited by capitalists whose benefit therefore can be seen as unpaid labour time. The ratio of surplus value to wage payments (paid labour time) is defined as relative surplus value. Absolute surplus value is raised by lengthening the working day; relative surplus value is increased by trying to compel workers to work at a faster pace, that is, intensifying work. Industrial capitalism became based on the intensification of work which could either lead to labour-saving or time-saving initiatives and usually both. When for example the 10 Hours Act was passed in Britain, speed-up processes immediately followed: the capitalists fought back by intensifying work again. Within capitalism, time became a decontextualized, a-situational, abstract exchange value. Instead of respecting the variable time of seasons, ageing, growth and decay, the invariable abstract time of the clock became hegemonial. The quantitative, divisible time of the clock was translated into money, leading to a commodification of time and, eventually, of life. Adam subsequently treats the other mentioned authors to describe their contributions to the analysis of time. The point she did not raise, however, is that Newton never used the clockwork metaphor. He disliked the mechanical clock as an authoritarian system, which could never match with the beautiful system, of the sun, planets and comets which proceeds from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.

Charged with a 50-page concise review of different time theories, she consecutively takes the reader into Part 2 of the study: the role of time in social life, exploring theory-impregnated time practices, which provide a large window containing a variety of lenses on the subject. Time practices focused on knowing the future, creating the future by (re)interpreting the past. She analyses how the six world religions -Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam -that 'share a belief in an eternal, transcendent principle beyond time and space from which our world emanates and to which we are ultimately to return' (p. 90), have imposed in different forms their cultural will on time. Rituals about burials, 'rites de passages', dances and festivals, calendars and food preservation are illustrations of this cultural will that provide a collective beat to communal life. While accepting that life is a temporary path in view of the eternal principle, human beings have constantly manipulated time by modifying nature's rhythms by lighting the hours of darkness and keeping ageing and decay at bay. Within this context it is still surprising how Christianity facilitated the clock-time revolution at the end of the Middle Ages. When the Chinese civilization, which in the 11th century was already familiar with the SuSung water clock, became acquainted with the European mechanical clock, it was denunciated as inaccurate, inappropriate for a society organized to variable hours and an affront to the emperor's self-esteem. Based on standardization and globalization, the modern world system, that is, the capitalists' world economy with its priority for and endless accumulation of capital, has been able to impose a standard time and a world time.

Colonization of time by illumination of gas and electricity, as well as colonization with time by imposing one universal time infrastructure on other parts of the world through wireless telegraph and telephone equipment, 'facilitated instantaneity and simultaneity, which means the elimination of duration and succession' (p. 119). Adam refers to the work of Manuel Castells, who in his Rise of the Network Society (1996), stresses not only the effects of simultaneity but also timelessness, meaning that the splicing together of unrelated events leads to a loss of chronological order and context-dependent rhythmicity.

After having introduced, through this variety of lenses, a fast range of topics related to time itself, in her last chapter she resumes the key issues by designing a conceptual framework based on five Cs: clock time, commodification, compression, colonization and control, which 'mark the distinctiveness of industrial societies' public temporal relations ' (p. 143). Compression of time has not only been increased by intensifying work processes (Taylorism, Fordism, Flexibilization), but also through increasing tempo within transport, transmission and transplantation 'each with their own distinct means of enhancing independence of the social relations of time from space and the body'(p. 130). The biggest problem, however, is the concept of control which reduces time to an objectified, externalized phenomenon that is constructed to specific design principles. Adam is convinced that this is the biggest fixation the world economy is struggling with. While controlling the other four Cs, we seem to forget about tempering and transcendence, as well as a broader knowledge and know-how of time. In order to enlarge our scope about time, she insists upon the relevance of a label she had already introduced in 1998 as 'timescape' to draw attention to the complex of mutually implicated temporalities proposed. This notion indicates, 'first that time is inseparable from space and matter, and second, that context matters ' (p. 143). It is fascinating to see how Adam tries to seduce the reader to move beyond thinking patterns in dualistic forms like day-night/lightdark/summer-winter. At the end of her exploration of key concepts in time studies she can, however, hardly detach herself from another dualistic form: 'What has slipped out of sight with the industrial way of life emerges from the shadow. We are once more confronted with questions about collective life and death, origin and destiny.' This should not be seen as a kind of criticism, because the book is an outstanding introduction to the topic itself. It inevitably invites one to explore the

Time & Society copyright © 2007 SAGE (London, Los Angeles, New Delhi and Singapore) VOL. 16 No. 1 (2007), pp. 131-134 0961-463X DOI: 10.1177/0961463X07074107 www.sagepublications.com

TIME & SOCIETY16(1)

landscape further, because 'when so much control fails and converts intended actions into unintended consequences, there is a need to (re)consider the place and role of humans in the cosmic scheme of things, to take stock of the ways we approach finitude and the temporal limits to human being' (p. 147).