This chapter considers how time use is and should be organised in today's advanced industrial societies. The first section confirms that the distribution and availability of free time is a matter of political justice and legitimate political concern. The second section shows that welfare policies have significant effects on patterns of time use, and extends existing work to explore the value of identifying ‘temporal regimes’, based on variations in time culture and temporal orientation as well as time use. Here it finds that although there are identifiable patterns, these are often fragmented and contradictory. The third section addresses the extent and consequences of long-hours working, and similarly finds both pressures and counter-pressures. Although the chapter concludes that challenges to current patterns of time use are likely to encounter strong opposition, it does find some grounds for optimism.

Free time as a scarce resource

Time is different from other scarce resources in that there are obvious limits to its accumulation. No-one can free up more than 24 hours a day and, although a few wealthy individuals are choosing to have their bodies frozen when they die in the hope that future scientific advances will one day enable them to be restored to life (Griffiths, 1999, pp 254-6), no-one can yet live forever. Time is therefore still the ultimate scarce resource. While in a sense anyone who does not want to die values time in itself, most people also value time as a means to an end – whether this be money, political influence, creative work, the enjoyment of leisure activities, or the development of personal relationships. Their ability to pursue these ends is affected by how much free or leisure time they have – that is, time that is not either controlled by someone else or taken up by paid work, unpaid work or personal care. Such time is far from evenly distributed, as some have to work most of their waking hours to earn enough to live while others can live off inherited wealth; some take painful hours to walk a distance that others run or drive in minutes; and some have to cook and clean for family members while others do not even have to do this for themselves. To the extent that these inequalities are socially and politically produced, they should be seen as a matter of justice.