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Draft:Time Capital

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  • Comment: After many declined submissions, this still reads like an AI-generated essay and not an encyclopedia article. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 18:14, 19 December 2025 (UTC)

Time capital is an emerging concept in the sociology of time that describes time as a quantifiable and measurable resource that may be accumulated, consumed, transferred, invested, and converted into other forms of capital, such as economic, social, cultural, or human capital.[1][2]. In addition, time capital was described as a social imaginary that has evolved under conditions of digitalization and the commodification of social life[3]. The concept has been developed primarily in academic work by Romanian sociologists Marian Preda and Stefania Matei[1][2][3], in relation to economic rationalization, strategic planning, sustainability, and the spread of technology in daily activities.

Background

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Sociological research has long emphasized that time is socially constructed and organized through cultural, economic, and other institutional arrangements[4]. In industrial and post-industrial societies, time has increasingly been treated as a scarce and valuable resource, particularly in relation to labor, productivity, and planning[5][6][7]. The conceptualization of time capital builds on this tradition by explicitly framing time as a form of capital rather than a background condition of social life.

Definition

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In sociological usage, time capital refers to the temporal resources available for future-oriented action and the capacity to sustain individual or collective activities over time. Specifically, "time capital is understood as a measure of sustainability or durability. Time capital is a measure of sustainability that defines the individual or collective potential for action projected into the future. Time capital is a numerical measure of durability that operationalizes a generic potential of action, thereby representing an estimation of an emerging capacity to perform individual or collective actions."[8]

Academic discussion

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Scholarly discussions of time capital emphasize that temporal resources may be influenced by multiple social factors and may work at different levels. Accordingly, the concept of time capital has been characterized by three properties: multicausality, indicating that it is affected by diverse social factors; convertibility, understood as the potential transformation of time into other forms of capital; and transferability, defined as the partial redistribution of temporal resources among social actors[9]. The concept has been applied analytically at four levels, including individual (individual time capital), primary groups (micro-level time capital), communities (mezo-level time capital), and societies (macro-level time capital), especially in theoretical and exploratory research contexts[10]. Unlike chronological time, the concept incorporates both duration and velocity as contextual conditions that affect how time is experienced and used[11].

In empirical research, the concept of time capital has been used to analyze how individuals cope with social and technological acceleration by analyzing differences in time-use capability and the conversion of temporal resources into economic, social, and cultural capital across generations[12][13]. In research on end-of-life care, the concept of time as an asset, associated with time capital, has been used to show how dominant cultural expectations about valuing and optimizing time are challenged by lived experiences of dying and waiting[14]. The concept of time capital has also found application across diverse research domains, including (1) studies of science skepticism where macro-level time capital has been examined as a governmental asset in relation to policies and practices of collective wellbeing[15], (2) exploration of women’s managerial careers where time capital has been employed to reveal hidden temporal inequalities, such as unequal access to discretionary time, career-sustaining time horizons, and the capacity to convert time into professional advancement[16], and (3) research on temporal synchronization using shared days of importance where individual time capital has been included to conceptualize time-life as an accumulation of temporally aligned resources[17].

In theoretical discussions within the sociology of time, the concept of time capital has been used to support the argument that measurement and formalization play a performative role in producing social realities rather than merely describing them, so time capital is understood as a textual and analytical device that facilitate collaboration, consolidate communities of practice, and actively shape the socio-temporal order supposed to describe[18]

Criticism

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The concept has been proposed in a context when some scholars caution that conceptualizing time as capital may extend economic metaphors into domains of social life where alternative temporal values exist[19][20]. It means that treating time as a form of capital risks privileging measurable, clock-based temporalities while marginalizing subjective, relational, or culturally embedded experiences of time, thereby limiting the concept’s applicability.

References

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  1. ^ a b Preda, Marian (2011). "Time Capital and Social Gravity: Two New Concepts for Sociology of Time". In Pirani, Bianca Maria; Smith, Thomas (eds.). Body and Time: Bodily Rhythms and Social Synchronism in the Digital Media Society. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (published 2013). pp. 24–40. ISBN 978-1-44384-715-5.
  2. ^ a b Preda, Marian; Matei, Stefania (2020). "Time Capital in Strategic Planning and Sustainable Management". Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences. 61: 105–124.
  3. ^ a b Matei, Stefania; Preda, Marian (2020). "Time Capital as a Social Imaginary". Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology. 11 (1): 51–58.
  4. ^ Adam, Barbara (1990). Time and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0-7456-0740-3.
  5. ^ Döring, Herbert (1995). "Time as a Scarce Resource: Government Control of the Agenda". In Döring, Herbert (ed.). Parliaments and Majority Rule in Western Europe. Mannheim: Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim. pp. 223–246.
  6. ^ Mankins, Michael; Brahm, Chris; Caim, Gregory (2014). "Your Scarcest Resource". Harvard Business Review: 74–80.
  7. ^ Ghosh, Shubha (2022). "Time, Scarcity, and Abundance". Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics. 7: 974706.
  8. ^ Preda, Marian; Matei, Stefania (2020). "Time Capital in Strategic Planning and Sustainable Management". Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences. 61: 107–108.
  9. ^ Preda, Marian; Matei, Stefania (2020). "Time Capital in Strategic Planning and Sustainable Management". Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences. 61: 109.
  10. ^ Preda, Marian; Matei, Stefania (2020). "Time Capital in Strategic Planning and Sustainable Management". Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences. 61: 110.
  11. ^ Preda, Marian; Matei, Stefania (2020). "Time Capital in Strategic Planning and Sustainable Management". Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences. 61: 109.
  12. ^ Kalmus, Veronika; Opermann, Signe (2020). "Personal time capital in the digital society: An alternative look at social stratification among three generations of highly skilled professionals in Estonia". Trames: A Journal of the Humanities & Social Sciences. 24(74/69) (1): 3–25.
  13. ^ Kalmus, Veronika; Masso, Anu; Opermann, Signe; Täht, Karin (2018). "Mobile Time as a Blessing or a Curse: Perceptions of Smartphone Use and Personal Time Among Generation Groups in Estonia". Trames. A Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences. 22(72/67) (1): 45–62.
  14. ^ Broom, Alex; Kenny, Katherine; Ehlers, Nadine; Byrne, Henrietta; Good, Phillip (2025). "Tensions of time at the end (of life)". Social Science & Medicine. 372: 117995.
  15. ^ Vulpe, Simona-Nicoleta (2025). Science Skepticism. Temporal and Religious Agency in Vaccination and Climate Change Controversies. Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press. ISBN 978-606-16-1543-8.
  16. ^ Stan, Oana-Mara (2020). "Sticking to the script: Women managers just do it all". Journal of East European Management Studies. 1 (SI): 131–148.
  17. ^ Vihalemm, Triin; Harro-Loit, Halliki (2019). "Measuring society's temporal synchronization via days of importance". Time & Society. 28 (4): 1333–1362.
  18. ^ Matei, Stefania; Preda, Marian (2019). "When social knowledge turns mathematical – The role of formalisation in the sociology of time". Time & Society. 28 (1): 247–272.
  19. ^ Adam, Barbara (1998). Timescapes of Modernity. The environment and invisible hazards. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-203-98138-3.
  20. ^ Birth, Kevin (2017). Time Blind. Problems in Perceiving Other Temporalities. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-319-34131-6.
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