Work-Related Practices: An Analysis of Their Effect on the Emergence of Stable Practices in Daily Activity Schedules

Abstract

Despite its ‘wordless’ and hidden characteristics, it is within the everyday tasks, routines, and rhythms that consumption takes place, from getting up every morning, having breakfast, going to work or school, having lunch, going home, having dinner, reading a book, surfing the Internet, watching TV, and probably doing similar things again and again. This study examines this routinized daily use of time of employed individuals based on the 2014–2015 UK Time-Use Survey data. In doing this, we focus on individual’s day-to-day activities and how they are routinized or how they are formed into stabilized practices. Starting from the definition of stable practices, we apply a relatively new method of social network analysis to visualize stable practices during workdays. We then analyse the cohesion between practices based on work hours and connections and coordination between practices. Our results suggest that work arrangements create stable practices that by themselves are stone pillars of daily routines. This implies that the removal (or ‘unlocking’) of stable practices during these time periods could produce some – albeit marginal – decongestion of routinized activities.