Abstract
Abstract
The fourth chapter shifts the ethnographic focus from Fiji to Finland, a country preoccupied with precise time telling and frugal attitudes to time. Where Fijian time is quantified (if quantified at all) by balance and levelling rather than precise measurements, Finnish time really is made up of hours and minutes. But these are not always the kinds of solid “facts” that temporal measures are assumed to be. The chapter discusses the use of time as proof of performance at Finnish universities: such time is labelled as “fake” even by the administrative personnel who operate the university time-allocation systems discussed in this chapter. However, the chapter does not only portray how North European time can be every bit as exotic as South Seas time. Looking at the role time plays in university accounting reveals a preoccupation with balance rather than profit making. The kinds of equivalences created with the help of “fake” time shows that time is consciously manipulated in order to accommodate the accountants’ prerequisites.