Abstract
Abstract
Chapter five delves deeper into time’s ability to reveal the underlying ethics displayed when time is fitted into equivalence equations. It examines a case involving the Helsinki Timebank – a local exchange network using time as a currency of account – and the Finnish Tax Administration. Both of these, the Timebank and the tax authority, have specific ideas regarding the worth of the “while”, the token currency connoting an hour of banked time. But these ideas are underwritten by incompatible ethical standpoints. Time’s ability to stand for individualised work histories just as well as generalised labour and social relations does not just prove the book’s central claim – that clock time can act as a vehicle for a multitude of values. It also highlights the malleability of time as a vehicle of value, the way in which clock time can be made to agree with a variety of value projects.