Measurable time is governable time: Exploring temporality and time governance in childcare social work

Abstract

This article deals with the workings of time governance in welfare professional settings. A contribution is made to current literature by offering insights into how ‘governing by the clock’ works at the micro-level in everyday interaction and why clock time is purposeful for the operation of power in a welfare bureaucratic context. The main argument posited is that measurability and decontextualisation are characteristics of clock time, facilitating the governance of professionals’ decisions and actions, and ultimately their time use. The argument is illustrated with empirical data from ethnographic fieldwork following social workers responsible for childcare investigations in Sweden. The interaction in focus regards efforts to meet a deadline of four months to complete the investigations inscribed in the Social Services Act. As a start, the article illustrates what relational, task-oriented and clock time approaches can imply for time use and childcare investigations, with the purpose of visualising the characteristics providing advantages of clock time for governance. After that, the more concrete workings of time governance are explored in how the objectified clock time, through these characteristics, works as a resource both for subtle routine and self-governing processes, and when the operation of power is more explicit. It is demonstrated how social workers make meaning, plan and conduct childcare investigations in order to make it possible to meet the deadline, sometimes with trade-offs. The governance relies on the facticity of the objectified time frame and the high knowledge status it is assigned in participants’ interaction. The analysis demonstrates the workings when a seemingly ‘soft’ time limit gets reified and trumps other sources for professional knowledge when decisions are legitimised, sometimes with unintended consequences. By analysing social work as a profession performed at the intersection of different time rhythms, a contribution is made to research on governance and street-level bureaucrats’ dilemmas.