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Call for papers n° 18: Managing social time with digital tools

Special issue edited by Laëtitia Bideau (Cirfase, IACS, UCLouvain), Victoria Chantseva (EXPERICE, USPN), Alexandra Piesen (EMA, Cergy Paris Université) et Victor Potier (LISIS, Université Gustave Eiffel)

Abstracts are due by May 31, 2025.

A wide range of digital objects are used in everyday life: domestic devices, communication tools, platforms for accessing services, and platforms for digitalising professional or parental work. Their development has often been presented as a means of simplifying, or even facilitating, the plurality of commitments to social activities and temporalities. The digitisation of professional and domestic activities today holds out the promise of making life easier, in much the same way as the spread of household appliances in the 1920s was intended to encourage urban households to rationalise and lighten their domestic burdens (Clarke, 2005; Delaunay, 2003).

Yet over the last few decades, research into the ‘social configurations’ of technology (MacKenzie, Wajcman, 1999; Wajcman, 2015) questions common assumptions about digitsation’s impact. More specifically, researchers are calling into question the idea that using digital tools is unilaterally virtuous or, on the contrary, deleterious, as it restricts people’s room for maneuver or speeds up the pace of their activities, particularly at work and at home. These researchers, rather, seek to understand the interweaving of the technical and social dimensions at work at the heart of these devices, questioning the social relationships, norms and socio-cultural values that shape their use. How do time and temporal organisations fit in? More specifically, how is the articulation of social time redefined by the use of digital tools?

The concept of ‘social time articulation’ refers to the experience of managing simultaneous commitments in several spheres of activity: professional, domestic, civic, leisure and others. As recent research has shown (Barbier, Fusulier, Landour, 2020; Pizarro Erazo, Viera Giraldo, Landour 2023; Warren, 2015), different forms of articulation exist as well as unevenly distributed capacities in dealing with multiple obligations. What role do new technologies play in this? How does the use of digital tools redefine the articulation of social time? By digital tools, we refer to a wide range of devices designed to foster communication and availability, such as digital school environments for parents to monitor their children’s schoolwork, shared diaries, smartphones, messaging and geolocation applications, or even programmable kitchen robots designed to streamline day-to-day organisations.

Changing temporal organisation through digital tools is especially embedded in broader changing forms of working. As platform capitalism develops (Abdelnour, Bernard, 2018), how do these ways of connecting customers and service providers (VTCs, housework, care work, meal delivery, DIY, etc.) affect practices of articulating professional and personal temporalities? How does the unequal experience of remote work reshape the spatio-temporal contours of activity (Célerier, Monchatre, 2021), in a context where this practice has recently been promoted as a key element in the management of collective temporalities (Datchary, Charlap, Jarty, Hélardot, Casas-Vila, 2023)? These transformations are also deeply linked to the temporal organisation of the domestic sphere and to gender relations. Over the last two decades, the myth of the ‘mumpreneur’ has constantly predicted the emergence of a new female independence through the commodification of domestic production on the internet (Landour, 2020; Naulin & Jourdain, 2019).

Our focus is less on employment policies or trends than on the ways in which the articulation between working and non-working time is evolving. How does the development of digital resources relate to individuals’ social positions (Granjon, 2022), socio-demographic characteristics or family configurations, and how does it change the way individuals manage time and prioritise urgency?

This special issue aims to explore the social logic underlying the articulation of time through the use of digital technologies. Accordingly, we will address digital uses as ‘technicised social facts’ (Martin, Dagiral, 2021), as technical devices are intertwined with social relations. What is the role of new technologies in this? How do the practices developed with these tools affect the way times are articulated?

This call for papers seeks to capture the diversity of social groups affected by the use of digital tools, as well as the plurality of contexts in which such practices take place. We invite submissions that cut across age, gender and social categories. More broadly, papers’ submissions may examine the use of digital tools from the perspective of the professional and family time frames in which they are used, as well as issues related to the management of free time (especially leisure time) or health and well-being (in terms of monitoring, surveillance or prevention).

This call for papers is structured around 3 themes. Papers are invited under one or more of these themes:

  • Temporal, social and digital inequalities in the management of social time.

  • Digital technologies and the optimisation of social time management.

  • Articulation of social time amidst tensions and surveillance.

Temporal, social and digital inequalities in the management of social time

A first line of questioning concerns the accessibility and use of these tools in mundane time management practices. Recent research underlines gender and class inequalities in the appropriation of tools - generating differentiated trajectories according to social background (Jourdain, 2023). How does the use of digital tools vary by gender, race, age, class and disability? What differences might be observed according to family configuration (two parents, single parents, reconstituted, etc.)? To what extent might digital technology reduce or increase pre-existing social inequalities over time?

Dematerialisation’ policies were initially presented as a solution particularly suitable for people with disabilities, enabling them to access certain services and organise their daily lives. However, recent studies of these tools have shown limitations in terms of effectively reducing administrative workload (Deville, Reveillere, 2023; Sellen, Harper 2003). To the extent that managing caregivers represents a significant amount of work for people with disabilities (Touahria-Gaillard, 2016; Touahria-Gaillard, 2017; Doé, 2019), does the use of digital tools induce a change in the articulation of social time?

Furthermore, the issue of temporal inequalities associated with work-related digital practices cannot be ignored. Managers have more time at their disposal (Bouffartigue, 2012) and greater autonomy according to gender and class (Ganault, 2022). Privileged categories are seen as ‘able’ to organise themselves as they wish, for example by resorting to teleworking, access to which is socially determined (Le Gagneur, 2021). Conversely, are people in precarious jobs and working conditions, often racialised, ‘confined’ to a high degree of heteronomy, with no control over their working hours? Does this lead to inequalities in working practices according to the degree of autonomy given to workers? How can these inequalities be documented and investigated?

Finally, we encourage contributions that address territorial inequalities in access. Considering this territorial dimension involves looking at issues of location, transport coverage, internet coverage, etc. Some geographical areas do not have the necessary internet connection to use digital technologies (October, 2019). Do these infrastructural inequalities impose specific time management methods according to local contexts?

Digital technologies and the optimisation of social time management

Another way to examine how digital technology shapes the organization of social time is by looking at the promise of ‘flexibility.’ Historical research on household technologies (Cowan, 1983; Shove, 2003) has shown that while domestic appliances were designed to save time and make household tasks easier, they also raised expectations around hygiene and comfort. Do the same apply to digital tools? Do they reinforce new expectations? How do they change the way people juggle professional and domestic responsibilities? To what extent do they encourage multitasking (Bidet et al., 2017)? Do they contribute to the fragmentation of work (Datchary, 2008) or even reshape how people invest their time? Do these tools help users carve out more time for non-work activities such as leisure, caregiving, household duties, and family life? Or do they introduce new constraints?

More broadly, can digital technology really be considered a tool for optimization? If so, in what areas, and who benefits most? Research on the attention economy (Citton, 2014) suggests that these tools demand users’ time, sometimes drawing them in so much that digital use itself can feel like wasted time (Nova, 2020). Shared calendars, digital learning platforms, private online messaging groups, smart home devices, and domestic robots—all designed to create synchronization and ‘save’ time for other activities (Flaherty, 2003)—could be examined from a critical or comprehensive perspective. Employer-driven initiatives aimed at improving time management could also be explored. Finally, the idea of optimization could be considered in relation to people’s life trajectories (Potier, Déjean, & Yassine-Diab, 2023; Ter Minassian et al., 2021), including their ability to reclaim personal time, sustain social connections, and navigate the boundaries between work and personal life.

Articulation of social time amidst tensions and surveillance

A final area of inquiry explores the tensions surrounding time management when digital tools are used for caregiving—particularly those that track location or transmit information about a person’s condition to others (e.g., monitoring bracelets, fall detectors, blood analyzers). How do these tools structure—and sometimes disrupt—pre-existing schedules and daily routines? How does real-time access to geographical and temporal data reshape the coordination of social time? From a care perspective, to what extent do these technologies shift the work of supporting vulnerable individuals (Tronto, 2009 [1993]) toward increased surveillance (Bruna, 2022)?

What impact do these tools have on the mental and physical burden of informal caregivers? Does the ability to track loved ones and stay informed about their activities provide reassurance that ‘everything is fine,’ or does it create new cognitive and emotional burdens? In other words, do digital tools foster a sense of security, or do they introduce additional responsibilities related to organizing, anticipating, and planning care work?

Beyond their use, how are these tools implemented? Are their adoption and usage negotiated, and with whom? Or are they imposed by those seeking to exert control? To what extent do the temporal constraints of these technologies reshape the moral dimensions of care (Molinier, Paperman, Laugier, 2009; Borgeaud-Garciandia, 2023) and, more broadly, the social relationships (Bidart, 1997; Dupin, 2018) between caregivers and care recipients?

This call for papers welcomes contributions from various fields of sociology—including family, work, digital studies, social and family policies, and education—that engage with the role of digital technologies in shaping the coordination of social time.

Submission conditions

This special issue aims to bring together empirically grounded contributions in one or more of these areas.

Proposals for papers should be one page in length (i.e. about 4,000 characters excluding references) and should be submitted by May 31st, 2025 to the following addresses:

laetitia.bideau@uclouvain.be

victoria.chantseva@univ-paris13.fr

alexandra.piesen@gmail.com

victor.potier@univ-eiffel.fr

The proposal (abstract), written in English or French, will mention the research question, the methodology used, and the theoretical framework employed. It should emphasize the scientific interest of the proposed article in relation to the existing literature and the call for papers, and should be accompanied by a short bibliography. Abstracts will be evaluated anonymously by the members of the journal’s editorial board.

The journal Reset is also open, in its ‘varia’ section, to all works in the humanities and social sciences, dealing with the digital as an object or method of research.

Bibliographie

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