Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism Author(S): E
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The Past and Present Society Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism Author(s): E. P. Thompson Source: Past & Present, No. 38 (Dec., 1967), pp. 56-97 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/649749 . Accessed: 06/01/2014 10:10 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Oxford University Press and The Past and Present Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Past &Present. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.240.165.182 on Mon, 6 Jan 2014 10:10:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TIME, WORK-DISCIPLINE, AND INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM Tess ... startedon herway up thedark and crookedlane or streetnot made forhasty progress; a streetlaid out beforeinches of land had value,and whenone-handed clocks sufficiently subdivided the day. ThomasHardy. I IT IS COMMONPLACE THAT THE YEARS BETWEEN 1300 AND 1650 SAW withinthe intellectualculture of WesternEurope importantchanges in the apprehensionof time.1 In the CanterburyTales the cockstill figuresin his immemorialr81e as nature'stimepiece: Chauntecleer - Caste up his eyento thebrighte sonne, That in thesigne of Taurushadde yronne Twenty degrees and oon, and somwhatmoore, He knew by kynde,and by noon oother loore That it was pryme,and crew with blisfulstevene .... But although"By natureknew he ech ascensioun/Of theequynoxial in thilketoun", the contrastbetween "nature's" time and clocktime is pointedin theimage - Wel sikererwas his crowyngin his logge Than is a clokke,or an abbeyorlogge. This is a very early clock: Chaucer (unlike Chauntecleer)was a Londoner,and was awareof the times of Court, of urban organization, and ofthat "merchant's time" which Jacques Le Goff,in a suggestive articlein Annales,has opposedto thetime of the medieval church.2 I do notwish to arguehow far the change was due to the spreadof clocksfrom the fourteenthcentury onwards, how farthis was itself a symptomof a new Puritandiscipline and bourgeoisexactitude. Howeverwe see it, the changeis certainlythere. The clock steps on to the Elizabethanstage, turningFaustus's last soliloquyinto a dialoguewith time: "the starsmove still, time runs, the clockwill strike". Siderealtime, which has beenpresent since literature began, 1 Lewis Mumford makes suggestive claims in Technics and Civilization (London, I934), esp. pp. 12-18, 196-9: see also S. de Grazia, Of Time, Work, and Leisure (New York, 1962), Carlo M. Cipolla, Clocks and Culture 300oo-7oo (London, 1967), and Edward T. Hall, The Silent Language (New York, 1959). 2 J. le Goff,"Au Moyen Age: Temps de L'Eglise et temps du marchand", Annales,E.S.C., xv (196o); and the same author's "Le temps du travail dans le 'crise' du XIVe Siacle: du temps medieval au temps moderne", Le Moyen Age, lxix (1963). This content downloaded from 129.240.165.182 on Mon, 6 Jan 2014 10:10:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TIME, WORK-DISCIPLINE, AND INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM 57 hasnow moved at onestep from the heavens into the home. Mortality and love are bothfelt to be morepoignant as the "Snaylymotion of themooving hand"3 crosses the dial. Whenthe watch is wornabout the neckit lies in proximityto the less regularbeating of the heart. The conventionalElizabethan images of time as a devourer,a defacer, a bloodytyrant, a scytheman,are old enough,but thereis a new immediacyand insistence.4 As the seventeenthcentury moves on the image of clock-work extends,until, with Newton, it has engrossedthe universe. And by the middleof the eighteenthcentury (if we are to trustSterne) the clockhad penetratedto moreintimate levels. For TristramShandy's father- "one of the most regular men in everythinghe did . .. that everlived" - "had made it a rule formany years of his life,- on the firstSunday night of everymonth.., .to windup a largehouse- clock,which we had standingon the back-stairshead". "He had likewisegradually brought some otherlittle family concernments to the same period",and this enabledTristram to date his conception veryexactly. It also provokedThe Clockmaker'sOutcry against the Author: The directionsI had formaking several clocks for the countryare counter- manded;because no modestlady now dares to mentiona wordabout winding- up a clock,without exposing herself to the slyleers and jokesof the family ... Nay, the commonexpression of street-walkersis, "Sir, will you have your clock wound up ?" Virtuousmatrons (the "clockmaker" complained) are consigningtheir clocksto lumberrooms as "excitingto acts of carnality".5 However, this gross impressionismis unlikelyto advance the presentenquiry: how far,and in whatways, did this shiftin time- sense affectlabour discipline, and how fardid it influencethe inward apprehensionof time of workingpeople? If the transitionto matureindustrial society entailed a severerestructuring of working habits- new disciplines,new incentives,and a new humannature upon whichthese incentives could bite effectively- how faris this relatedto changesin theinward notation of time ? 3 M. Drayton, "Of his Ladies not Comming to London", Works,ed. J. W. Hebel (Oxford, 1932), iii, p. 204. 4 The change is discussed Cipolla, op. cit.; Erwin Sturzl, Der Zeitbegriffin der ElisabethanischenLiteratur (Wiener Beitrage zur Englischen Philologie, lxix, Wien-Stuttgart,1965); Alberto Tenenti, II Senso della Morte e l'amore della vita nel rinanscimento(Milan, 1957). 5 Anon., The Clockmaker'sOutcry against the Authorof ... TristramShandy (London, 1760), pp. 42-3. This content downloaded from 129.240.165.182 on Mon, 6 Jan 2014 10:10:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 58 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 38 II It is wellknown that among primitive peoples the measurement of timeis commonlyrelated to familiarprocesses in thecycle of work or of domesticchores. Evans-Pritchardhas analysedthe time-sense of the Nuer: The daily timepiece is the cattle clock, the round of pastoral tasks, and the time of day and the passage of time througha day are to a Nuer primarilythe succession of these tasks and theirrelation to one another. Amongthe Nandi an occupationaldefinition of time evolved covering notonly each hour, but half hours of the day - at 5-30in themorning the oxen have gone to the grazing-ground,at 6 the sheep have been unfastened,at 6-30 the sun has grown,at 7 it has becomewarm, at 7-30 the goats have gone to the grazing-ground,etc. - an uncom- monlywell-regulated economy. In a similarway termsevolve for the measurementof time intervals. In Madagascartime mightbe measuredby "a rice-cooking"(about half an hour)or "the fryingof a locust" (a moment). The Cross River nativeswere reportedas saying"the man died in less than the time in whichmaize is not yet completelyroasted" (less thanfifteen minutes).6 It is not difficultto findexamples of thisnearer to us in cultural time. Thus in seventeenth-centuryChile timewas oftenmeasured in "credos": an earthquakewas describedin 1647 as lastingfor the period of two credos; while the cooking-timeof an egg could be judgedby an Ave Maria said aloud. In Burmain recenttimes monks rose at daybreak"when there is lightenough to see the veinsin the hand".' The OxfordEnglish Dictionary gives us Englishexamples - "pater nosterwyle", "misererewhyle" (1450), and (in the New EnglishDictionary but not the OxfordEnglish Dictionary) "pissing while"- a somewhatarbitrary measurement. PierreBourdieu has exploredmore closelythe attitudestowards timeof the Kabylepeasant (in Algeria)in recentyears: "An attitude of submissionand of nonchalantindifference to the passageof time 6 E. E. Evans-Pritchard,The Nuer (Oxford, 1940), pp. Ioo-4; M. P. Nilsson, Primitive Time Reckoning(Lund, 1920), pp. 32-3, 42; P. A. Sorokin and R. K. Merton, "Social Time: a Methodological and Functional Analysis", Amer.Jl. Sociol., xlii (I937); A. I. Hallowell, "Temporal Orientationin Western Civilization and in a Pre-Literate Society", Amer. Anthrop.,new ser. xxxix (1937). Other sources forprimitive time reckoningare cited in H. G. Alexan- der, Time as Dimensionand History(Albuquerque, 1945), p. 26, and Beate R. Salz, "The Human Element in Industrialization", Econ. Devel. and Cult. Change,iv (I955), esp. pp. 94-114. 7 E. P. Salas, "L'Evolution de la notion du temps et les horlogersl'apoque& coloniale au Chili", Annales E.S.C., xxi (1966), p. 146; Cultural Patternsand TechnicalChange, ed. M. Mead (New York, UNESCO, 1953), P. 75. This content downloaded from 129.240.165.182 on Mon, 6 Jan 2014 10:10:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TIME, WORK-DISCIPLINE, AND INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM 59 whichno one dreamsof mastering,using up, or saving... Haste is seen as a lack of decorumcombined with diabolical ambition". The clockis sometimesknown as "the devil'smill"; thereare no precise meal-times;"the notionof an exact appointmentis unknown;they agreeonly to meet'at thenext market' ". A popularsong runs: It is uselessto pursuethe world, No one willever overtake it." Synge,in hiswell-observed account of the Aran Islands, gives us a classicexample: While I am walkingwith Michael someoneoften