Disrupted Temporalities

By the end of 2022 permacrisis, an “extended period of insecurity and instability”, was coined as the word of the year (UK). It was the outcome of the range of entangled crises; climate change, the war in Ukraine, and the COVID-19-pandemic. The point of departure for this project is how the co-present crises disrupt the temporalities of everyday life; the temporal flow of routines and rituals, and destabilizing vernacular understanding of pasts, presents, and futures.

The ‘normal’ order of time is no longer taken for granted as we live in a state of ‘permanent exception’.

The project will investigate and compare the ongoing temporalization of everyday lives in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The overall aim is to advance our understanding of how various times are practised in everyday lives, and how such practices activate specific pasts, care for near or far futures, and interfere with present everyday scripts.

The project pursues a performative approach to time as practised, including the premise of temporal indeterminacy and of manifold temporalities co-existing.

The empirical material includes approx. 8100 responses to inquiries collected by folklife archives, supplemented with follow-up questionnaires, diaries, and in-depth interviews. This vast qualitative material provides a unique possibility to investigate disrupted temporalities, and the ongoing practices of sorting out pasts, presents, and futures in everyday life within four Nordic countries.