Social Forces, University of North Carolina Press

Private Time and Public Time: The Temporal Structure of Social Accessibility and Professional Commitments Author(s): Eviatar Zerubavel Source: Social Forces, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Sep., 1979), pp. 38-58 Published by: University of North Carolina Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2577783 . Accessed: 24/06/2011 09:27
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Private

Time

and

Public
Structure

Time:

The

Temporal

of
and

Social

Accessibility

Professional
EVIATAR

Commitments*
ZERUBAVEL,

University Pittsburgh of

ABSTRACT Thispaperhighlightsthe temporal aspects socialaccessibility, of demonstratingthat timeis a major dimension socialorganization of alongwhich bothprivacy professional and commitments defined modern are in An society. analysisof the temporal structureof professional commitments within the domainof healthcare, leads to the claim that the temporally rigid way in which most professional commitments definedtoday is one of the key are A characteristics modernsocialorganization. generalconceptual of scheme, constructed aroundthe temporal structure socialaccessibility, evaluated of is in termsof its use in helpingus identify differentiate and various occupational rolesas well as variousstatus rankingswithin stratification systems. The symbolicsignificance the temporal is of organization social accessibility of stressed-both general,andfor professional in commitments particular. in A most significantconsequence of the growing division of laborin modern society has been man's multiple participationin the social world. In traditional societies, the person's various group affiliations are interrelated in a sort of concentric pattern, so that membership in any social group or network necessarily implies membership in some others. In modern society, on the other hand, these affiliationsmay be represented by a web of intersecting circles which are not contained in-and are, at least in part, independent of-one another (Simmel, b). A major implication of modern man's multiple participationin the social world has been his segmentation along the lines of his affiliations with various social groups and networks. That these affiliations are independent of one another implies that none encompasses him in toto. Whereas membership in concentricsocial circles implies being totally absorbedby
*Thisis an expanded version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American SociologicalAssociation, 1978. I wish to thank Renee Fox, Erving Goffman, Edward Gross, SamuelHeilman, CharlesLidz, VictorLidz, Susan Pondfield,YaelZerubavel,and two anonymous referees for their valuablecomments on earlierdrafts.
C)1979,Universityof North CarolinaPress. 0037-7732/79/010038-58$02.10

38

Private, Public Time / 39

them, each of the various intersecting social circles with which modern man is affiliated demands from him only a partial involvement. Hence the widely discussed social-structural, as well as existential, distinction between the modern individual and each of the various roles he occupies. Never being totally identified with any one of them, his involvement in each is necessarily partial. The distinction between person and role is closely related to a similar sociological distinction, that between the private self and the public self. One of the key characteristics of modern social organization is its separation between the private and public spheres of the individual's life. Aside from the general need for some periodic withdrawal from publicity into privacy (Goffman, a, d; Schwartz a),' it becomes even more necessary in modern society. The competing claims on the person by his various social circles and the often conflicting demands entailed by his various social roles make the institutionalization of such remissions absolutely essential to modern social life (Merton). It should be added, however, that privacy and publicity should not be regarded as mutually exclusive categories, since pure forms of either are quite rare. The situation of being alone with one's spouse, for example, is obviously less public than that of being at a formal reception, and yet it is by no means totally private. Therefore, privacy and publicity ought to be viewed as the ideal-typical polarities of a continuum, rather than a conceptual dichotomy. The Temporal Organization of Privacy That the modern individual must maintain the partiality of each of his various involvements in social life by withdrawing periodically into his private self implies the need to regulate his social accessibility. The sociological concern with privacy has traditionally been restricted to the informational aspects of social accessibility (that is, to such phenomena as secrecy and confidentiality), and has only recently been broadened so as to encompass also some of its spatial aspects, such as personal space and territoriality. The relation between privacy and time, for example, has so far hardly been touched. And yet, the temporal aspects of privacy involved, for example, in the partial insulation of social actors from observability (Merton) or in the segregation of the audiences of their various performances (Goffman, a) cannot be ignored. Moreover, the private or public quality of a given space often varies across time. "Back regions," for example, are defined not only in spatial terms, but in temporal terms as well: ". . . there are many regions which function at one time and in one sense as a front region and at another time and in another sense as a back region" (Goffman, a, 126. Italics mine).

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The indispensability of scheduling to the maintenance of privacy has been noted quite explicitly by Goffman: By proper scheduling of one's performances,it is possible not only to keep one's audiences separated from each other. .. but also to allow a few moments in between performancesso as to extricateoneself psychologicallyand physically from one personal front, while taking on another (a, 138). Whilemanifestly participatingin one system of roles, the individualwill have some capacityto hold in abeyance his involvement in other patterns, thus sustaining one or more dormant roles that are enacted roles on other occasions. This capacity supports a life cycle, a calendar cycle, and a daily cycle of role enactments; such scheduling implies some jurisdictionalagreements as to where and what the individual is to be when (c, 90-91). This discussion is an attempt to throw some light on the relatively neglected temporal dimension of social accessibility. I intend to demonstrate how time functions as one of the major dimensions of social organization along which privacy and role commitments are defined in modern society. By providing some boundaries along which the private and public spheres of life are segregated from one another and to which the association of person and role is confined, the temporal structure of social life has become indispensable to the regulation of the modern person's social accessibility, as well as to the maintenance of the partiality of each of his various social involvements. In other words, with the increasing functional and structural differentiation within individuals' webs of group affiliations and the growing bureaucratic split between person and role, time has become one of the major organizational principles which help to institutionalize privacy and to segment the modern person along the lines of his various social involvements: "The fact that there is a time for each of many different activities . . . keeps the claims of each from interfering with those of the others. In fact a society so complex as ours probably could not function without relatively rigid time scheduling" (Parsons, 302). That time functions as a segmenting principle in social life was first noted by Durkheim, who contended that it is a major means of separating sacred and profane occasions and activities (which, for him, was the very essence of religion). In fact, in arguing that the institutionalization of feast days, fast days, and rest days is essential for keeping the sacred and the profane domains of life segregated from one another, Durkheim actually claimed that temporalsegregation is one of the fundamental principles of the social organization of religious life. I would like to demonstrate here that, in a very similar way, time also keeps apart the private and public spheres of life.2 The person's life is socially organized and temporally structured so that whereas during some periods of time he must be accessible to others (e.g., during office hours or on open-house evenings), there are other periods of time during which he may be legitimately inaccessible (e.g., when he is in the bathroom, meditating, or asleep).

Private, Public Time / 41

I propose that we view the relative degree of individuals' social accessibility at any given time as a proportion between two hypothetical constructs, privatetime and publictime (Zerubavel, b). I should note that, like privacy and publicity in general, these are the ideal-typical polarities of a hypothetical continuum, and do not constitute together a mutually exclusive dichotomy. Rather than view given time periods as either private or public, we ought to consider every moment of an individual's time as some combination of private and public elements, that is, as being located somewhere along that continuum. This would allow us to compare various degrees of social accessibility. The time one spends playing with one's children, for example, is obviously not as purely private as when he is asleep; yet it is by all means less public than the time he spends, say, at a cocktail party. Despite the obvious conceptual affinity between private time and free time (or leisure), these two categories should not be confused with one another-in the same way that privacy in general ought to be distinguished they emphasize two distinct aspects of social life. from freedom-since Whereas the main focus of the work-leisure dichotomy in sociology is the use of time, the main focus of the present conceptual framework is social accessibility. Thus, whereas leisure is characterized primarily as time which is optionally used (De Grazia), private time is characterized here as time during which one is socially inaccessible, regardless of how it is used. To appreciate the distinction between these two concepts, note that we may engage in public activities during our leisure time while we may stress our inaccessibility when we work. But private time does resemble leisure in being a residual category (Moore). That the institutional temporal order is organizationally prior to the personal one (Zerubavel, e, chap. 5) is also revealed in the chronological priority accorded the scheduling of public over private time. It can even be argued that the former is logically prior, since it is usually the fixed and unalterable starting point, in accordance with which most of the latter is organized. Doctors who work in hospitals, for example, must plan their vacations in accordance with the annual rotation schedule of their hospital. Also, like military personnel, they must refer to their weekly or monthly night-duty schedule before they can make any reservations for shows or plans with friends for particular evenings and weekends. Private time, then, is definable only in relation to public time. Yet there are at least four other aspects of its definitional relativity. First, the location of private time is variable and can never be defined in an absolute way by any particular time of the day, day of the week, part of the year, and so on. Even daytime, which is regarded by most people in our society as far more public than nighttime, has a very different quality for night workers, for example. During my fieldwork in a hospital, I once heard a night nurse telling an intern how very surprised and somewhat annoyed

42 / Social Forces / vol. 58:1, september 1979

she was at being called at home by her head nurse at 10:30A.M., to which she first referred as "the middle of the day," adding immediately: "In the middle of the night for me, that is!"3 The definitional relativity of private time is also implied by the fact that the temporalboundaries which separate it from the more public time periods may vary across cultures. The social meaning of calling someone at 3:00 PM., for example, depends, to a large extent, on whether that act'takesplace within a culturalcontext where it is institutionally customary to take afternoon naps! Moreover, the temporal boundaries of social accessibility may vary even within one and the same culture, across interactional channels as well as across degrees of social distance. Thus, it is usually considered appropriateto call someone on the telephone some time past the temporal boundary beyond which an actual visit would be regarded as an intrusion. Similarly,it is usually considered appropriate to call a close friend some time past the temporal boundary beyond which calling a mere acquaintanceor a strangerwould be regarded as an intrusion. Finally, the definitional relativity of private time is also suggested by the very fact that the notions of accessibility and inaccessibilityare relative. One is never inaccessiblein an absolute way, but always in relation to someone, and this someone may very well vary. During the time that one is accessible to one's boss, for example, one may nevertheless be almost totally inaccessible to one's children, or vice versa. The hypothetical continuum lying between private time and public time bears a very close resemblance to another continuum which relates to the spatial aspects of social accessibility, namely the one lying between "intimate distance" and "public distance" (Hall, b). I would, therefore, suggest that we can view time from a novel perspective, that of territoriality, and define private time as a "non-spatial territoryof the self."4I prowhich resembles pose that we view private time as a nicheof inaccessibility, both home territoryand personal space in that one has far more control over one's accessibility to others within it than outside of it. Within this temporally defined quasi-spatial niche, one can be legitimately inaccessible, and does not have to rely on the use of such defensive techniques as saying, for example, "If anyone calls, say that I am not here . . . " This preserve is bounded by some temporally defined "involvement shields" (Goffman, d), which, though certainlynot as visible as spatial boundaries, are nevertheless regarded socially as no less binding. Thus, claiming control over one's social accessibility within it ought to be regarded as any other territorial claim. Violatingthis claim by telephoning one at 3:00A.M., for example, is quite analogous to violating his claim over his personal space by standing or sitting too close to him, and is justifiableonly on the grounds that it is necessitated by an extreme emergency. (Thatcalling one at that hour may constitute a practicaljoke [Hall, a] is based on the takenfor-grantedassumption that a call made at socially accepted sleeping hours must be an emergency). It should be added, however, that there are actu-

Private, Public Time / 43

ally no explicit rules which provide a clear-cut definition of the temporal boundaries of social accessibility, so that these are often subject to negotiation. That various people may define them differently introduces some ambiguous situations that sometimes even result in conflicts. One's right to be inaccessible at certain times is also evident from the way society punishes offenders by taking the control over their private time out of their hands. A typical case in point is the prison, which is a setting where people have almost no private time at all, where "inmates are almost continually in one another's presence or in sight of authorities" (Schwartz, c, 229. Italics mine). It should be added that, in general, time is probably the most significant dimension of the "total" aspect of "total institutions," where inmates are always socially accessible and have no time within which they can screen out non-intimates. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that, in the original definition of the total institution, time was listed as the first dimension of the "encompassing tendencies" of institutions in general (Goffman, b). (It is interesting to note that the total institution is also characterized by the fact that the inmate's entire time is scheduled for him by others. This points to the particular relation between schedules and social control [Zerubavel, c]). Since we are dealing here with a territorial perspective on temporality, it would be most useful to characterize time by two other concepts, which have so far been applied only to characterize buildings (Osmond) and spaces in general (Sommer), namely "sociofugality" and "sociopetality." Sociopetality has originally been defined as "that quality which encourages, fosters and even enforces the development of stable interpersonal relationships," and sociofugality as "a design which prevents or discourages the formation of stable human relationships" (Osmond, 28). However, private time, too, can be said to be sociofugal, since-like personal space-it essentially separates people from one another, whereas public time-like public space-is essentially sociopetal, in that it draws them together. For most people in our society, for example, nighttime is a sort of sociofugal time, whereas daytime is more of a sociopetal time, since social interaction at night is usually far more exclusive than during the day. However, when people do interact at nighttime, their interaction is very often particularly intimate, precisely because of that! With nighttime being usually a sociofugal time period, interpersonal barriers fall there much faster than at daytime. (It has also been claimed that at nighttime people are often much more friendly and helpful than during the day [Melbin].) Like privacy in general, private time, too, has certain symbolic significance which transcends its merely practical value. Lead time (Hall, a), for example, is by no means a merely practical device which is used in order to enhance effective scheduling, but, to a large extent, a symbolic display of respect towards another person's private time. To appreciate its symbolic significance, note how many people might decline an invitation for a first

44 / Social Forces / vol. 58:1, september 1979

date if they are not given notice enough in advance (even if they are actually free on that particular day), since a short notice implies some lack of respect for their inaccessibility. Likewise, it is largely employees' moral demand to be able to plan their private time enough in advance that accounts for the particular efforts which managers usually make to design work schedules as early as possible. Though its length-like the temporal boundaries of social accessibility-is only very rarely explicitly defined (as, for example, in the diplomatic world), lead time is usually regulated in a fairly structured way by tacit rules of etiquette, and its length varies at regular patterns across social distance as well as relative social status. Thus, while a close friend, for example, may be invited to come in an hour or so, mere acquaintances are very likely to feel offended at being invited only two days in advance. (It is interesting to note that some people use these very same rules strategically, as when calling others at the last moment precisely in order to present themselves as less distant socially and to suggest that the relationship is not very formal). Similarly, it is well known that a distinguished speaker who is invited to deliver a guest lecture usually demands a longer lead time than does a less-known speaker. The Bureaucratization of Professional Commitments Although I have characterized public and private time as particularly distinct from work and leisure time, it is nevertheless in the domain of work that we can best appreciate the temporal segregation of the private and public spheres of life from one another. Probably nowhere is the modern temporal segregation of the private from the public self more evident than within this domain. The temporal aspect of the bureaucratic segmentation of the modern individual into a person and an incumbent of a particular occupational role is seen in the fact that the partiality of his involvement in that role is very often defined in temporal terms. Most occupational commitments today are officially defined in such terms as a number of hours a day or a number of days a week (not to mention, of course, the common bureaucratic distinction between full-time and part-time employees). Even that part of the year during which one is not actively associated with one's occupational role, namely the vacation, is defined primarily in temporal terms. Thus, we may be free to spend our vacations wherever and with whomever we like, yet we are nevertheless officially restricted as to when we can take them and how long they may last. (Like private time in general, the vacation is defined as being away from something, that is, as a residual category. The word, vacation, itself derives from the Latin vaccus, meaning empty.) I shall not concern myself here with such issues as the length of the

Private, Public Time / 45

working day and the workweek or the annual number of vacation days, matters of main concern to labor unions and sociologists of leisure alike, since I do not intend to provide here a quantitative characterization of work time. Rather, I shall deal with the qualitative distinction between various time periods in terms of degrees of social accessibility; and, in particular, with the qualitative characterization of work time as public time. The feature I wish especially to stress here is the temporalrigidity of modern workschedules. (However, I shall also not deal here with "flexitime," since it highlights only the degree of rigidity of the temporal location of the boundaries between private and public, whereas my main concern here is the rigidity or flexibility of these boundaries themselves.) The temporal rigidity of modern work schedules is accounted for, at in part, by economic modernization. Whereas in pre-industrial times, least "Nearly all craftsmen were self-employed, working in their own homes with their own tools, to their own hours, knocking off when it suited them" (Wright, 116. Italics mine), industrialization brought with it some inevitable temporal rigidification of work (Thompson). "The transition from a temporally lax and variable work pattern to a tightly timedand temporallyrecompensed work schedule is one of the major changes in attitude required of the newly recruited worker in underdeveloped areas undergoing economic modernization" (Moore, 25-6. Italics mine). And yet, to understand fully the temporal rigidity of modern work schedules, we must also consider a most significant ideological change which has taken place in the West. With the spread of the democratic belief in the universality of human dignity, and given the increasing demand for privacy, it has become generally accepted that every person has a basic right to be socially inaccessible at certain times, for practical, as well as symbolic, reasons. Within the domain of work, the official recognition given to the privatization of some parts of the individual's time is most clearly indicated by the institutionalization of paid vacations, sick days, and bonus days such as holiday time and personal holidays. One gains insight into the symbolic significance of the privatization of time by contrasting the traditional relations between masters and servants with the modern relations between superiors and subordinates. The human dignity of the modern underling is suggested by the fact that, unlike the traditional servant, he is not only a subordinate. The partiality of his identification as such is assured by the fact that his association with his occupational role is temporally bounded in a most rigid way, and is periodically suspended. In the modern West, subordinates are never regarded as inferior by nature to their superiors. . . . they only become so fora time,by covenant. Withinthe terms of this covenant the one is a servant, the other a master;beyond it they are two citizens (Tocqueville, 191. Italicsmine).

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In democraciesthe condition of domestic service does not degrade the characterof those who enter upon it, because it is freely chosen and adopted for a timeonly (Tocqueville,194. Italicsmine). In other words, we are literally dealing here with a temporaryrelationship between person and occupational role. As I have shown earlier, it is generally accepted in the modern West that the individual has the right to claim control over his social accessibility during his private time as a sort of possession. Given the modern conception of time as a commodity (Zerubavel, a), it is only natural that one of the most common ways of denying a person that right is to buy it from him. This suggests that working time ought to be regarded as a period of private time which employers transform into public time by buying it from their employees (Soule). That so many wage earners are paid by units of time (such as the hour or the day) both reflects and reinforces the temporal rigidity of their work schedules. Obviously, the more private the individual's time is, the more expensive it is. Working overtime is a perfect case in point. Not only must the employer pay his employee, or give him some compensatory time off some other working day for having sold him his right over his time; he must also pay the employee who works overtime at a higher rate than usual-time and a half or even double time-for having surrendered to him the more private parts of it. For very similar reasons, employees also get paid at a considerably higher rate than usual for working evenings or nights. Although from a purely quantitative standpoint, night, evening, and day shifts are usually interchangeable (as are regular and overtime hours), the qualitative distinction between privacy and publicity (given the general sociofugality of nighttime) is nevertheless officially recognized. It should also be noted that, when they are asked to work overtime or on a night shift, employees usually expect to be notified enough in advance. This indicates their particular sensitivity about having due respect symbolically displayed towards their private time. There is strong ideological resistance in the modern West to people being forced to work beyond their regular hours of work. As an American legislator who sponsors a bill which would prohibit employers from firing or even disciplining employees who refuse to work overtime recently asked: "Should individuals' time be ruled by the large corporations that they work for, or should people have the basic right to live their own lives, on their own time?" (Knickerbocker, 7. Italics mine). As the etymology of the term overtime suggests, it is officially agreed today that the person's accessibility in his occupational role is restricted to the temporal boundaries of that part of his time which he has "lsold"; beyond those boundaries he has the right to refuse to be actively associated and identified with that role. Most commitments and responsibilities involved in modern occupational roles are officially restricted to those public time periods to which partici-

Private, Public Time / 47

pation of their incumbents is confined. They are by no means expected to transcend the temporal boundaries of these periods, which are supposed to separate these roles from their incumbents as persons. With very few exceptions, modern people are not always on the job, and outside the temporal boundaries of certain public periods they may be legitimately inaccessible in their occupational roles. (This is particularlyapparent in organizationswhich operate around the clock.) I would like to claim that the temporal boundaries of these public periods are the boundaries between the states of being on duty and offduty, and, therefore, propose that these periods be called duty periods.This implies a view of the popular bureaucraticdistinction between being on and off duty as a temporal one, a particularinstance of the distinction between public time and private time in the domain of work. Indeed, from a social organizational standpoint, the temporal definition of the boundaries of most modern professional commitments is definitely prior to, and by far more binding than, say, their spatial definition. The professional commitments of the modern person are defined primarily by the temporal boundaries of some duty periods. Outside those boundaries, one is usually considered to be off duty, even though physically present at the working place. Whether taken at the work place or elsewhere, the office coffee break and the lunch break are classic examples of institutionalizedforms of temporary suspension of the person's association with his occupational role. And there are other occasions when a person who, from a spatial point of view, is at work may nevertheless decline any work responsibilities on the accepted grounds that he is already off, or not yet on, duty. Much has been said and written about the increasing trend towards professionalization in modern social life. This used to entail being constantly on the job. But the professional who is alwayson the job is becoming increasinglyrare. One of the most significant aspects of the rationalization of social life in modern Westerncivilization is the increasing bureaucratization of social accessibilityand professional commitments, a majormanifestation of which is the rigidificationof their temporal boundaries. The rigid way in which professional commitments are temporally defined is one of the key characteristics modern social organization.As becomes a bureauof craticage, the modern person's time is rigidly segmented into parts during which he is officially supposed to be accessible in his occupational role, and others during which he is not. The identity between a modern occupational role and its incumbent is inevitably partial, since it is confined to a rigidly defined period of time. Thus, many job descriptions today are rigid and explicit in specifying the temporalboundaries of the professional commitments entailed in the job. The rigidity of these boundaries derives from the fact that they are officiallycircumscribedby calendarand clock-e.g., a nine-to-five job with a three-week annual vacation. The bureaucratization modern professional commitments is by no of

48 / Social Forces / vol. 58:1, september 1979 means restricted to such work situations as those of bank tellers, receptionists, or assembly-line workers. In fact, it has already penetrated even the most sacred domains of life. Let us explore the temporal structureof professional commitments within the domain of health care, where acute issues of life and death are a daily matter,and where one would, therefore, expect to find at least some approximationof a total identity between an occupationalrole and its incumbent. The first chapter of the code of ethics adopted by the American Medical Association in 1847 begins with the words, "A physician should
not only be ever ready to obey the calls of the sick. . . (Leake, 219. Italics ."

mine). This implies that physicians regardever-availability a fundamental as to the point of being taken for granted-professional obligation. Even today, medicine is among the very few professions which still adhere, at least ideologically, to the traditionalconception of the professional as inseparable from his occupational role. Being held continuously responsible and accountable for their patients' well-being, physicians are expected to be alwayson the job and to activate their professional duties whenever they are in demand. When they leave the hospital for the day, they are usually expected to leave instructions as to how they can be reached. Furthermore, they may be called at home for consultation. During the last two decades, a special one-way radio system has been introduced into hospital life. Physicians carry"beepers" wherever they go; thus, practicallyas well as symbolically,they can be reached at any time. Thus, at least in theory, they have no periods of time which are utterly private and not vulnerable to intrusion. The way in which physicians' professional commitments are socially defined is revealed very clearly in the temporal structureof medical coverage in hospitals. One of the most significant structuralcharacteristicsof doctors' work schedules, in accordancewith which their professional duties are defined from a temporalstandpoint, is their relativeflexibility.Their coverage systems in the hospital are based on duty periods which are fairly flexible, as far as length is concerned, since their end is usually markedby the actual completion of the physician's daily tasks in the hospital, rather than dictated by the clock. Doctors do not have any rigidly fixed leaving times beyond which they may legitimately refuse to see patients. Only in hospital services such as emergency rooms or outpatient clinics, where the doctor-patient relationshipis relativelydiscontinuous anyway, are doctors' duty periods durationally rigid and bounded by leaving times which are fixed at particulartimes of the day. However, even in the case of the medical profession we can already detect the bureaucratizationof professional commitments in the recognition-even though not yet official-of some notion of private time and periodic withdrawal into inaccessibility. The physician who makes house calls in the middle of the night is becoming increasingly a rare

Private, Public Time / 49

species, and the expressed admiration which some young house officers hold for senior staff physicians who do come to the hospital on weekends or holidays when they are needed for consultation only indicates that the doctor's ever-accessiblity should by no means be taken for granted today. Physicians themselves also admit-though unofficially-that the practice of turning one's beeper off is not uncommon among them. Moreover, whenever interns call their resident or attending physician at home, they first make sure that it is justifiable, and nearly always offer some apology for having intruded during non-hospital time. They usually also think twice before waking up the resident at 3:00 or 4:00 A.M., although he or she is officially supposed to be accessible all night.5 This is definitely reinforced by joking comments such as, "If there is any emergency, don't hesitate not to wake me up," which, though meant as jokes, cannot be understood only as such. It can also be argued that the reason private physicians have institutionalized group practice is that they would still be able to comply with the moral imperative of providing continuous coverage (Zerubavel, d), and yet also ensure the privacy of time off from the clinic. Consider, for example, the case of the Health Maintenance Organization. The fact that physicians can share their responsibility for any patient with other physicians (or even other health professionals) enables them to provide continuous medical coverage of patients without sacrificing their claim for some private, offduty time. And yet-ideologically, at least-the medical -profession still adheres to the traditional conception of the professional as inseparable from his occupational role, and physicians are still supposed, at least in theory, to be always on the job. The bureaucratization of professional commitments in the domain of health care is certainly far more evident in the case of the nursing profession. Unlike physicians, nurses are paid by the hour, since their professional obligations are officially defined by number of working hours per week. Their time is officially segmented into rigidly defined periods during which they are supposed to be accessible in their capacity as nurses, and others during which they are not. They are expected to be active in their occupational role only within the temporal boundaries of their duty periods, and are officially relieved from having to assume any professional responsibilities outside them. When contrasted with the role of physician, it is not only the considerably shorter working day and workweek of nurses that is so impressive sociologically about the role of nurse, but, also, the rigid definition of the temporal boundaries of their accessibility and professional commitments as nurses (Zerubavel, d). This rigidity pertains both to the length of their duty periods and their temporal location within the daily cycle. It is built into the nurses' coverage system through the institutionalization of fixed arrival and leaving times which constitute the official boundaries of

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their professional commitments as nurses. Generally speaking, nurses stop working not upon having completed daily work assignments but, rather, when the clock marks the end of their shift. Their report, which is a highly ritualized ceremony that dramatizes the acts of getting into and out of the occupational role of nurse and of assuming and taking off professional responsibilities, is scheduled for fixed times of the day and is usually not postponed by more than a few minutes, even when a service is particularly busy. The particular rigidity of the temporal boundaries of nurses' professional commitments derives from the fact that they are circumscribed by the clock. Ending one's work in accordance with the clock obviously entails more temporal rigidity than doing it according to the completion of tasks. Moreover, it is far more artificial.6 order to appreciate the artificial basis In of the temporal rigidity of nurses' coverage systems, note that not only are the boundaries of their shifts fixed in time, they are usually also designated in conventionally rounded off temporal terms. Thus, nurses' shifts usually begin and end on the hour, rather than at such times as 4:14 or 8:37. This also implies that their length is designated in rounded off terms of complete hours, rather than, say, 7-hour-42 minute-long time periods. Whenever nurses are asked by their head nurse or nursing supervisor to work overtime, it is officially understood that they have the right to refuse. If they do agree to it, they get paid at a considerably higher hourly rate than usual, as if to be adequately compensated for having relinquished their claim over some of their more private time. (Since nighttime is generally recognized as being of a far more private quality than daytime, nurses also get paid at a higher hourly rate than usual for working on the evening or night shifts). They also expect to be approached about it as far in advance as possible. Not only is it quite impractical not to allow them enough lead time-for otherwise they might make other plans for that particular evening-it is also considered rather impolite, since nurses are particularly sensitive about having due respect paid their claims to their more private time. Thus, even though there are usually no official rules which specify explicitly how long in advance nurses should call in when sick, most seem to agree about a certain temporal threshold beyond which calling off sick is regarded as inappropriately late, since it does not allow those of them who are asked to work overtime enough lead time. Furthermore, it shows a lack of respect for the private time of fellow nurses who have to cover for the sick one. Such a symbolic display of respect is expected even by nurses who are on call at home. Even though paid (at a low rate) for just staying at home in case they might actually be called in, they nevertheless expect to be given some advance notice when they are called in, mainly for symbolic reasons. (The situation of being on call at home is a very good example of a most delicate combination of actual privacy and potential publicity, and

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indicates that private and public time do not form a mutually exclusive dichotomy, but are, rather, polarities of a continuum.) Generally speaking, the social world of the modern nurse is sharply divided into public and private periods. Nurses' time outside the hospital has a far more private quality than that of physicians. They do not have to carry beepers with them wherever they go. They are not expected to leave instructions as to where and how they can be reached on evenings and weekends. It is most unusual that they would be called at home for consultation. In short, they are well assured that once they leave the hospital grounds, the privacy of their off-duty time will be protected. Nurses' professional ethics allow them to legitimately abstain from assuming any professional responsibility beyond the official boundaries of their duty periods. (Interestingly, on the very rare occasions when a physician refuses to see patients beyond a certain hour, he is harshly criticized not only by his colleagues, but by nurses as well!) If a nurse has not received a report yet, or if she has already finished giving hers, she is officially considered to be off duty, even if she is physically present at her own service. Nurses often arrive at their service some time before their shift begins, being well assured that no one will expect them to start working right away. It may happen, too, that a nurse will sit at her station some time past the end of her shift, yet remind anyone who asks her to do something that she is already off duty. (It should be added, though, that such instances are far more common in emergency rooms, where the patient turnover is considerably more rapid and staff-patient relationships, therefore, far less continuous and personal, than on inpatient units.) The nurses' report is a sort of closing ceremony, and any presence in the hospital after it has ended can be required only for the purpose of completing tasks which are supposed to have been completed during the duty period. Nurses can be required, for example, to stay in the hospital some time past the end of the report they have given, in order to finish writing up progress notes on each of their patients, a chore to be completed before leaving. On such occasions, however, they are not expected to fulfill and assume any other nursing duties and responsibilities. That nurses often arrive at work some fifteen or twenty minutes ahead of time only to sit at their station without even glancing at a bed or a chart-because they are not on duty yet-clearly demonstrates that even pure concern and motivation can be bureaucratized. That these are artificially regulated in such a rigid way by the clock implies that they cannot be fully accounted for on a psychological level alone.7 The bureaucratization of professional commitments is particularly impressive in the case of a profession such as nursing, since it implies its having already penetrated one of the most sacred domains of our life, namely health care. If commitments, concern, and motivation can be bureaucratized in a domain where

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literally vital problems are a daily matter, is there any domain of social life where they cannot be? Discussion I have tried to throw some light on the temporal aspects of social accessibility and to show that time is a major dimension of social organization along which both privacy and role commitments are defined in modern society. By providing some rigid boundaries that segregate the private and public spheres of life and to which the association of person and role is confined, time has become indispensable in regulating the social accessibility of the modern person, and in setting limits to each of his various social involvements. There is a most significant temporal dimension to the bureaucratic segmentation of the modern individual into a person and an incumbent of a particular occupational role, since his association with that role is officially confined to certain temporal boundaries that are not to be transcended despite the incumbent's professional commitments. This temporally rigid way in which most professional commitments are defined today is definitely one of the key characteristics of modern social organization. I have grounded all those general claims in an analysis of the temporal structure of professional commitments within one particular domain of social life, namely health care. I have chosen to deal with that particular domain because of its sacred nature, contending that if professional commitments are bureaucratized in a domain where problems of life and death are a daily matter, it would be most difficult to find any realm of social life where they are not. Thus, though I have examined the temporal structure of professional commitments only within the domain of health care, such an analysis is clearly applicable to the work situations of secretaries, bank tellers, factory workers, and so on. Moreover, it is very unlikely that even other domains of social life where one would assume that professionals are ever-available (consider, for example, the military, politics, the church, and the police) do not have similar mechanisms of segregating the more private from the more public time. Furthermore, not only do I regard the above analysis of the nursing profession as applicable to most other modern occupations; its applicability is by no means restricted to the domain of work. The conceptual framework which I have constructed around the concepts of private time and public time is definitely applicable to analyses of social organization and social interaction in general. Consider, for example, ever-availability. That family physicians of the old style often dramatize their professional commitment by emphasizing that they would visit a patient in need at any time of the day and

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on any day of the week suggests its particular symbolic significance in medicine. This is also one of the main reasons why the modern hospital is always open (Zerubavel, d), and why many Health Maintenance Organization clinics list their round-the-clock coverage as their most significant attraction to private patients. But the symbolic significance of ever-availability is by no means restricted to the domain of health care. Students, for example, often express their feeling that some approximation of ever-availability ought to be one of the major criteria for a professional evaluation of university professors. Moreover, the symbolic significance of ever-availability is not even restricted to the domain of work in general. For example, one criterion for being a good friend might be the extent to which one approximates an ideal-typical state of ever-availability. Yet as I have shown in contrasting medicine and nursing, the ideas introduced here, in particular the distinction between various degrees of temporal rigidity or flexibility in defining professional commitments, can be most helpful in identifying and differentiating occupational roles. I have shown here how the rigidity or flexibility of the definition of the temporal boundaries of professional commitments may point to fundamental differences in ethical codes among various professions. (I have also shown that these different professional ethics may coexist within one and the same organization.) The contrast between the degree of rigidity or flexibility of the temporal boundaries of nurses' and physicians' professional commitments supports Durkheim's claim that the occupational group constitutes a most significant locus of morality in modern, highly differentiated society (Durkheim, a). While ever-availability is definitely among the major moral imperatives which characterize the medical profession, it certainly does not constitute a binding ethical principle as far as the nursing profession is concerned. Varying degrees of temporal flexibility in accordance with which professional commitments are defined can also help us to identify and differentiate status rankings within a stratification system. Generally speaking,

other things equal, flexiblydefined boundaries professional committemporal of mentsare usuallyassociated with high status, and rigidlydefined ones with low . status
It is true that high-ranking officials exercise much tighter control over their social accessibility than low-ranking officials. In the same way that the rich use butlers, they use secretaries and receptionists to screen visitors, telephone calls, and mail, and it is usually difficult to get an appointment with them. In organizationallife the privacy of the upper rank is insured structurally;it is necessaryto proceed through the lieutenant stratumif the top level is to be reached. In contrast, the lower rank, enjoying less control over those who may have access to it, find their privacymore easily invaded (Schwartz, a, 743).

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And yet, paradoxically,high social status usually involves a much less clear-cut segregation between the private and public spheres of one's life than does low social status. The time of the executive in any bureaucratic organization has a markedly more public quality than the time of hourly paid employees who work in the very same organization. The temporal boundaries of the responsibility of the directorof an emergency room, for example, are ratherfluid and quite flexibly defined, compared to those of any orderly who works there. It is precisely because his social status within the emergency room is higher than that of the orderly that it would be he, rather than the orderly,who would be called at home in the middle of the night in case something goes wrong there. This rule applies not only across occupational groups (physicians, for example, are located much higher than nurses within the social hierarchy of the hospital), but also within each group. The above analysis of the temporal structure of nurses' professional commitments, for example, is far less applicable to head nurses, who usually arrive at work some time before most regular day nurses, often leave some time after them, and are generally far more accessible than they during their non-hospital time. Unlike regularnurses, responhead nurses must always be on duty, because they are personally sible for the services of which they are in charge. Moreover, continuity of coverage is intrinsicallyrelated not only to personal responsibility,but to as indispensability well (Zerubavel, d). Unlike low-ranking officials who work under them, high-ranking officials must always be on duty, because they are socially defined as less dispensable. That high-ranking personnel are always held responsible and accountable implies a fairlydiffusedefinition of their responsibilitiesand commitments and, therefore, a relatively flexible definition of their temporal boundaries. In contrast, the far more specificdefinition of the professional commitments and responsibilities of lower-echelon personnel usually entails a far more rigid definition of their temporalboundaries. In short, there at or is a very closerelationship the between levelof specificity diffuseness which of and aredefined the degree rigidity and responsibilities commitments professional orflexibility definingtheirtemporal in boundaries. Since most role relations in modern society tend to be more specific than diffuse (Parsons), they are temporally defined in a fairly rigid way. Consider, for example, the temporal definition of Weber's types of authority. Whereas traditional or charismatic authority involves the entire person who has it, legal-rational authority involves only that part of him which is temporarily associated with the office. As such, it necessarily involves fixed temporal boundaries. Whereas the authority of traditional or charismaticleaders such as Louis XIV, Nicholas II, Mao Tse-Tung, or Kwame Nkrumah, for example, was temporallybounded only by death or an unscheduled politicalinsurgence, the legal-rational authorityof leaders such as Harold Wilson or Gerald Ford has been procedurallybounded in a

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most rigid way by the fixed, scheduled end of their term in office. This is also very clearly evident when the traditional master is contrasted with the modern boss whose authority is temporally bounded in a most rigid way by the fixed beginning and end of the working day and the workweek. Though I have not passed judgment on the bureaucratization of professional commitments in modern society, I would like to mention two major perspectives from which one might evaluate this phenomenon. Many Marxists would regard a situation in which a secretary leaves her desk promptly at 5:00 P.M. even though in the middle of some work as a classic contemptible manifestation of the human condition of modern alienated labor, for whom "doing" is distinctly dissociated from "being." However, it can also be argued that it is precisely this aspect of bureaucratization that protects the individual from being swallowed entirely by the organization, and so helps to maintain some balance between the "I" and the "me" components of the self. While physicians may regard being paid by the hour as professionally demeaning and look down on nonprofessionals or paraprofessionals who very often refuse to work beyond their regular hours, it is precisely those low-status technicians, dispatchers, secretaries, orderlies, and aides whose private time is institutionally protected far more than that of any physician. The fact that working at 2:00 P.M. on Wednesday, or on July 27 differs substantially from working at 2:00 A.M. on Sunday, or on Christmas highlights a much more general phenomenon, namely the centrality of time as a context on which the meaning of many social situations and acts depends. Eating on a fast day clearly has a very different meaning than has the very same act when it is done on any other day, and the meaning of having sexual relations on a first date definitely differs from that of having sexual relations on a tenth date. Time is very central to the definition of norms and their boundaries. That an act is considered legitimate when it takes place at one time and illegitimate when it takes place at another time implies that the legitimacy of social acts is, to a large extent, temporally situated. Time being a dimension of social life which constitutes a cognitive context for anchoring meaning, the temporal organization of social accessibility is heavily imbued with symbolic significance. I have pointed out, for example, that a long lead time usually functions as a symbolic display of politeness and respect, whereas a short notice implies some lack of respect for one's claim to social inaccessibility (unless it is deliberately intended to function as a symbolic display of intimacy). I have also suggested that the institutionalization of paid vacations, sick days, and personal holidays represents the official recognition given to the person's right to dissociate himself from his occupational role and be professionally inaccessible at times, even if it is for purely symbolic reasons. I have also emphasized the symbolic significance of paying someone at a higher rate than usual for

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working overtime, yet, at the same time, noted the symbolism of everavailability in work situations as well as in other domains of life. The intricate symbolic relationship between private time and social status is a most interesting case in point. Note, for example, that, as symbolic expressions of being professionally committed, the acts of coming to work early and leaving late are usually linked with higher status. A beautiful example of the close symbolic relationship between ever-availability and being important is the habit of Woody Allen's friend in Play It Again, Sam of calling his answering service every now and then during his nonwork time in order to report his current location. Within work time, however, having a secretary who protects one's social inaccessibility is, like having a butler, a symbol of high status and power. I would like to conclude with a general comment about the sociology of time. One of the main characteristics of a social calendar is that it, " ... cuts time up into bounded units not in order to count and total them but to describe and characterize them, to formulate their differential social, intellectual, and religious significance" (Geertz, 391). People definitely do not relate to time only as a physicomathematical entity which is characterized in quantitative terms alone. The distinction between private time and public time is obviously a qualitative distinction. A qualitative conception of time, which puts a particular emphasis on the social ability to unequalize mathematically equal durations (without which the phenomenon of paying one time and a half for working overtime would have made no sense), as well as to equalize mathematically unequal ones, has always been among the fundamental cornerstones of the sociology of time,8 and is certainly one of the major contributions of a sociological perspective on temporality. The above analysis has been an attempt to apply such a perspective to the study of social organization. As I have tried to show, characterizing periods of time as private and public can help us further to illuminate the structure of social accessibility and professional commitments in modern society.

Notes 1. For a sociological analysis of one of the most important forms of "periodic remission," namely sleep, see Schwartz(b). 2. For another discussion of time as a segmenting principle in social life, see Goffman's (b) analysis of "bracketing." 3. Nevertheless, since much of social life is temporallystructuredalong regularlyrecurrent patterns (Zerubavel,e), it is hardly surprisingthat private time is usually defined as being "located"at certain phases of particular"social cycles" (Zerubavel,b) such as the day, the week, and the year. 4. Fora pioneer attemptto apply the territorial frameworkto non-spatialdimensions of social interactionand interpersonalrelations, see Goffman, (a). For some earlierattempts to represent non-spatialaspects of social accessibilityin quasi-spatialterms, see Lewin;Park;Simmel (a). Consideralso the applicabilityof the territorial frameworkto other non-spatialaspects of privacy(e.g. personal information).

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5. Having originated during the days when house officers actually resided at the hospital almost continuously,the term "resident"is essentially somewhat of an anachronismtoday. 6. For some classic discussions of the artificial,arbitrary, and conventionalbasis of the temporalorganizationof social life in general, see Hubertand Mauss;Sorokin, (a, b); Sorokinand Merton. 7. For another example of a sociological account of the regulation of concern within the domain of medicalcare, see Lief and Fox. 8. See, for example, Durkheim(b);Hubertand Mauss;Sorokin (b); Sorokinand Merton.For some furthersociologicalcritiquesof the conceptuallimitationswhich are involved in a purely quantitativeconception of time, see Lukacs;Mannheim. References De Grazia, Sebastian. 1964. Of Time, Work,and Leisure. New York: Anchor Books. Durkheim, Emile. a:1964. The Division of Laborin Society. New York: Free Press. . b:1965. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Free Press. Geertz, C. 1973. "Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali." In The Interpretationof Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Goffman, Erving. a:1959. The Presentationof Self in EverydayLife. New York: Anchor Books. . b:1961. Asylums. New York: Anchor Books. . c:1961. Encounters. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. . d:1963. Behavior in Public Places. New York: Free Press. . e:1972. Relations in Public. New York: Harper. . f:1974. Frame Analysis. New York: Harper. Hall, Edward T. a:1959. The Silent Language. New York: Premier Books. . b:1966. The Hidden Dimension. New York: Anchor Books. Hubert, H., and M. Mauss. 1909. "Etude Sommaire de la Representation du Temps dans la Religion et la Magie." In Melanges d'Histoiredes Religions. Paris: Librairies Felix Alcan et Guillaumin Reunies. Knickerbocker, B. 1978. "More Workers Balking at Compulsory Overtime." The Christian ScienceMonitor (Wednesday, March 22):7. Leake, Chauncey D. (ed.) 1927. Percival's Medical Ethics. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. Lewin, K. 1973. "Some Social-Psychological Differences Between the United States and Germany." In Resolving Social Conflicts. London: Souvenir Press. Lief, H. I., and R. Fox. 1963. "Training for 'Detached Concern' in Medical Students." In Harold I. Lief et al. (eds.), The Psychological Basis of Medical Practice. New York: Harper & Row. Lukacs, Georg. 1971. History and Class Consciousness.Cambridge: MIT Press. Mannheim, Karl. 1952. Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Melbin, M. 1978. "Night As Frontier." AmericanSociological Review 43(January):3-22. Merton, Robert K. 1968. Social Theoryand Social Structure. New York: Free Press. Moore, Wilbert E. 1963. Man, Time, and Society. New York: Wiley. Osmond, H. 1957. "Function as the Basis of Psychiatric Ward Design." Mental Hospitals 8(April):23-9. Park, R.E. 1924. "The Concept of Social Distance." Journalof AppliedSociology 8:33944. Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social System. New York: Free Press. Schwartz, B. a:1968. "The Social Psychology of Privacy." American Journal of Sociology 73:741-52. . b:1970. "Notes on the Sociology of Sleep."Sociological Quarterly 11:485-99.

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. c:1972. "Deprivation

of Privacy as a 'Functional

Prerequisite':

The Case of

the Prison." The Journalof CriminalLaw, Criminologyand Police Science 63(2):22939. Simmel, Georg. a:1950. The Sociologyof Georg Simmel (ed. Kurt H. Wolff). New York: Free Press. . b:1964. Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations. New York: Free Press. Sommer, R. 1967. "Sociofugal Space." AmericanJournalof Sociology 72:654-60. Sorokin, Pitirim A. a:1941. Social and Cultural Dynamics. Vol. 4. New York: Bedminster. . b:1943. Sociocultural Causality, Space, Time. Durham: Duke University Press. Sorokin, PA., and R.K. Merton. 1937. "Social Time: A Methodological and Functional Analysis." AmericanJournalof Sociology 42:615-29. Soule, George. 1956. What Automation Does to Human Beings. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. Thompson, E.P 1967. "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism." Past and Present 38(December):56-97. Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1945. Democracyin America.Vol. 2. New York:Vintage Books. Weber, Max. 1964. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: Free Press. Wright, Lawrence. 1968. Clockwork Man. London: Elek Books. Zerubavel, Eviatar. a:1976. "Time in Modern Western Civilization." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations, Philadelphia.
. b:1976. "Timetables and Scheduling: On the Social Organization of Time." Paper pre-

SociologicalInquiry 46(May):87-94.
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sented at the annual meeting of the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations, Milwaukee. . d:1979. "The Temporal Organization of Continuity: The Case of Medical and Nursing Coverage." Human Organization (Spring). . e:1979. Patterns of Time in Hospital Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.