Cabdrivers and Their Fares: Temporal Structures of a Linking Ecology

Abstract

The author argues that behind the apparent randomness of interactions between cabdrivers and their fares in Warsaw is a temporal structure. To capture this temporal structure, the author introduces the notion of a linking ecology. He argues that the Warsaw taxi market is a linking ecology, which is structured by religious time, state time, and family time. The author then focuses on waiting time, arguing that it too structures the interactions between cabdrivers and their fares. The author makes a processual argument that waiting time has been restructured by the postsocialist transformation, but only because this transformation has been continually encoded through the defensive and adaptive strategies of cabdrivers responding to the repetitive and unique events located across the social space. The author concludes with the claim that linking ecologies are a recurring structure of the social process and that they form the backbone of globalization, financialization, and mediatization.

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“…Drawing on the concept of 'power-chronography', Sarah Sharma (2014) has for example shown how the capacity of the privileged to speed up or slow down at will is enabled by less privileged actor groups who are granted less temporal autonomy. Making others hurry or forcing them to wait represent two opposing but similarly effective modes of domination (Serafin, 2019). Similarly, Lisa Adkins (2018) illustrates how, rather than rendering their futures predictable, the overall capitalist logic of speculation exposes those who are indebted (and even more so those who are under-or unemployed [p.…”

Eine Neuordnung der Zeit? Zum Verhältnis von Zeitlichkeit, Kapitalismus und Staat im Zeichen der Pandemie

“…Diese Fähigkeit wird jedoch nur durch eine Armada von weniger privilegierten Akteuren ermöglicht, die sich den ständig wechselnden Geschwindigkeiten und Rhythmen anpassen müssen und so selbst kaum über zeitliche Autonomie verfügen. Andere warten zu lassen oder zur Eile zu nötigen, ist eine Form von Herrschaft (Auyero 2010 ; Schwartz 1974 ; Serafin 2019 ), die sich vor allem jene Akteure leisten können, die über ausreichend Kapital verfügen. Ungleichheit, als ein grundlegendes Merkmal kapitalistischer Gesellschaften, wird so auch in der Dimension der Zeit sichtbar, und zwar als ungleiche zeitliche Autonomie .…”

Between social spaces

“…Other existing sociological concepts for describing the relations between social spaces, such as ‘field overlap’ (Evans & Kay, 2008), ‘interstitial fields’ (Medvetz, 2012), ‘Russian dolls fields’ (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012), ‘heteronomous fields’ (Leschziner, 2015), ‘proximate fields’ (Lei, 2016), ‘adjacent ecologies’ (Block-Lieb & Halliday, 2017), ‘overlapping ecologies’ (Liu, 2017) or ‘linking ecology’ (Serafin, 2019), are also incomplete, though each captures some aspects of this complex relationship. The most problematic among these concepts is the image of Russian dolls in Fligstein and McAdam’s (2012) theory of strategic action fields, which suggests that all fields look the same except for size.…”

“…When two spaces get close to each other, they form a variety of structural patterns, characterised by existing concepts such as ‘structural coupling’ (Luhmann, 1984/1995), ‘linked ecologies’ (Abbott, 2005), ‘field overlap’ (Evans & Kay, 2008), ‘Russian Doll fields’ (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012), ‘proximate fields’ (Lei, 2016), ‘adjacent ecologies’ (Block-Lieb & Halliday, 2017) or ‘overlapping ecologies’ (Liu, 2017). There are also discussions of ‘interstitial fields’ (Medvetz, 2012), ‘spaces between fields’ (Eyal, 2013) or ‘linking ecology’ (Serafin, 2019), all of which focus on the areas between adjacent social spaces. Nevertheless, little effort has been made to integrate this growing vocabulary into a coherent framework for understanding the social distance between social spaces.…”

“…Furthermore, the common area itself needs to be understood like other social spaces. Serafin’s (2019) study of the Warsaw taxi market as a ‘linking ecology’ offers an intriguing approach for theorising areas between social spaces. In this case, the ecology of the taxi market is a highly fluid social space not only situated in the middle of three larger spaces (i.e.…”