In the Interest of Time: Plural and Relational Temporalities in Modern Life

Modern life is organized around the relentless ticking of the clock, a system of timekeeping whose roots stretch back to industrial and colonial histories. This standardized, mechanical approach has become the dominant orientation, shaping everything from our workdays to our collective sense of the future. Yet beneath its veneer of efficiency, clock-time has crowded out plural, embodied, and relational ways of experiencing temporality: cycles and rhythms attuned to ecology, ritual, community, and memory. This article explores what is lost when time is flattened into a metric and asks what might be regained by remembering and reimagining its multiplicity. Through a synthesis of cultural critique and design-led research, we seek to illuminate alternative temporal infrastructures that foster belonging, care, and renewal for diverse communities and more-than-human worlds.

Introduction: The Reign of Clock-Time

Modern life is regulated by clock-time, a system whose dominance traces back to the industrial and colonial eras. Before the widespread use of mechanical timekeeping, many societies oriented their days by cyclical events such as sunrise and sunset, seasons, and celestial patterns ( Wikipedia, 2007 ). The industrial revolution in Europe accelerated advances in clockmaking, making timepieces mass-produced, affordable, and central to daily routines ( Saybrook History, 2021 ; Lignoma, n.d. ). In colonial India, standardized imperial time was imposed upon diverse local rhythms, transforming economic life, labor, and the organization of daily existence ( Shekhar, 2017 ; Salamé, n.d. ; European Journal of International Law, n.d. ).

The consolidation of clock-time served a key function in the administration of people, commerce, and the functioning of colonial cities. Policies mandated standardized time zones, often set to foreign meridians, which disrupted regional and solar time that communities had relied on for generations ( Shekhar, 2017 ; European Journal of International Law, n.d. ). These changes were not uncontested. In Mumbai, for example, the introduction of Indian Standard Time prompted civic protest and everyday refusal through "Bombay Time," which was locally attuned to natural rhythms rather than imposed metrics ( Shekhar, 2017 ; Salamé, n.d. ).

As clock-time became the default system for work, schooling, and governance, other plural, relational, and embodied forms of temporality — such as Indigenous cyclical calendars, ecological rhythms, and communal rituals — were sidelined or labeled inefficient ( Trafo, 2023 ; Noba Project, 2011 ). The result is a monoculture of time, a metric regime that shapes memory, community, and the organization of everyday life, often at the expense of multiplicity and belonging ( Trafo, 2023 ; Noba Project, 2011 ; Psyche, 2025 ).

This research article examines the historical rise of clock-time and critically interrogates the loss of plural temporalities. In investigating these dynamics, we ask: what possibilities for community, care, and creativity might emerge when we reclaim and reimagine time in its fullness?

Many Kinds of Time: What Gets Crowded Out

Across the world, communities have long cultivated plural ways of keeping, living, and remembering time. Indigenous cyclical calendars, for example, intimately align seasonal changes, ecological indicators, and communal activities. In Australia, language groups have co-developed highly localized seasonal calendars, which encode ecological, meteorological, and hydrological knowledge and support the management of Country ( CSIRO, 2025 ; CSIRO, 2025 ). These calendars are not merely practical tools, but visual representations of deep connections between people and place, facilitating knowledge transfer and community learning, especially in Indigenous schools and intergenerational contexts.

Traditional ecological calendars shape subsistence activities by reading signs from local flora and fauna, alongside abiotic phenomena such as snow, rain, and photoperiod ( Yang et al., 2023 ; Jiménez et al., 2023 ). These are living systems, ever-adapting in response to environmental change, as seen in Indigenous communities negotiating climate shifts and alterations to seasonal cues ( Cornell CALS, 2023 ). In South America, biocultural calendars weave together social rituals and environmental rhythms across diverse ethnolinguistic communities ( Rozzi et al., 2023 ).

Memory, community, and belonging are likewise organized through plural time. Collective memory forms through shared histories, familial rituals, and public commemorations rather than fixed schedules, producing shifting identity and meaning across generations ( Grever, 2018 ). Ecological rhythms—annual cycles of migration, hibernation, and reproduction—structure the lives of plants and animals and synchronize with the pulse of human ritual and celebration ( Thoré, 2024 ; Royal Society, 2013 ; Rose, 2000 ). Living Maya time preserves cyclical calendars such as the Haab, Tzolk'in, and Calendar Round, maintaining cultural knowledge and ritual practice into the present ( Living Maya Time, 2023 ).

These plural, embodied, and relational temporalities offer alternative ways to organize memory, community, and belonging, ways that risk being crowded out by the monoculture of clock-time. Whether seasonal, ritual, or ecological, multiple times persist, adapt, and invite us to reconsider what it might mean to live well together.

Hegemony and Harm: Consequences of Temporal Monoculture

When clock-time becomes the sole infrastructure for organizing human activities, it flattens the richness of temporal experience. Time turns into an abstract metric: segmented, measured, optimized, and largely administered through mechanical devices and schedules ( Nguyen, 1992 ). Anthropologists and theorists have documented how such metric time shapes social interactions, labor, and daily rhythms, replacing more organic, relational, and process-oriented forms of coordination ( AnthroEncyclopedia, 2025 ). The imposition of standardized time both displaces older systems and fosters new forms of alienation, routinization, and even boredom especially among those whose cultural rhythms previously centered on cyclicality or communal duration.

This flattening results in multiple forms of loss. Individuals become disconnected from embodied cycles like sleep, hunger, migration, and ritual; communities lose temporal anchors for gatherings, memory, and generational transmission ( Nguyen, 1992 ; AnthroEncyclopedia, 2025 ). Ecological harm arises as well: metric time promotes agricultural monoculture, market-driven immediacy, and extractionist attitudes to land and labor, undermining resilience and amplifying vulnerability in the face of environmental change ( Kaur, 2024 ; Bourke et al., 2021 ).

Cultural theorists and postcolonial critics argue that the dominance of clock-time is not simply technological, but deeply political. Timekeeping was an instrument of colonial governance, standardizing and controlling colonized populations, and erasing plural temporalities ( Cambridge Companion, 2004 ; Wikipedia, 2003 ). Postcolonial writers frame this as a form of epistemic violence: metric time undermines alternate conceptions of history, future, and belonging, privileging certain cultures’ values and suppressing others ( Mezzadra, 2006 >]( https://www.postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/393/819.) ); Hawthorne, 2019 ; AnthroEncyclopedia, 2025 ).

In sum, the consequences of temporal monoculture are felt across selves, societies, and ecosystems. The critique from cultural theory and postcolonial studies calls on us to recognize both the harm and the creative possibilities in reclaiming plurality, reminding us that time, too, is a site of contestation, care, and transformation.

Remembering and Regaining Multiplicity

Honoring multiplicity in temporal infrastructure invites a radical shift in how we experience, coordinate, and value time. What can be recovered or re-invented by recognizing the many coexisting rhythms and durations in everyday life? Temporal design research positions time as a material that is not fixed, but emergent from dynamic relationships—social, ecological, economic, and political ( Pschetz, 2018 ; University of Dundee, 2013 ; Temporal Design Edinburgh, 2025 ). Instead of seeking a universal clock, designers document, expose, and celebrate the diversity of temporal expressions that persist across cultures and communities.

Speculative and participatory design methods help imagine and prototype alternatives, challenging metric time’s dominance. Examples include clocks synchronized to family routines, ecological phenomena, or local rituals; communal calendars that reflect both collective memory and shared anticipation; and digital systems carefully attuned to seasonal or biological markers ( Pschetz et al., 2016 ; Eschrich et al., 2025 ; EPIC, 2025 ). "Spiraling time," an Indigenous design principle, foregrounds dialogue across generations—reimagining speculation as a conversation among ancestors and descendants, rather than linear prediction ( Eschrich et al., 2025 ).

Everyday resistance to metric time often emerges through small, collective acts. Families and communities celebrate rituals or festivals aligned with lunar, solar, agricultural, or migration cycles. Workers organize flexible work schedules based on mutual care, not just productivity. Activists build networks of solidarity that synchronize around shared aspirations rather than imposed deadlines ( Pschetz et al., 2016 ; Temporal Design Edinburgh, 2025 ). These practices are not simply nostalgic or regressive; they are experiments in collective flourishing, opening new possibilities for living with time in plural, adaptive, and restorative ways.

Toward Plural Futures

Plural temporalities begin with expanding the way education, organizations, and communities coordinate, imagine, and act through time. In education, cultivating a "temporal imagination" helps students recognize multiple, contested temporal frames: provincializing clock-time and creating space to dialogue about alternative rhythms in the face of climate change and social justice challenges ( Facer, 2024 ). Pedagogies for plurality ask learners to confront assumptions about time, attune to diverse time-scapes, and work collectively to reconfigure shared temporal arrangements.

Organizations and research initiatives increasingly support plural time by building participatory methods that activate collective knowledge and critical reflection ( Participatory Approaches, 2022 ; DFK Paris, 2022 ; Trafo, 2023 ). Community projects, such as pop-up villages with plural currency experiments, invite active co-creation to design for diversity in economic, temporal, and social infrastructures ( RadicalxChange, 2024 ).

Open-source and participatory approaches foreground the importance of collective reimagining. Participatory planning and action research put affected communities at the center, empowering marginalized groups and allowing context-specific change ( RE-DWELL, 2022 ; egyankosh, n.d. ). From collaborative mapping exercises to participatory policy design, these practices foster inclusivity and develop tools for imagining — and living — plural futures together ( FAO, 1996 ; KU Community Toolbox, 2025 ).

This is simultaneously a call for experiments and an invitation to contribute. Plural temporalities offer new paradigms for education, policy, community, and everyday life. By collectively inventing, trying, and sharing alternative ways of organizing and valuing time, we open pathways toward care, creativity, and unexpected forms of belonging.

Conclusion

The loss of plural, embodied, and relational temporalities in the face of clock-time monoculture has far-reaching implications: it narrows our experience of time, disconnects memory and community, and often diminishes opportunities for care and belonging ( Mason, 2023 ; Bastian, n.d. ; Christensen, 2022 ). The singular focus on metric and mechanical time, as critiqued by temporal pluralities research and postcolonial studies, risks excluding vital cycles, communal rituals, and diverse forms of time knowing, affecting how people imagine futures, narrate pasts, and participate in shared life ( Journal of Human Values, 2020 ; Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2015 ).

Yet this very loss catalyzes opportunity: a growing movement toward reclaiming and co-creating plural timescapes. Research in temporal pluralities, mental time travel, and participatory community projects points the way to reorienting life, memory, and community through renewed attention to multiplicity. Open-source, collective experiments—across education, organizations, and grassroots efforts—offer seeds for alternate infrastructures where memory and future-making become collaborative and inclusive ( Beaty et al., 2018 ; Adam, 2008 ).

This is an urgent invitation: to step beyond the clock, attend to the diversity of temporal rhythms, and collectively reimagine infrastructures that support plural living, memory, and belonging. By reclaiming time through shared knowledge, imagination, and experimentation, communities can open new horizons for solidarity, justice, and flourishing.