THE TENSIONS BETWEEN PROCESS TIME AND CLOCK TIME IN CARE-WORK - THE EXAMPLE OF DAY NURSERIES

Implicit or explicit in work on care and caring has been the issue of time. Notwithstanding this fact, however, time itself has not been suf ficiently problematized. In the first part of this paper, the concept of process time is introduced and its relevance for an understanding o f care-work is suggested. Drawing on data from a qualitative study of day nurseries in Sweden, the second part of the paper explores various tensions and conflicts that (can) arise in this type of care-work due to the intermeshing of clock/linear time and process time. The implic ations, in relation to present day economic cuts, are also briefly dis cussed.