IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v48y1999i10p1307-1319.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Power, control and resistance in the timing of health and care

Author

Listed:
  • Fox, Nick J

Abstract

In the modern period, time has been commodified and can be bought, sold and bartered. This paper argues that this means that while time may be a tool of power and control, it is also a site for resistance to power. Four case studies are evaluated from this perspective. A day-case surgery unit is examined to identify the routinization of health care, with time as a tool of control. Decisions over discharge from hospital following surgery demonstrate how time may be 'sold' to 'buy' future time. The disruption of routines during surgery suggest how time may be used as a means of resisting power, while in residential homes, old people find time on their hands as it is transformed into something which must be filled. It is argued that resistance is not achieved by recourse to 'natural' (as opposed to cultural) time, but by rethinking time creatively.

Suggested Citation

  • Fox, Nick J, 1999. "Power, control and resistance in the timing of health and care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 48(10), pages 1307-1319, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:48:y:1999:i:10:p:1307-1319
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(98)00435-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nagington, Maurice & Holman, David & Mumford, Clare & McCann, Leo, 2021. "Theorising the hospice gaze: A Foucauldian collaborative ethnography of a palliative day care service," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 291(C).
    2. Petersson, Jesper & Backman, Christel, 2022. "Patient-accessible online health records: Reconfigurations of clinical rhythms and doctors’ front- and backstage spaces," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:48:y:1999:i:10:p:1307-1319. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.