Busyness and Citizenship

Abstract

William E. Scheuerman Busyness and Citizenship HOW DOES THE EXPERIENCE OF BUSYNESS AFFECT DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL life? My hunch is that those reading this essay might very well offer the following answer: busyness means that we relegate political activities to the bottom of a long and sometimes tedious laundiy list of “things to get done.”In fact, many of us no longer even bother to include the basic activities of citizenship—becoming informed about the issues, delib­ erating with our peers about matters of common concern, attending a political meeting, or even voting—on the list in the first place. Like this author, many readers probably feel somewhat guilty about this as well, and thus tiy to compensate in some way or another. Rather than volun­ teering for a presidential campaign, for example, I spend a few minutes writing out a check to the candidate or campaign of my choice. Even better (because it’s less tim e consuming), I go online and provide my credit card number and make a donation that is transmitted in a matter o f nanoseconds. I make up for the fact that my day is already crammed full with time-consuming activities by privileging forms of political activity that can be engaged in rapidly and even instantaneously. At worst, busyness generates political disinterest and apathy: many of our fellow citizens openly describe the most fundamental form of demo­ cratic participation, the vote, as a “waste o f time.” At best, it seems to privilege an acceleration of political activity: we seek speedy and rapidly consummated types o f involvement that do not unduly add to the enormous time pressures we already feel. Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether even such high-speed forms of citizen involvement are social research Voi 72 : No 2 : Summer 2005 447 normatively satisfactory. Can liberal democracy flourish when a grow­ ing number o f us avoid the responsibilities o f citizenship altogether, while even those o f us who tiy to remain politically involved insist that we be dealt with quickly and painlessly? In this essay I hope at the very least to deepen our understanding of this quagmire. It also provides a useful starting point for examin­ ing one of the core challenges of contemporary political life: How can we make sure that busyness and citizenship coexist in a potentially fruitful, though by no means necessarily harmonious, relationship? I start by linking the ubiquitous experience o f busyness to one o f the core structural trends of m odem society: social acceleration. According to an impressive body of recent research, ours is a high-speed society in which core social processes are undergoing dramatic rates o f accel­ eration. The process of social acceleration not only represents a funda­ mental source of busyness, but also helps explain why contemporary society tends to favor high-speed over slow-going activities. I then take a closer look at the nexus between social acceleration and citizenship, arguing that the temporality o f active citizenship meshes poorly with the imperatives of high-speed society. Finally, I consider ways by which the apparent tension between citizenship and social speed might be minimized. Although no easy solutions are available, we need to acknowledge some virtues to speed while doing a better job of ensuring that citizens can take advantage of new political possibilities offered by it. Can accelerated citizenship take normatively more satisfying forms than our example o f the harried citizen who goes online to make a quick campaign donation? SOCIAL ACCELERATION: WHY ARE WE SO BUSY? The fact that many of us feel rushed and tired by day’s end does not merely result from inefficient personal time budgeting. John Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey are probably right to note that the immediate source o f the shortage of time experienced by most Americans derives from our decision to watch virtually endless hours o f television every day and thereby reduce the time available for other potentially more 448 social research enriching activities (Robinson and Godbey, 1997). But the dilemmas go deeper, and they are unlikely to be solved by moral pleas for Americans to turn off their television sets and instead engage in some...