Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The re-organisation and re-structuring of time brought about by changes in the global economy, spatial relationships, and technological innovations have an impact on the way people live, affecting social relationships, and experiencing of temporalities. Much has been written about the texture and production of temporalities ashore, however, people who work on merchant vessels have generated very little interest in terms of understanding their temporal existence. Such elision, sidelines a crucial aspect of time reckoning, as it were, in contemporary work and living spaces which could prove beneficial in enriching our appreciation and understanding of the complexities of temporalities of everyday life. This study, based on three voyages on merchant vessels for a period of five weeks each and interviews with Filipino seafarers in various ports and training centres in the UK and the Philippines, looks at this lacunae – the everyday experiencing of time of Filipino seafarers at sea. It offers some interesting insights into how time is both experienced on the fast and slow lanes, as it were, providing us much insight into the complexities of temporal production in contemporary society.