Social Time, Bodies and the “Logic of Waiting” in the Configuration of Urban Sensibilities

Abstract

Considering the acceleration of social time encouraged by the ever increasing speed in the circulation of goods and products in the current phase of capitalist development, it becomes essential to reflect on the configuration of social sensibilities. Particularly, the logic is embodied in the way city dwellers are, in their feelings and in their modes of possessing (physical things/property). Based on observations from Argentine life that illustrate the unequal access to basic urban services and goods, this article assesses the concept of “waiting mechanism” and its articulation with social sensibilities in peripheral urban contexts. The main assumptions of this analysis are that “waiting” affects bodies and that the experience of the city results from the class inter-play of social and bodily distance and proximity, which opens certain paths and closes others. From this standpoint, it is demonstrated that this “logic of waiting” yields feelings of helplessness socially reproduced through the assertion that “things will always be this way” and structured from the repetition of the experience of lacking (lack of access to basic sanitation, lack of possibilities of transportation, and so on). Thus, the emergence of “waiting” as an ability becomes problematic since it is one of the mechanisms manifesting the living conditions of people (and their historically constructed sensibilities) from the outskirts of cities in the twenty-first century.