Since the ‘culture of poverty’ studies in the 1960s, temporal structures have become essential for understanding poverty and its reproduction. Most studies in this field have characterised poverty by a strong presentism, a neglect of the future, and a lack of agency in shaping the course of life. This article provides a novel approach to make sense of the intersection between time and poverty by empirically analysing the work that the poor perform to distinguish, link and valuate their past, present and future and make sense of their lives as stories of social mobility. Drawing on the biographical narratives of poor men and women from urban Santiago and rural Maule in Chile, we argue that the temporal structures of the poor intertwine a pragmatic presentism with the aspiration of social mobility through the sacrificial structure of an extended self. These findings reveal that the poor are not passive subjects of destiny but agents of a dynamic and open-ended story, and that their biographies are structured not only by the fatalism of the repetition of the past but also by a dramatic struggle for the future.
AdamB. (1990). Time and social theory. Polity Press.
2.
AlexanderJ. C.SmithP. (1993). The discourse of American civil society: A new proposal for cultural studies. Theory and Society, 22(2), 151–207.
3.
AppaduraiA. (2004). The capacity to aspire: Culture and the terms of recognition. In RaoV.VijayendraWaltonM. (Eds.), Culture and public action (pp. 59–84). Stanford University Press.
4.
AraujoK.MartuccelliD. (2012). Desafíos comunes: retrato de la sociedad chilena y sus individuos. LOM Ediciones.
5.
ArcherM. S. (2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge University Press.
6.
ArcherM. S. (2007). Making our way through the world: Human reflexivity and social mobility. Cambridge University Press.
7.
ArellanoJ. P. (2011). Equity and sustainable growth: Twenty years of social policies, Chile 1990–2009. The World Bank.
8.
BanfieldE. C. (1970). The unheavenly city: The nature and future of our urban crisis. Little, Brown and Company.
9.
BearL. (2014). Doubt, conflict, mediation: The anthropology of modern time. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 20(S1), 3–30.
10.
BelkR. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168.
11.
BergsonH. (1919). Matter and memory. George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
12.
BergsonH. (1944). Creative evolution. Random House.
13.
BernasconiO. (2011). Negotiating personal experience over the lifetime: Narrative elasticity as an analytic tool. Journal of Symbolic Interaction, 34(1), 20–37.
14.
BesoaínC.CornejoM. (2015). Vivienda social y subjetivación urbana en Santiago de Chile: Espacio privado, repliegue presentista y añoranza. Psicoperspectivas. Individuo y Sociedad, 14(2), 16–27.
BrunerJ. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1–21.
17.
CanalesM.BelleiC.OrellanaV. (2016). ¿Por qué elegir una escuela privada subvencionada? Sectores medios emergentes y elección de escuela en un sistema de mercado. Estudios Pedagógicos (Valdivia), 42(3), 89–109.
18.
CidadeE. C.XimenesV. M. (2012). As manifestações do fatalismo do jovens em condições de pobreza no Brazil. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología Social, 1, 80–102.
19.
D’AlessioM.GuarinoA.De PascalisV.ZimbardoP. G. (2003). Testing Zimbardo’s Stanford Time Perspective Inventory (STPI) – Short form. Time & Society, 12(2/3), 333–347.
20.
DayS.PapataxiarchisE.StewartM. (1999). Lilies of the field: Marginal people who live for the moment. Westview Press.
21.
De KeereK. (2020). Finding the moral space: Rethinking morality, social class and worldviews. Poetics, 79: 101415.
22.
DupréL. (2008). The structure and meaning of sacrifice: From Marcel Mauss to René Girard. Archivio di Filosofia, 76(1/2), 253–259.
23.
EliasN. (2007). An essay on time. University College Dublin Press.
24.
ElliotJ. (2005). Using narrative in social research: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Sage.
25.
EvansV. (2004). The structure of time: Language, meaning and temporal cognition. John Benjamins Publishing.
26.
Ffrench-DavisR. (2018). Reformas económicas en Chile (1973–2017). Neoliberalismo, crecimiento con equidad, inclusión. Taurus.
27.
FieulaineN.ApostolidisT. (2015). Precariousness as a time horizon: How poverty and social insecurity shape individuals’ time perspectives. In StolarskiM.FieulaineN.van BeekW. (Eds.), Time perspective theory: Review, research and application (pp. 213–228). Springer International Publishing.
28.
FlahertyM. G. (2003). Time work: Customizing temporal experience. Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(1), 17–33.
29.
FlahertyM. G. (2011). The textures of time: Agency and temporal experience. Temple University Press.
30.
FreemanM. (1998). Mythical time, historical time, and the narrative fabric of the self. Narrative Inquiry, 8(1), 27–50.
31.
Fundación para la Superación de la Pobreza. (2011). Voces de la pobreza. Significados, representaciones y sentir de las personas en situación de pobreza a lo largo de Chile. FUNASUPO.
32.
GellA. (1992). Anthropology of time. Berg.
33.
GüellP. (2009). En Chile el futuro se hizo pasado: ¿y ahora cuál futuro? Ensayo sobre la construcción simbólica del tiempo político. In Expansiva, Universidad Diego Portales, & Centro de Estudios Públicos (Eds.), El Chile que viene: De dónde venimos, dónde estamos y a dónde vamos (pp. 17–37). Universidad Diego Portales.
34.
GüellP.YopoM. (2016). The subjective texture of time: An exploratory and empirical approach to time perspectives in Chile. Time & Society, 25(2), 295–319.
35.
HanC. (2011). Symptoms of another life: Time, possibility, and domestic relations in Chile’s credit economy. Cultural Anthropology, 16(1), 7–32.
36.
HartogF. (2007). Regímenes de historicidad. Universidad Iberoamericana.
37.
IrarrázavalI. (1995). Habilitación, pobreza y políticas sociales. Estudios Públicos, 59, 99–165.
38.
JansenH. (2015). Time, narrative, and fiction: The uneasy relationship between Ricoeur and a heterogenous temporality. History and Theory, 54(1), 1–24.
39.
JaszczoldK. M. (2009). Representing time: An essay on temporality as modality. Oxford University Press.
40.
KoselleckR. (2004). Futures past: On the semantic of historical times. Columbia University Press.
41.
KumarM. (2010). Poverty and culture of daily life. Psychology and Developing Societies, 22(2), 331–359.
42.
LamontM.WelburnJ.FlemmingC. (2013). Responses to discrimination and social resilience under neo-liberalism: The United States compared. In HallP. A.LamontM. (Eds.), Social resilience in the neoliberal era (pp. 129–157). Cambridge University Press.
43.
LarrañagaO.ContrerasD.CabezasG. (2015). Políticas contra la pobreza: de Chile solidario al ingreso ético familiar. Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo.
44.
LeccardiC.RampaziM. (1993). Past and future in young women’s experience of time. Time & Society, 2(3), 353–379.
45.
LewisO. (1966). The culture of poverty. Scientific American, 215(4), 19–25.
46.
LittlerJ. (2018). Against meritocracy: Culture, power and myths of mobility. Routledge.
47.
MarramaoG. (2008). Kairos. Apología del tiempo oportuno. Gedisa.
48.
MartínezJ.PalaciosM. (1996). Informe sobre la decencia. La diferenciación estamental de la pobreza y los subsidios públicos. Colección estudios urbanos. Ediciones SUR.
49.
McTaggartJ. E. (1908). The unreality of time. Mind, 17(68), 457–474.
50.
McTaggartJ. E. (1927). The nature of existence. Cambridge University Press.
51.
MeadG. H. (1932). The philosophy of the present. Open Court.
MoynihanD. P. (1965). The Negro family: The case for national action. United States Department of Labor.
54.
MunnN. D. (1992). The cultural anthropology of time: A critical essay. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21, 93–123.
55.
NowotnyH. (1992). Time and social theory: Towards a social theory of time. Time & Society, 1(3), 412–454.
56.
OnetoL. (2001). Los discursos sobre la pobreza en Chile. Análisis de sus paradigmas. Proposiciones, 34, 1–12.
57.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2018). A broken social elevator? How to promote social mobility.
58.
PhanH. P. (2009, November29–December3). Examination of time perspective, hope, self-efficacy, and ethnic identity: A structural equation model [Paper presentation]. 2009 International Education Research Conference – Inspiring Innovative Research in Education, Canberra.
59.
Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo. (2010). Desarrollo humano en Chile. Género: los desafíos de la igualdad.
60.
Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo. (2012). Desarrollo humano en Chile. Bienestar subjetivo: el desafío de repensar el desarrollo.
61.
RaczynskiD.SerranoC. (2003) Nuevos y viejos problemas en la lucha contra la pobreza en Chile. In MuñozO.StefoniC. (Eds.), El periodo del Presidente Frei Ruiz-Tagle (pp. 333–366). Editorial Universitaria.
RicoeurP. (1987). Tiempo y narración I. Configuración del tiempo en el relato histórico. Ediciones Cristiandad.
64.
RobertiM. E. (2010). Claves para el análisis de la temporalidad futura: un recorrido por trayectorias laborales en condiciones de pobreza. Revista Question, 1(27), 1–16.
65.
RobertsB. (2002). Biographical research. Open University Press.
66.
RobertsB. (2004). Time, biography and local history-making. Rethinking History, 8(1), 89–102.
67.
RyanW. (1976). Blaming the victim. Vintage Books.
68.
SayerA. (2011). Why things matter to people: Social science, values and ethical life. Cambridge University Press.
69.
ShiraniF.HenwoodK. (2011). Taking one day at a time: Temporal experiences in the context of unexpected life course transitions. Time & Society, 20(1), 49–68.
70.
SomersM. R. (1990). Narrativity, narrative identity and social action: Rethinking English working-class formation. Social Science History, 16(4), 591–630.
71.
ValdésX. (2007). La vida en común. Familia y vida privada en Chile y el medio rural en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. LOM Ediciones.
72.
ValentineC. A. (1968). Culture and poverty: Critique and counter-proposals. University of Chicago Press.
73.
Yopo DíazM. (2020). Making the right time: The transition to motherhood in contemporary Chile [PhD thesis, University of Cambridge].
74.
Yopo DíazM.Rivera AburtoS.Peters RiverosG. (2012). Individuación y políticas sociales en Chile. Sobre la experiencia de nuevas propietarias en la comuna de Lo Espejo. Polis – Revista Latinoamericana, 32, 1–18.
75.
ZilvetiM. (2018). La fragilidad de sí: Tiempo, trabajo y constitución subjetiva [PhD thesis, Universidad Alberto Hurtado].
76.
ZimbardoP. G.BoydJ. N. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individual-differences metric. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1271–1288.
