Understanding of how time is experienced is essential when conducting qualitative research. This article explores how time seemingly stands still, speeds up, slows down, rewinds and fast-forwards for the participants in our qualitative investigations. Drawing upon interview data with street homeless people in Moscow, Russia, this article examines the ways in which time is contextualized and used by research participants to make sense of their everyday experiences and important events in their lives. There is a tendency to understand time by measuring it, rather than seeing it as something within which lived experience happens and qualitative research is carried out. Drawing on Bergson’s conception of time as duration, this article examines the ways in which time can be distinctively used and understood within qualitative research.
AbbottA (2001) Time Matters: On Theory and Method. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2.
AbbottA (2016) Processual Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
3.
AdamB (1990) Time and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
4.
AdamB (1995) Timewatch: The Social Analysis of Time. Cambridge: Polity Press.
5.
AdamB (1998) Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards. London: Routledge.
6.
AdamB (2006) Time. Theory, Culture and Society23(2–3): 119–138.
7.
BergsonH (2007) Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics. New York: Dover Publications.
8.
BoydellKMGoeringPMorrell-BellaiTL (2000) Narratives of identity: Re-presentation of self in people who are homeless. Qualitative Health Research1: 26–38.
9.
BraunVClarkeV (2021) The ebbs and flows of qualitative research: time, change, and the slow wheel of interpretation. In: CliftBCGoreJGustafssonJ, et al. (eds), Temporality in Qualitative Inquiry: Theories, Methods and Practices. London: Routledge, pp. 22–38.
10.
ButchinskyC (2007) Identities of rough sleepers in Oxford. In: SealM (ed), Understanding and Responding to Homeless Experiences, Identities and Cultures. Dorset, UK: Russell House, pp. 1–26.
11.
CarlssonC (2012) Using turning points to understand processes of change in offending. British Journal of Criminology52(1): 1–16.
12.
ChamberlainCJohnsonG (2018) From long-term homelessness to stable housing: investigating ‘liminality’. Housing Studies33(8): 1246–1263.
13.
CliftBCGoreJGustafssonJ, et al. (2021) Temporality in Qualitative Inquiry: Theories, Methods and Practices. London: Routledge.
14.
ColtartCHenwoodK (2012) On paternal subjectivity: a qualitative longitudinal and psychosocial case analysis of men’s classed positions and transitions to first time fatherhood. Qualitative Research12(1): 35–52.
15.
DalyG (1996) Homeless: Policies, Strategies and Lives on the Street. London: Routledge.
16.
DamonJ (2002) La Question SDF. Paris: PUF.
17.
DavidsonENugentBJohnsenS (2021) Charting the rough journey to ‘Home’: the contribution of qualitative longitudinal research to understandings of homelessness in austerity. Social Policy and Society20(4): 684–700.
18.
DesjarlaisRR (1997) Shelter Blues: Homelessness and Sanity in Boston Shelter. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
19.
FacerKSiebersJSmithB (2021) Working with Time in Qualitative Research: Case Studies, Theory, and Practice. London: Routledge.
20.
FitzpatrickSQuilgarsDPleaceN (2009) Homelessness in the UK: Problems and Solutions. Coventry: Chartered Institute of Housing.
21.
GiddensA (1991) Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
22.
GhoseTFiellinDAGordonAJ, et al. (2013) Hazardous drinking and its association with homelessness among veterans in care. Drug and Alcohol Dependence132(1–2): 202–226.
23.
GlickWHuberGMillerC, et al. (1995) Studying changes in organisational design and effectiveness: Retrospective event histories and periodic assessments. In: HuberGVan de VenA (eds), Longitudinal Field Research Methods. London: Sage, pp. 126–154.
24.
GoffmanE (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster.
25.
HealyJ (2012) The Grass Arena. An Autobiography. London: Penguin.
26.
IsaacsSBlundelDFoleyA, et al. (2015) Social Problems in the UK: An Introduction. London: Routledge.
27.
Johnson-HanksJ (2002) On the limits of the life cycle in ethnography: toward a theory of vital conjunctures. American Anthropologist104(3): 865–880.
28.
HojdestrandT (2009) Needed by Nobody. Homelessness and Humanness in Post-Socialist Russia. Ithaka, NMY: Cornell University Press.
29.
HutsonSLiddiardM (1994) Youth Homelessness: The Construction of a Social Issue. London: Macmillan.
30.
Koro-LjungbergMHendricksJ (2018) Narratives and Nested-Time. Qualitative Inquiry26(10): 1196–1205.
31.
LovellAM (1992) Seizing the moment: power, contingency, and temporality in street life. In: RutzH (ed), The Politics of Time. Washington DC: American Anthropological Association.
32.
MayockPCorrML (2013) Young People’s Homeless and Housing Pathways: Key Findings from a 6-year Qualitative Longitudinal Study. Dublin: Department of Children and Youth Affairs.
33.
McCarthyL (2013) Homelessness and Identity: a Critical Review of the Literature and Theory. People, Place and Policy Online7(1): 46–58.
34.
McLeodJ (2017) Marking time, making methods: temporality and untimely dilemmas in the sociology of youth and educational change. British Journal of Sociology of Education38(1): 13–25.
35.
MoranPAthertonF (2020) The Philosophy of Homelessness: Barely Being. London: Routledge.
36.
NealeB (2021) The Craft of Qualitative Longitudinal Research. London: Sage.
37.
Neale B HenwoodKHollandJ (2012) Researching lives through time: an introduction to the timescapes approach. Qualitative Research12(1): 4–15.
38.
NealeBFlowerdewJ (2003) Time, texture and childhood: The contours of longitudinal qualitative research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology6(3): 189–199.
39.
O’NeillB (2017) The Space of Boredom. Homelessness in the Slowing Global Order. Durham: Duke University Press.
40.
OlkowskiD (2021) Deleuze, Bergson and Merleau-Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception. IN: Indiana University Press.
41.
OsborneR (2002) “I may be Homeless, but I’m not Helpless”: The Costs and Benefits of Identifying with Homelessness. Self and Identity1(1): 43–52.
42.
ParsellC (2011) Homeless identities: enacted and ascribed. The British Journal of Sociology62(3): 442–461.
43.
PascaleC (2005) There’s no Place like Home: The Discursive Creation of Homelessness. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies5(2): 250–268.
44.
Roer StrierDSandsRG (2015) Moving beyond the ‘official story’: when ‘others’ meet in a qualitative interview. Qualitative Research15(2): 251–268.
45.
Sanchez-MiraNBernardiL (2021) Relative time and life course research. Longitudinal and Life Course Studies12(1): 19–40.
46.
SandelowskiM (1999) Time and Qualitative Research. Research in Nursing & Health34(4): 342–352.
47.
SealM (2007) Introduction: Homelessness and identity. In: SealM (ed), Understanding and Responding to Homeless Experiences, Identities and Cultures. Dorset, UK: Russell House.
SnowDAAndersonL (1987) Identity Work Among the Homeless: The verbal Construction and Avowal of Personal Identities. American Journal of Sociology92: 1336–1371.
50.
SnowDAAndersonL (1993) Down on Their Luck. A Study of Homeless Street People. Berkeley: University of California Press.
StephensonS (2016) Crossing the Line: Vagrancy, Homelessness and Social Displacement in Russia. London: Routledge.
53.
TeruiSHsiehE (2016) ‘Not homeless yet. I'm kind of couch surfing’: finding identities for people at a homeless shelter. Social Work in Public Health31(7): 688–699.
54.
ThomsonRHendersonSHollandJ, et al. (2002) Critical moments: Choice, chance and opportunity in young people’s narratives of transition to adulthood. Sociology36: 335–354.
55.
Van DoornL (2010) Perceptions of time and space of (formerly) homeless people. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment20(2): 218–238.
56.
Van GennepA (1960) The Rites of Passage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
57.
ZuffereyCKerrL (2004) Identity and everyday experiences of homelessness: Some implications for social work. Australian Social Work57(4): 343–353.
