The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has thoroughly transformed our sense of time, blurring even further the boundaries of private versus working time in a multitude of jobs and stubbornly interfering with our routine time structuring practices. Unpredictability and fluidity – hallmarks of the eerie times we live in – hinder ubiquitous planning practices of the capitalist-consumerist societies, therefore undermining the usual functioning of a multitude of constituent economic, social and cultural processes. The experience of living in exceptional times is further exacerbated by the perturbation of the ritual/sacred time on personal and community level: online family reunions, rites of passages and church services tend to lack exactly that immersive sense of belonging which they are centered around. The last two years taught us that time – in its lived by, worked for and suffered under form – could be an infinite source of human achievement but also despair. The amazing variety of social and cultural responses to these changing times draws the attention of the social scientist upon the variability and malleability of time – as an ever-changing social construction determining our habitus both as individual and as societal beings.
