Titelaufnahme

Does the pandemic foreshadow a more sustainable order of time? Can the crisis allow for a departure from the capitalist time regime? This article looks at the Covid-19 pandemic and respective state interventions from a perspective inspired by the sociology of time and eco- nomic sociology. It shows that the social and economic disruptions attributed to the pan- demic can be understood as the result of a collision of opposing temporal logics. In order to contain the pandemic, the state initially enforced ways of dealing with time that contradict the capitalist time regime and its major principles - commodification and rational use of time, acceleration, and appropriation of the future. This "return of the state" as a power governing its citizens' time does not, however, in itself imply a "new temporal order" that goes beyond the current state of emergency. The article shows that those state interventions intended not to contain the virus but to mitigate its social and economic consequences can often be understood as attempts to mediate between different temporal logics and cushion their collision. They essentially facilitate a "return" to the capitalist time regime and thus perpetuate time-related inequalities.