Understanding Time and Problem Solving Experience: A Case Study of the Invisible Police

Abstract

In this paper we will explore the relation between the actors’ understanding of time and the problem solving strategies in a complicated situation. Drawing on ethnography and conversation analysis we will focus on the institutional interaction order governing the scenes these movies exhibit. Using phenomenology and Ernest Pople indices, we aim to analyze the understanding made of the time in these conversations. In doing so we will consider the moment in which the violators rationalize the reasons behind their violations. The results show that while the time that law, the police and even the road technologies rely on is homogeneous and linear, the drivers employ the expressions connotating an iterative understanding of time. The paper concludes with showing how the law breaking drivers base their conversations on a nonlinear time to manage the difficult situations they are involved with. This suggests that far from a universal category, time is a category constantly taking different shapes in different everyday encounters.

Keywords

• circular time
• conversation analysis
• linear time
• phenomenology
• ethno-methodology