Met de tijd meegaan. Over tijd en tijdsritmen ten plattelande

Samenvatting

"Keep in with time" - about time and time-rhythms in the country-side. This article deals with time-regimes in a Dutch rural community. Until the turn of the century the countrymen in West-Twente were committed to a time arrangement which resembled the task-oriented time-regime, that the historian E.P. Thompson has described for pre-industrial England. This time-regime was interwoven with the agrarian cyclus and punctuated by the agrarian-religious feastcalendar. Seasonal working-rhythms, a perception of time as a quality and an intermingling of work and leisure were some of its characteristics. Influenced by the integration of the farmholdings in supra-local markets this old time-regime in the twentieth century changed into a more modern time-regime. Clock-time became paramount, time became money, labour became more disciplined. The article ends with a comparison between the two time-regimes in terms of "freedom", which is an important value for farmers.