ABSTRACT
Capitalism today tries to take advantage of sleep while reducing its duration. The expansion of flexible work regimes into other fields of life spreads the effects of social acceleration. Acceleration is in line with deceleration. Sleep can be a limit to acceleration or can be a necessary deceleration of the body for further acceleration. On the one hand, due to the requirements and desires inside and outside work, sleep is more vulnerable to time pressure. On the other hand, lack of or unhealthy sleep is seen as an obstacle before enriched participation in waking life. The tension between the economic and cultural drivers of social acceleration is perpetuated by its structural motor, which generates an ambivalent position for the sleep of white-collar employees. This renders sleep both dispensable and indispensable at the same time.
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Notes on contributors
Çağatay Topal
Çağatay Topal completed his MS study in sociology at Middle East Technical University and his Ph.D. study in sociology at Queen’s University at Kingston in Canada. Among his research interests are surveillance, sociological theory, and science and technology. He currently teaches in the Department of Sociology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara.
Emir Kurmuş
Emir Kurmuş completed his MS study in Sociology at METU. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. He currently works as a research assistant in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Istanbul University. Among his research interests are time and temporality, social acceleration, sociology of sleep, and political theory.