Living on buffered time

Toward another sociology of storage

Bibliographic Data

ID2301475
AuthorsVeit Braun (0000-0002-1769-6716, Institute for Sociology, University of Frankfurt, Germany, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume69
Issue2
Pages277-293
Publication date2025-06-12
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueActa Sociologica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-6993 • E-ISSN: 1502-3869
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00016993251348997
OpenAlexW4411249102
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited63

This article seeks to understand the role of storage for social time. While social theory has largely interpreted storage in spatial terms, a recent body of literature explores how cold storage technologies affect society's relationship with time. The ability to suspend life in ice, several scholars argue, leads to a new relationship with time: the future becomes malleable as frozen cells, tissues and seeds are options with which events can be reversed, action can be postponed, and the status quo can be preserved. However, a growing number of empirical studies of cold storage complicates this hypothesis, finding that these technologies are often used to accelerate action instead. The divergence, this article argues, can be understood by linking the assumptions underlying the suspension hypothesis to sociological concepts like value, expectations, and especially practice. It argues that under certain circumstances, storage is best understood as dynamic rather than static. Taking in things and releasing them at different rates, it acts as a form of buffer that can link social activity and flows of different speeds and rhythms without imposing a shared temporality on them. On these grounds, the article pleads for a broadened understanding of storage as a social technique that affects both space and time

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