Business Temporal Norms and Bereavement Behavior

The development of modern commerce and industry gave rise to distinctive concepts and norms governing use of time, which include precise measurement, scheduling, punctuality, standardization, pricing, and efficient use of time. It is problematic how extensively the temporal norms of business have come to dominate various aspects of social life. The paperfocuses on bereavement. It examines the process in which business came to cast the situation of the bereaved worker in a temporalframework: time off. This gave emphasis to prescriptions as a basis for organizing death work and extended business conventions to bereavement practices andfunerary rituals. As bereavement practices have been brought increasingly into consistency with the business temporal code, bereavement has taken on the meanings of the business system, reflecting and reinforcing a social order based on businesslike management of time.