Socionatural resources endure through time as well as across space (Giddens, 1984).

Space configures time in that where we are in relation to others alters across time and changes our experiences and perceptions of time. Living in an impoverished neighbourhood causes me depressive anxiety and insomnia. Sleeplessness affects my physical and mental wellbeing. My energy levels, motivation and concentration are depleted, harming my interactions with others and threatening to trap me in a vicious cycle of stress and deprivation.

Reciprocally, time configures space in that the rhythms of time, when we are, effects the geographies of social relations. Some individuals are pressed to take jobs with unsociable hours that adversely affect their family life and non-work activities. The value and meaning of time to them differs from its value and meaning to others.

Time, like space, is therefore socially constructed, structuring and structured by socioeconomic inequalities (Bauman, 2000; May and Thrift, 2001). The distribution of resources across space/time both enables and constrains social agents, telling them where and when they may or may not interact; the interactions of social agents sometimes conform to the existing contours of space/time (perpetuating existing resource structures), sometimes subjecting them to new processes and configurations.

Below, we look at our key concept and its relation to poverty in the light of three subjects: social policy, sociology and environmentalism. We are then in a position to refine the understanding of ecosocial poverty developed over previous chapters.

Social policy

Time is another central theme of social policy (Fitzpatrick, 2004a; Bryson, 2007, pp 39-43, Chapter 6).

• • Social insurance is typically thought of as the socialisation, or pooling, of risks: mutual protection against shared vulnerabilities (Kuhnle and Sander, 2010). Even if you yourself are never ill, unemployed, incapacitated, old, or whatever, you will still have benefited by being insured against such possibilities. Although we cannot predict the frequency and severity of such vicissitudes, nor who they will affect, we can introduce some security into life's lottery. Social insurance smoothes out the life course. Social insurance also represents the socialisation and pooling of time. Consider pensions. Those who die young will be net contributors to a scheme that never supported them; others will be net beneficiaries. We could say that the former have bequeathed some of their time to the latter.