Trading Time: Can Exchange Lead to Social Change?

Cuts to social services in the wake of austerity in recent years have led communities to look within, at possible initiatives that they can use to replace some of the support that’s been lost. One of the most interesting and promising initiatives has been time banking, a system that enables people within a community to trade—and store for later use—hours of supportive work and assistance. Trading Time is the first book to look closely at the way that time banking works in theory and practice, and it builds on the social theory of time to highlight the tensions between the values of people involved with time banks and the values of policy makers.