The time change and its consequences on life in society with the decryption of sociologist Jean Viard. Next night at 2 a.m., it will be 3 a.m., and we’ll lose an hour of sleep.
Social issue, your weekend meeting to fully understand the context of a news item and its challenges. Today with the sociologist Jean Viard, research director at the CNRS, focus on the question of the time change. Next night at 2 a.m. it will actually be 3 a.m. already. This time change was implemented in France in 1976, with President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
franceinfo: Is it a ritual that we love to hate, but that we don’t want to let go of in France?
John Viard: Yes, but not only in France, since now, in fact, the weather is European. But also, it’s a way of talking about time a little lighter than the length of the retreat. But it is all the same always the question of time, but of time in its organization. It must be said that it did not start with the oil crisis. It started at the time of the war of 14: in France, in Germany, in England, we changed hours, in particular to reduce coal consumption, and in a society that was not electrified. The countryside in France was electrified at the end of the 1930s. So taking advantage of daylight, and then coal, was a major issue.
And then in 1945, indeed, we deleted this passage. We came back at 1 a.m. universal, at least in France. And then, after a new energy crisis this time, no more coal, but oil, there, again, we play on the hours. The problem is that since then, we first decided in 2002 to have the same time throughout the European Union. It’s a way of body. We belong to a temporal, spatial community. We have borders and we have the same time. So it is a project of political unification. Moreover, many countries have unified their hours, recently the United States, Turkey, etc.
That is to say that the idea of having a time, 1 national hour, basically, is a rising idea in societies today. Especially since electricity, lighting, in particular, with new light bulbs, consume less electricity and, on the other hand, with podcasts, etc., the high mass of the 8 p.m. newspaper where all of France was sitting on her sofa no longer has the same function at all. There’s all that at play, and the question that we don’t know how to resolve, and that’s why Europe has been blocked for ten years now, is it what time to choose?
We cannot come to an agreement between Europeans. For what ?
Because we don’t have the same interests. An Irishman, if you give him the same time as a Greek, there are seasons, there’s almost a two-hour difference in reality, in the light. If you go to Brittany, you have almost an hour difference with Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. So in fact, the time of the sun is not universal. Universal time is 1 hour political. How do we overlap the two? One day, we will need to affirm Europe, and I think that will be one of the symbolic measures. We will have a big meeting of Heads of State, we will decide on a single hour, we will embrace each other, it will be a way of having a common Europe. Me, I see it like that.
But deciding to remove the time change, wouldn’t that be out of step with our times, when there are regularly increasing calls for sobriety?
There are two questions. The time change upsets the rhythms of individuals, especially children and infants. And if you’ve had children, you know that when we change the time at the start of the school year, it’s a calamity, it means: do we respect human nature? Which is one of the concerns today. Look at the ladies who no longer want to take pills, with the idea that nature is a higher good, which is certainly true, but that does not mean that it is not as dangerous.
And on the other side, there are those who say yes, okay, but rather it is necessary to consume less energy. It’s almost two ideas of what is natural, which can oppose each other. And then, it’s true that you have to recognize that for children, it’s really very complicated, especially infants, as they are completely punctuated with suckling by a biological rhythm – it looks like they bought a watch they are already so regular in their request for bottles or breasts – there, there is indeed this issue which opposes the other. So I would say that for the moment, we do not know what will happen. But what is true is that we don’t even agree on the words. People say I go forward, I go back…
And fortunately most watches are now automatic, computers, cell phones, there are few clocks where you have to change the time. It’s one thing to say, you have to teach children that you change the time. We have to show them a clock, we change the hands. They need to understand why all of a sudden it’s dark when they go to bed or, on the contrary, they go to bed when it’s daytime.