Abstract

This paper aims to disclose that waiting is, as stated by Alfred Schutz, a phenomenon in our durée (or inner duration) which deals with several streams of consciousness at the same time grasped together by the contrapuntal structure of our mind. Based on empirical research conducted at the international airport of Buenos Aires Ministro Pistarini we argue that the organization of the time of waiting produced by experts explicitly plays with the contrapuntal structure of the mind in order to hold together at once the topic of the process of boarding, aiming to take the plane, and the topic of activities that entertain the passengers while waiting. This involves an inversion of the passenger's hierarchy of relevancies, who moves from the experience of just waiting to the ecstatic experience of consumption. In order to set in a durable way this structuration of the thematic kernel and the hierarchy of relevancies, experts seek to incentivize the development of habitualities and automatisms. This is generally achieved except when unforeseen events come up or passengers resist the strategies of incentive to consummation and the demarcation of exclusive places in the airport. Also, even if the time of waiting is often seen as normal, habitual and according to international standards, when operational contingencies occur and processes become slower than expected, the experience of waiting gets once again the center of attention and it can produce anxiety when the original structure of relevancies, in which waiting takes the first place, is reset and becomes the thematic kernel.