Synopses & Reviews
This book explores the relevance of classical ideas in the anthropology of time to the way we understand history, participate in the events around us, and experience our lives. Time is not just an abstract principle we live by or a local cultural construct: it is shaped, punctuated, organized, and suffered in complex ways by real people negotiating their lives and relations with others. Space may be opened up for politics, violence or revolutionary change within the framework of ceremonial markers of social time: holy days, festivals and carnivals. People create and recreate patterns in the way they imagine the past, present and future at such moments, through material objects, language, symbolic action and bodily experience. The rhythms of social life, including periodic episodes of sacred or special time, interact with 'historical events' in strange ways. They are fundamental not only to the human condition but to the making and remembering of history, as well as to what we recognize as the unexpected or abnormal. The Qualities of Time brings anthropologists and archaeologists together in a new conversation about the 'patterns' of our understanding and experience of time. The authors reflect on how we should interpret evidence about the distant past, andhow far the structuring of social time is a human universal. They also consider whether anthropology itself has been so oriented to the present it has still to develop ways of dealing with temporality. The interactions of time-structures, ceremonials, and specific historical events, including violence inspired by the millennium, are interrogated. The experience of individuals who feel the times are for them 'out of joint' is also examined.By combining socio-cultural, philosophical and historical approaches, this thought-provoking book moves anthropological debates about time's qualities well beyond existing studies.
Synopsis
This book explores the relevance of classical ideas in the anthropology of time to the way we understand history, participate in the events around us, and experience our lives.The authors reflect on how we should interpret evidence about the distant past, and how far the structuring of social time is a human universal. They also consider whether anthropology itself has been so oriented to the present it has still to develop ways of dealing with temporality.
About the Author
Wendy James is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford.
David Mills is the Anthropology Coordinator at the Centre for Learning and Teaching Sociology, Anthropology and Politics, University of Birmingham.
Table of Contents
Arguments about Antiquity: Rhythm, Recognition and Evidence * The Material Culture of Memory--Paul Lane * "Time, Too, Grows on the Moon": Some Evidence for Knight's Theory of a Humanuniversal--Ian Watts * Historical Time versus the Imagination of Antiquity: Critical Perspectives from the Kalahari--Chris Wingfield * Kingship, Revolution and Time--David Wengrow * "Varimu Valale": Rock-Paintings, Ritual Practice and World Heritage in Kondoa-Irangi, Tanzania --Jaspar Chalcraft * The Time of Place in West Mexico--Trevor Stack * A Tiger in an African Palace--Richard Fardon* Ceremony, Politics and the Punctuation of Social Time * Time-Shapes and Cultural Agency among West African Craft Specialists--Roy Dilley * Quartering Sheep at Carnival in Sud Lìpez, Bolivia--Maggie Bolton * Time and Religious Practice in Southwest Ethiopia--Tadesse Wolde * Bandits and Heroes: Past and Present in Central China--Mary Rack * The "Rounds" of Time: Time, History and Society in Boorana Oromo (Southern Ethiopia and Northern Kenya)--Gemetchu Megerssa and Aneesa Kassam * Time and its Contradictions: The Age and Generation System if the Meru Tigania-Igembe (Kenya)--Anne-Marie Peatrik * The Kanungu Fire: Millenialism and the Millenium in South-Western Uganda--Richard Vokes * Living Rhythms@ Personhood In and Out of Time * Living in Time's Shadow: Pollution, Purification and Fractured Temporalities in Buddhlist Ladakh--Martin Mills * Life Made Strange: An Essay on the Re-inhabitation of Bodies and Landscapes--Andrew Irving * Time Inscribed in Space, and the Processs of Diagnosis in African and Chinese Medical Practices * Time and the Work Ethic in Post-Socialist Romania * Embodies Memories: Displacements in Time and Space--Julia Powles * Cutting Time: Beads and Songs in the Making of Samburu Memory--Bilinda Straight