The qualities of time : anthropological approaches / edited by Wendy James and David Mills.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

James, Wendy.

Mills, David, 1969-

Series:

A.S.A. monographs ; 41.

ASA monographs, 0066-9679 ; 41

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Time--Cross-cultural studies.

Time.

Genre:

Cross-cultural studies.

Physical Description:

xviii, 373 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Berg, 2005.

Summary:

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, 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. 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.

Contents:

Introduction: From Representation to Action in the Flow of Time / Wendy James, David Mills 1

Part I Objects and Places as Signs of the Past

1 The Material Culture of Memory / Paul Lane 19

2 'Varimu Valale': Rock Art as World Heritage in a Ritual Landscape of Central Tanzania / Jasper Chalcraft 35

3 The Time of Place in West Mexico / Trevor Stack 55

Part II Mythical Times, Presentism, and the Critique from History

4 Tiger in an African Palace / Richard Fardon 73

5 'Time, Too, Grows on the Moon': Some Evidence for Knight's Theory of a Human Universal / Ian Watts 95

6 Historical Time versus the Imagination of Antiquity: Critical Perspectives from the Kalahari / Chris Wingfield 119

7 Kingship, Revolution and Time: Perspectives on Materiality and Modernity / David Wengrow 137

Part III Modern Times?

8 Time Inscribed in Space, and the Process of Diagnosis in African and Chinese Medical Practices / Elisabeth Hsu 155

9 Time and the Work Ethic in Post-Socialist Romania / Monica Heintz 171

Part IV Countering the Metanarratives

10 Quartering Sheep at Carnival in Sud Lipez, Bolivia / Maggie Bolton 187

11 Bandits and Heroes: Time and Place in Central China / Mary Rack 203

12 The Persistence of Multiple-religious Practices in South-west Ethiopia / Wolde Gossa Tadesse 219

13 Time-shapes and Cultural Agency among West African Craft Specialists / Roy Dilley 235

Part V Cosmologies and the Making of History

14 The 'Rounds' of Time: Time, History and Society in Borana Oromo / Gemetchu Megerssa, Aneesa Kassam 251

15 Cutting Time: Beads, Sex and Songs in the Making of Samburu Memory / Blinda Straight 267

16 Old System, New Conflicts: Age, Generation and Discord among the Meru, Kenya / Anne-Marie Peatrik 285

17 The Kanungu Fire: Millenarianism and the Millennium in South-western Uganda / Richard Vokes 301

Part VI Persons In and Out of Time

18 Life Made Strange: an Essay on the Re-inhabitation of Bodies and Landscapes / Andrew Irving 317

19 Embodied Memories: Displacements in Time and Space / Julia Powles 331

20 Living in Time's Shadow: Pollution, Purification and Fractured Temporalities in Buddhist Ladakh / Martin A. Mills 349.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1845200454

1845200748

OCLC:

56805577