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Paper short abstract:

Going beyond the debate on "African vs European time" the paper looks at practices of standardizing and vernacularizing time. I investigate opportunities that allow to chose between time registers, in particular when referring to the future in current Afropean debates on global environmental change.

Paper long abstract:

If thinking of Africa or Europe in terms of a continental space is flawed (see "The myth of continents" by Lewis and Wigan 1997), then what about "Afropean time"? After all, most Africans and Europeans are connected by living in the same, or neighbouring, time zones: "Greenwich Mean Time" as it was known in the colonial past and "Zulu Time" as it still called in international sea- and air traffic. Co-evalness is what we strive for in anthropological accounts and the stereotypes connected to "African time" seem to be finally on the way out. Do we need a new language that helps us to talk about shared and diversified concepts of time? Do we all mean the same things when we identify "generations" or when we complain about "seniors exploiting juniors" or ("juniors not respecting seniors") - also in university settings? And in terms of practical research: What is the time horizon that we target? Is scholarly writing always for "eternity"? Or is it only relevant when it is part of a fixed-term project? How much do we want to invest in archiving and accumulating? How important is forgetting and giving things up?

In this contribution I trace some of these questions. I want to overcome the old debate on "African versus European time" by looking at practices of standardizing and vernacularizing time instead. And I investigate opportunities that allow to chose between time registers, in particular when referring to the future in current debates about the global environmental crisis.