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- Convenors:
-
Helen Cornish
(Goldsmiths)
Martyn Wemyss (Goldsmiths)
Narmala Halstead (University of Sussex)
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- Formats:
- Roundtables
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 21 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
What does it mean to consider 'being in cultural time' ethnographically (Munn 1992)? How do we treat time as both epistemological category and ethnographic object? This roundtable invites short contributions which reflect on temporalities as ethnographic problems, resources, and analytics.
Long Abstract:
We invite participants to reflect on what it means to use a notion of being in cultural time ethnographically, and to consider how we treat time as both epistemological category and ethnographic object. Nearly 30 years have passed since Munn declared that 'people are in cultural time, not just conceiving or perceiving it' (1992: 110). Since then questions of time have been repeatedly explored by anthropologists to understand chronotopes/cultural rhythms/temporal registers as devices which orient both perspectives and actions. This roundtable focuses on time as an ethnographic rather than metaphysical problem. We solicit 5 minute contributions which address questions of ideologies, affects, and practices, and their relation to (different conceptions of) time, and contributions from those taking time and its manifestations (material, cultural, social) as their ethnographic object.
Questions to consider may include but are not limited to:
• How do different or incommensurable temporal registers manifest themselves within shared cultural spaces?
• How do particular political, religious, or social acts orient themselves in relation to postulated pasts or futures?
• How might the shared temporality of fieldwork inform ethnographic representations?
• What temporal dimensions must we take into account in our ethnographic renderings of place?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 21 July, 2020, -Stephanie Love (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA)
Paper short abstract:
By comparing the multiple terms for the "colonial past" that circulate in Algeria, I push for an anthropology of "orientation," the epistemological, cultural, and material practices that link multiple scales of socio-political life and produce complex spacetimes (or chronotopes) in everyday life.
Paper long abstract:
In this intervention, I call for new analytical frameworks for understanding "orientation" as a socio-political process through which people navigate and produce multiple spacetimes across different scales of social life. Drawing on 18-months of ethnographic field research in Oran, Algeria, I analyze the multiple terms for the "colonial past" that circulate in everyday speech, each of which index a speaker's ideological, social, and political orientation both on micro and macro scales. I compare the standard Arabic terms "isti'mar" (settling a place) and "mustudmir" (destroying a place), with everyday language of time in circulation in Algerian Arabic and French. The most common term, "waqt frānça" (French-times), often refers to things that were better back then ("bekri"). I argue that this is not simply a case of "colonial nostalgia." Instead, the juxtaposition of what the French "left behind" and what independent Algerians "have built" has become a powerful spatial metaphor for Algerians' grievances towards their government. These grievances erupted in 2019, when millions of Algerians mobilized for the country's "second revolution" (or al-Hirak) in 60 years. By analyzing the use of these linguistic variants, I argue that the anthropology of time should better understand practices of "orientation" as the way that "being in cultural time" (Munn 1992) is achieved. Orientation, therefore, should be understood as numerous epistemological, linguistic and cultural practices that link multiple scales of socio-political life and, in turn, produce the complex spacetimes in which people live.
Theodoros Kyriakides (University of Cyprus)
Paper short abstract:
This brief provocation addresses the question of the cultural 'before' and 'after' through a brief overview of the history of magic in Cyprus.
Paper long abstract:
The suggestion of time as a cultural register and ideology invites us to further consider the political 'work' through which such understandings of time are locally shaped. For example, a pertinent question is how the cultural past - that is to say, a bygone era of a certain culture or society - is distinguished from the present. This brief provocation addresses the question of the cultural 'before' and 'after' through a brief overview of the history of magic in Cyprus. More specifically, I focus on a localised form of magic which is known in Cyprus as yities (the closest equivalent to English being 'charming' or 'binding'). Of interest here is a political assemblage of institutions and narratives which demarcated such forms as magic as a thing of the past, and hence aided in structuring a modern understanding of time moving forward.
Lukas Ley (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Paper short abstract:
How do we speak about chronicity without ignoring individual and collective attempts to escape terminality and stagnation? This presentation considers social acts in and after 'chronic' time. How do they relate to time and how do we account for their very own temporality?
Paper long abstract:
In many places, infrastructures stopped working or turned against the populations that they were meant to support and serve. In Indonesia, where I conducted long-term fieldwork, poor residents live in the aftermath of infrastructural failure. They regularly suffer from floods--riverbanks crumble or canals designed to prevent flooding clog. Faced with this situation, people are constantly forced to fix and retrofit infrastructures, inserting themselves actively into larger sociotechnical assemblages. As Jackson (2013) argued, as a mode of existence repair itself constitutes an aftermath that grows at the margins of sociotechnical systems. Repair extends the lifespan of infrastructures, bridging from old worlds to new worlds--buying time. But what if the possibility of deterioration lingers on? What if repair and prevention trap people in such a present, preventing them from developing viable long-term plans? Cazdyn (2012) has diagnosed contemporary society with having entered a chronic mode, "a mode of time that cares little for terminality or acuteness." The 'chronic' comes with a cultural configuration that suppresses agony and manages pain while repressing the possibility of future change (cf. Masco 2019). In ethnographic research, however, we often encounter hopeful and innovative arts of dealing with crisis and dead-ends that have more or less self-destructive effects (Bourgois 2003). In my presentation, I ask what it means to consider chronic time and its material manifestations as an ethnographic object. How do we speak about chronicity without ignoring attempts to escape terminality and stagnation? How do social acts relate to this kind of future?