The Anthropology of Time

ANTH 433/633 Wed. 9:20-11:15 Mike McGovern 120 10 Sachem St. mike.mcgovern@yale.edu Office hours: Tues 11:30-1:30 Description: Anthropologists are interested in the cross-cultural variability in conceptions of time and space. Nearly one hundred years ago, Durkheim (1912) insisted that the category of time was neither a universal a priori category nor an individualized processing of experience. The category of time, like space, number, and cause, is itself a cultural product, issuing forth from words and actions in society. In turn, the culturally specific understanding of time is foundational to individuals' attempts to exercise agency in the societies in which they live. The course begins with a number of classical anthropological texts that set the terms of the discussion, then incorporates a number of readings from philosophy and history that have been influential on anthropological analyses of time. Among the topics to be covered will be the importance of time and timing in politics; narrative as a structuring element of social action in time; the variations of tempo characteristic of charismatic religious experience and socialist societies; and the socio-cultural constitution of hope as a forwardlooking frame for social and political acts. Readings will include Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination; Bhabha, Nation and Narration; Boym, The Future of Nostalgia; Donham, Marxist Modern; Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer; Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes is Object; Gell, The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and Images; Greenhouse, A Moment's Notice: Time Politics Across Cultures; Keane, Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter; Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time; Miyazaki, The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge; Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1; and essays by Arjun Appadurai, Walter Bejamin, Clifford Geertz, Edmund Leach, Nancy Munn, William Sewell, E.P. Thompson, and Hayden White. The course will be offered to graduate students and upper level

undergraduate anthropology majors with the permission of the instructor. This is a seminar course, with enrollment limited to 20 students. Requirements: The grade will be based on class participation (33%) and on the final paper or project (66%). Undergraduates will complete a research paper of 15 pages and graduate students a paper of 20 pages on a topic developed in consultation with me. Please see the syllabus for information about the date s on which the successive steps in the research and writing process will be due. Readings will be modest, and it is expected that students will have done all of the reading for each meeting. It is the responsibility of each student to demonstrate her or his mastery of the readings during class sessions, and failure to do so will result in a lower grade for participation.

The following books will be available at Labyrinth Bookstore and on reserve at Bass Library. Shorter readings will be available on the "Resources" page of the v2 website. Bakhtin, Mikhail 1981 The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: U. Texas Press. Bhabha, Homi, ed. 1990 Nation and Narration. London: Routledge. Boym, Svetlana 2001 The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Donham, Donald 1999 Marxist Modern. Berkeley: University of California Press. Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1940 The Nuer. Oxford: Clarendon. Fabian, Johannes 1983 Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes is Object. New York: Columbia U. Press. Gell, Alfred 1992 The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and Images. Oxford: Berg. Greenhouse, Carol 1996 A Moment's Notice: Time Politics Across Cultures. Ithaca: Cornell U. Press. Keane, Webb 2007 Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. Berkeley: University of California Press. Koselleck, Reinhart 2004 [1979] Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press.

Miyazaki, Hirokazu 2004 The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge. Stanford: Stanford U. Press. Ricoeur, Paul 1984 Time and Narrative, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 11 January--Introduction 18 January--Some classic approaches Fortes, Meyer 1949 "Time and Social Structure: An Ashanti Case Study.: In Social Structure: Studies Presented to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, ed. M. Fortes. New York: Russell and Russell. Geertz, Clifford 1973 "Person, Time and Conduct in Bali." In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Leach, Edmund 1961 "Two Essays Concerning the Symbolic Representation of Time" In Rethinking Anthropology. London: Athlone Press. Munn, Nancy 1992 "The Cultural Anthropology of Time: A Critical Essay." Annual Review of Anthropology. 21:93-123. Appadurai, Arjun 1981 "The Past as a Scarce Resource" Man 16:201219. Bloch, Maurice 1977 "The Past and the Present in the Present." Man. 12:278-292.
recommended:

25 January--time and space Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1939 "Nuer Time Reckoning." Africa. 12: 189-216. 1940 The Nuer. Oxford: Clarendon. 1 February--Time and Narration Bhabha, Homi, ed. 1990 Nation and Narration. London: Routledge. Ricoeur, Paul 1984 Time and Narrative, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. White, Hayden 1981 "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality." In W.J.T. Mitchell, ed. On Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
from: from:

8 February--Orientations toward the Future Miyazaki, Hirokazu 2004 The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge. Stanford: Stanford U. Press.

15 February--The Ethics of Time in Anthropology Fabian, Johannes 1983 Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes is Object. New York: Columbia U. Press. 22 February--Approaches from other disciplines Bakhtin, Mikhail 1981 "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel" In The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: U. Texas Press. Sewell, William 1996 "Three Temporalities: Toward an Eventful Sociology." In T. McDonald, ed. The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences. 245-280. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Thompson, E.P. 1967 "Time, Work and Discipline in Industrial Capitalism." Past and Present 38:56-97.
recommended:

Koselleck, Reinhart 2004 [1979] Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press.

29 February--Time and Political Rationalities Greenhouse, Carol 1996 A Moment's Notice: Time Politics Across Cultures. Ithaca: Cornell U. Press. 3-18 March: Spring Break 21 March--Eschatological Time
from:

Benjamin, Walter 1969 Illuminations. New York: Schocken.

from: Keane, Webb 2007 Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. Berkeley: University of California Press. Guyer, Jane 2007 "Prophecy and the Near Future: Thoughts on Macroeconomic, Evangelical, and Punctuated Time." American Ethnologist. 34(3):409-421. Robbins, Joel "Continuity Thinking and the Problem of Christian Culture: Belief, Time, and the Anthropology of Christianity." Current Anthropology 48:5-38. 28 March--Forward and Back

Boym, Svetlana 2001 The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Verdery, Katherine 1996 "The 'Etatization' of Time in Ceausescu's Romania" In What was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton University Press. 4 April--Revolutionary Time Donham, Donald 1999 Marxist Modern. Berkeley: University of California Press. Harms, Erik 2011 "Future Orientations in the Country of Memory: Social Conceptions of Time" and "Negotiating Time and Space: Household, Labor, Land, and Movement" In Saigon's Edge: On the Margins of Ho Chi Minh City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 11 April--Coda: The Anthropology of Time Revisited Gell, Alfred 1992 The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and Images. Oxford: Berg. 18 April--Student Presentations 2 May--papers due.