Time Blind: Problems in Perceiving Other Temporalities

by Kevin K. Birth

Overview

This book explores how modern concepts of time constrain our understanding of temporal diversity. Time is a necessary and pervasive dimension of scholarship, yet rarely have the cultural assumptions about time been explored.  This book looks at how anthropology--a discipline known for the study of cultural, linguistic, historical, and biological variation and differences--is blind to temporalities outside of the logics of European-derived ideas about time.  While the argument focuses primarily on anthropology, its points can be applied to other fields in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319341323
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	11/14/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	171
File size:	806 KB

About the Author

Kevin K. Birth is Professor of Anthropology at Queens College of the City University of New York, USA.  He is the author of numerous articles and several books about time. 

Table of Contents

Prelude: The Duplicity of Time

Chapter 1. (Hegemonic) Calibrations in Anthropology

Chapter 2. Evolution’s Anticipation of Horology?

Chapter 3. ‘Hours Don’t Make Work’: Kairos, Chronos, and the Spirit of Work in Trinidad

Chapter 4. Past Times: Temporal Structuring of History and Memory

Chapter 5. Tensions of the Times: Homochronism versus Narratives of Postcolonialism

Chapter 6. Thinking Through Homochronic Hegemony Ethnographically

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A pivotal intervention into interdisciplinary research on time. Birth expertly demonstrates that assumptions about time have impeded scholarship across a wide range of disciplines. The implications of failing to reflect on the hegemony of Western concepts of time are convincingly drawn out, including the unwitting reproduction of ethnocentrisms. This book insists on the diverse and contentious heritage of time, calling on researchers to re-examine their presuppositions and engage more deeply with the complexities of time.” (Michelle Bastian, Chancellor’s Fellow, University of Edinburgh, Scotland)