The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and Images

by Alfred Gell

Time - relentless, ever-present but intangible and the single element over which human beings have no absolute control - has long proved a puzzle. The author examines the phenomenon of time and asks such fascinating questions as how time impinges on people, to what extent our awareness of time is culturally conditioned, how societies deal with temporal problems and whether time can be considered a `resource' to be economized. More specifically, he provides a consistent and detailed analysis of theories put forward by a number of thinkers such as Durkheim, Evans-Pritchard, Lévi-Strauss, Geertz, Piaget, Husserl and Bourdieu. His discussion encompasses four main approaches in time research, namely developmental psychology, symbolic anthropology (covering the bulk of post-Durkheimian social anthropology) `economic' theories of time in social geography and, finally, phenomenological theories. The author concludes by presenting his own model of social/cognitive time, in the light of these critical discussions of the literature.

Genres: Anthropology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, World History, Sociology

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Bene Pétursson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd book. Feel like the amount of people in the world who are going to get something out of this book are a very fucking small pool indeed. You need to have a decent understanding of both social theory and analytic philosophy, particularly the discourse within analytic philosophy on time (i.e. post Mctaggart stuff) as well as Lewis' Possible Worlds Theory, AS WELL as a basic understanding of Logic. Considering the fact these two crowds seem to never mix, I'm not surprised that 2 of the 4 reviews of this book that they had at my uni library stated that they didn't understand what the book was about, or they thought it was purely critical, it is not. Gell tries to build a bridge between analytic and scientific metaphysical realism about time (A-theory's though, so nothing special about tense) and anthropological relativism about time, and in doing so creating a universal theory of time for the Social Sciences. This project sees him go through Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Psychology, Continental Philosophy, Analytic Philosophy, and finally modal and temporal logic. Obviously considering the immense scope of interaction means that he does have some slightly spicy takes that we will not mention (*cough* "I think of beliefs as inscriptions, things one has written down inside one's head as part of a big list entitled 'things that I believe,' which can be added to, subtracted from, or altered at will." *cough*). All this being said in classic Gell fashion this is an extremely creative book with some genuine insights, and the positive position that he sketches out in parts 2 and 3 has some very genuinely important insights (perhaps most importantly, our use of mental temporal-spatial maps to make sense of the world, and the role that this plays in action, particularly of the strategic kind). Sadly the book end just as it seems to be about to get insanely interesting. In the conclusion he feigns mental exhaustion, which considering how much analytic philosophy he read for this project I don't blame him.

Recommend this book to anyone looking to apply analytic philosophy to social theory, and for anyone interested in time within social theory, particularly if you yourself are feigning mental exhaustion from the amount of unreflexive Bergsonians out there.

[Federico Julian · Rating 5 out of 5]

La propuesta de Gell respecto a la antropológia del tiempo me pareció bastante buena. Distingue entre dos tipos de lineas de tiempo, la a y la b y se decanta por la segunda. Después de hacer una crítca al relativismo cultural Gell busca establecer un criterio que permita estudiar el tiempo y sus expfesiones culturales en un nivel práctico. Me parece que lo logra con éxito.