Rethinking time's arrow: Bergson, Deleuze and the anthropology of time

Since the early 1970s, time has come to the fore as a constitutive element of social analysis in the guise of what I term here 'fluid time'. Anthropologists of multiple theoretical persuasions now take for granted that social life exists in 'time', 'flow', or 'flux...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Anthropological theory 2008-12, Vol.8 (4), p.399-429
Main Author: Hodges, Matt
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic discipline
Anthropological theory
Anthropologists
Anthropology
Bergson, Henri Louis
Deleuze, Gilles
Ontology
Philosophy
Social life & customs
Social research
Social scientists
Time
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Summary:Since the early 1970s, time has come to the fore as a constitutive element of social analysis in the guise of what I term here 'fluid time'. Anthropologists of multiple theoretical persuasions now take for granted that social life exists in 'time', 'flow', or 'flux', and this temporal ontology is commonly accepted as a universal, if habitually unquestioned, attribute of human experience. Similarly, it underpins today's dominant paradigm of 'processual' analysis, in its many forms. Yet this concept is notably under-theorized, in keeping with a history of uneven study by social scientists of time. In this article I draw on anthropological approaches by Gell and Munn, and philosophical work by Bergson and Deleuze, to put forward a critical theorization. I then discuss its ramifications. Ultimately, I argue that this model points to a rapprochement between the anthropological study of time and history, sociality and temporality, and an enhanced role for temporal analysis in anthropological theory.
ISSN:1463-4996
1741-2641
DOI:10.1177/1463499608096646