There remains, in the human sciences, a tendency to view human life as unfolding within the putatively universal metaphysics of time and space. Even dynamic concepts – such as mediation, consumption, contention, alienation, fragmentation and articulation – often presume, in their application, that time and space are objective realities external to human action. The 2004-05 Ethnohistory Workshop will critically reconsider time and space as abstract unchanging aspects of human experience and activity. We will seek instead to analyze the ways in which time and space are not only the premises of human action but, in fact, its products.

Our interrogation of time and space will be advanced by delimiting each. We will foreground, accordingly, the issues of temporality and mobility. Temporality and mobility help us conceptualize (i) the ways in which time and space are differentiated, respectively, into myriad forms and (ii) the ways these forms relate to each other. Temporality and mobility may be, in turn, specified further as follows.

The triad of past/present/future (aligned, by some, with traditional/modern/postmodern) is emblematic of the way temporalities are disaggregated and, at once, interrelated. The same may be said of temporal dyads such as periodization/culmination, simultaneity/duration, acceleration/evanescence, aspiration/prediction, repetition/exception, systemic/dialogic, civilization/camp and revision/reincarnation – to offer just a few pregnant examples. In what ways do human communities enact and elaborate such temporal distinctions? How are they prioritized, on what occasions, by whom, and to what ends?

In much the same way that temporality qualifies time, the concept of mobility serves as an alembic for space. We propose that mobility is a signal mode through which space is, at once, both segmented and connected. Dyads such as citizen/migrant, sovereignty/locality, individual/total, inert/nomadic, central/peripheral, leader/follower, departure/destination and division/compression – to offer, again, some examples – pivot, in significant measure, on notions of mobility. In what ways do human communities establish and embody such notions? How are different sorts of mobility hierarchized and who does so?

We are particularly – though not exclusively – interested in exploring the intersections between temporality and mobility. Do they concatenate one with the other? If so, what are the conditions, causes and consequences of such concatenations? What are the implications for the formation of human communities? What are the implications for the human sciences, e.g., contemporary debates about “construction” and “translation”?

Although this prospectus is, of necessity, drawn in broad terms each workshop session will address an issue as much empirical as theoretical.

 

Fall 2004

Spring 2005

April 21st, 2005: Gyanendra Pandey, Department of Anthropology and History, Johns Hopkins University
Paper Title: "The Time of the Dalit Conversion"
Venue: University Museum, Room 345
Time: 4:30-6:30 PM
Co-Sponsors: South Asia Center and the Center for the Advanced Study of India