Vessels Of Time: An Essay On Temporal Change And Social Transformation

Is the concept of time among the Salteaux, Balinese, Nuer, or Pitanjare similar or different? What about ancient India and China or medieval Europe or industrialized America? This elegantly structured book is an exploration of the theoretical, methodological, and interpretative questions of what is involved when we talk about time in different societies, Western and non-Western, in contemporary and historical contexts. The author concludes that time in an anthropological sense is not a universal condition with a constant meaning throughout histories and societies and that the anthropologist's task is to find ways of comparing the differences, thereby opening cultures and traditions to each other in a more egalitarian way than has ever been possible.