In the Meantime: Toward an Anthropology of the Possible

Published by Berghahn Books 2023

In the Meantime

Toward an Anthropology of the Possible

Edited by: Adeline Masquelier and Deborah Durham

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781800738874

Overview
Contents

About this book

The “meantime” represents the gap between what is past and the unknown future. When considered as waiting, the meantime is defined as a period of suspension to be endured. By contrast, the contributors of this volume understand it as a space of “the possible” where calculation coexists with uncertainty, promises with disappointment, and imminence with deferral. Attending to the temporalities of emerging rather than settled facts, they put the stress on the temporal tactics, social commitments, material connections, dispositional orientations, and affective circuits that emerge in the meantime even in the most desperate times.

Author / Editor information

Adeline Masquelier is Professor of Anthropology at Tulane University. She is author of Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town (Indiana, 2009) and Fada: Boredom and Belonging in Niger (Chicago, 2019). She is a former executive editor of the Journal of Religion in Africa and past president of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.

Deborah Durham teaches at the University of Virginia. She conducts research in Botswana and Turkey and is the co-editor of Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy (Indiana, 2007) and Elusive Adulthoods: The Anthropology of New Maturities (Indiana, 2017). She is an Editor at Hau Books and is Deputy Editor for Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.

Adeline Masquelier is Professor of Anthropology at Tulane University. She is author of Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town (Indiana, 2009) and Fada: Boredom and Belonging in Niger (Chicago, 2019). She is a former executive editor of the Journal of Religion in Africa and past president of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.

Reviews

“[This volume] curates an extraordinary conversation about what it means to wait, seemingly without end, in a moment that is supposedly defined by instantaneity. The book’s timing and its framing could not be better.” • Bruce O'Neill, Saint Louis University

“This is a superb volume, on the subject of a particular temporal mode—what the editors call “the meantime”… this book is top-notch scholarship, on a cutting-edge subject that will make a significant contribution to not only anthropology but cognate fields.” • Anne Allison, Duke University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Introduction. Minding the Gap in the Meantime Adeline Masquelier and Deborah Durham Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. “Just Waiting”: Korean Chinese Mobility and Immobility in Transnational Migration June Hee Kwon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	26
Chapter 2. In the Meanplace: Traversing Boom and Bust in China’s High Growth/Ghost Town Michael Alexander Ulfstjerne Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
Entretemps. “A Lot of Standing Around in the Dark”: Specters of Waiting in Paranormal Research Misty L. Bastian Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
Chapter 3. Raising Consciousness in the Costa Rican Seasonal Low Sabia McCoy-Torres Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Chapter 4. Stranded in Decolonization: The Attritional Temporality of Sahrawi Activism in Moroccan-Occupied Western Sahara Mark Drury Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
Entretemps. Machine-Made Time: Dialysis and the Complexities of Waiting and Planning Janelle S. Taylor and Ann M. O’Hare Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
Chapter 5. Waiting for Thieves: Nighttime Capital and the Labor of Sitting in Niger Adeline Masquelier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	124
Chapter 6. Waiting to Heal in “Crip Time”: Temporalities of Chronic Skin Wounds among Gunshot Survivors in New Orleans Daniella Santoro Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	148
Entretemps. Urgency, Boredom, and Pandemic Mean/Time(s) Martin Demant Frederiksen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	168
Chapter 7. African Time, Waiting, and Deadlines in Botswana Deborah Durham Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	172
Chapter 8. Waiting Out the Rush: On the Durability of Wealth in Kenya’s Coastal Sex Economies George Paul Meiu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	194
Afterword. 219 In Slow Time Thomas Hylland Eriksen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	224

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 240

eBook

Published: March 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781800738874