The western and non-western dichotomization of time in anthropology

Abstract

Early anthropological analyses of time produced Western vs. non-Western dichotomies of time. Later on, anthropology gradually shifted from a modernist to relativist and postmodernist tones in the analyses of time. This shift is the result of the criticism on the dichotomization from within the discipline that considered such dichotomization as West-centric or ethno-centric. Additionally, it is argued here that the anthropology’s interest in studying social change, particularly globalization, has contributed to this shift. This article presents the review of selected literature to discuss the way the Western and non-Western dichotomization was generated and later faded away. It provides an insight into how anthropological analyses related to time have changed throughout the history of the discipline.

Introduction

In his book, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object, Johannes Fabian discussed how anthropologists experienced time. According to Fabian (1983), during fieldwork, anthropologists typically identify themselves with the communities they work in by sharing intersubjective time. On the contrary, they typically organize their writings according to physical or typological time so that their ethnographies are not regarded as poetry, fiction, or political propaganda. In doing so, they place the community in a time different from their own.

The separation of time between anthropologist and the community is not due to any analytical error. It originates from the very foundation of the discipline’s epistemology. Having its roots in evolutionary approaches and colonialism, early anthropology constructed ‘others’ as ‘primitive’, savage’, ‘traditional’ and ‘indigenous’ by placing them in different or distant space and time (cf. Eriksen and Nielsen 2013; Gell 1996; Kuper 2018). Therefore, almost all early anthropological analyses of time produced the dichotomies of Western vs. non-Western, which resonated with ‘modern’ vs. ‘traditional’ or ‘primitive’ conceptualizations in the early history of the discipline (e.g., Evans-Pritchard 1940; Hallowell 1955; Lévi-Strauss 1963; Nilsson 1920; Whorf 1956). However, this modernist tone later ceded to a relativist one and then diluted or faded away in postmodernism, acknowledging differences in the ways time is perceived, constructed, reproduced, and managed across the world.

Two main factors, I argue, have major contribution to the criticism and irrelevance of the Western vs. non-Western dichotomies of time in later anthropological analyses. These factors relate broader debates and developments in anthropology. Firstly, Western vs. non-Western dichotomization was criticized from within the discipline, regarding ethno-centric. They also viewed such an approach as theoretically and methodologically flawed. This criticism emerged mainly after the rejection of evolutionary and structuralist approaches of social and cultural anthropology in the USA and the UK. Secondly, the process of globalization gave rise to homogenization of cultures, at least to some extent and apparently so, in which the adoption of Western temporal models took place in non-Western cultures. Further, postmodernist anthropological analyses of time did not appreciate the broader dichotomization of Western and non-Western cultures. As Munn (1992) noted, the anthropology of time has not been among the major interests of inquiry until the 1970s. In recent decades, however, anthropological analyses of time have encompassed a great deal of diversity in theoretical and conceptual frameworks.

Methods

This article uses theoretical literature review methodology to explore and analyze the use of time in anthropology. The literature is based on mainly three types of literature in anthropology published in the forms of books or peer reviewed journal articles. The first type of literature includes debates and discussion on the concept of time. The second type includes case studies that deal with the cultural models or perceptions of time. The third type includes literature that deals with the history of anthropology. The literature is reviewed to provide analysis of time in different phases of the history of anthropology and the relevant criticism within the discipline.

The review of literature here highlights how the concept of time has been dichotomized throughout the history of anthropology. Therefore, it will help us understand how anthropology has analyzed non-western cultures in addition to studying how anthropologists conceptualize time. Similar dichotomies exist in other cultural traits and elements such as space, architecture, and design due to the specific way anthropology has evolved. The history of the discipline is discussed here to contextualize change in the understanding of time in anthropology due to paradigmatic shifts. The dichotomies of time continue to exist, though faded, but the more focus on analyzing globalization is emerging, it provides anthropology with an opportunity to bring in more interdisciplinary perspectives on time. The analyses of time that do not take into account global processes, in fact not all contemporary anthropology does, may still dichotomize time as before.

There is a great deal of anthropological literature in relation to the analysis of time in different communities. However, the references to the studies of time in this article are not purported to be comprehensive. I only use a sample of these studies to support the arguments and exemplify certain trends and approaches. Some of these studies are rather old as they are mentioned here in the context of the history of the anthropology of time. In the coming pages, I will discuss the basis of the anthropology of time and the Western and non-Western dichotomization of time. Later, two main factors that led to avoiding the dichotomization are discussed: namely, the criticism within the discipline and the recent analyses of time in relation to globalization.

Results and discussion

Studying time

Astronomers, mathematicians, philosophers, and other intellectuals from China, Egypt, Greece, and the Indus Valley have been investigating time since ancient eras. Philosophy, physics, and other disciplines regarded time as an abstract concept, enigma, mathematical puzzle, intuition, metaphysical phenomenon, natural and/or supernatural force, or a mental process (cf. Evans 1998; Friedman 1983; Rosen 2004). Prior to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the absoluteness of space and time formed a classical view (Mughal 2009; Hawking 1988). According to another view about the relativity of space and time, though less popular, is the prioritization of the former and the subordination of the latter. The compound expressions ‘spacetime’ or ‘timespace’ were referred to these concepts jointly as early as in the eighteenth century (cf. Archibald 1914; Tegmark 1997). Various disciplines in humanities and sciences continue to study time from but there has not yet been a universally applicable definition of the concept possible.

American and British anthropologists have been investigating time in relevance to social structure since early studies (cf. Bogoras 1925; Hough 1893; Nilsson 1920; Sorokin and Merton 1937). Although anthropologists have studied the concepts of time in different societies, by considering the local cultural contexts, many studies followed or came in dialogue with Durkheimian perspectives of time. A majority of anthropological studies of time during the first half of the twentieth century was inspired by Emile Durkheim’s view of ‘collective representation’ – created by and ‘dictated to’ individuals (cf. Durkheim 1912; Gell 1996; Schmaus 2004). In these studies, the term ‘category’ adopted different connotations from those of philosophically defined such as Aristotelian highest predicable or the Kantian presupposed by experience.

According to Durkheim, time is among the most primary categories of human thought and is social in origin just like space, cause, and number. The category of time, for example, forms through the seasonal and daily rhythms of social life that helps in performing rituals. People create societies, though unconsciously, and societies create categories. Therefore, categories are collective creations and prior to any individual’s experience. According to Durkheim (1912), the primary categories of understanding the world have their roots in religion: “If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion”. He argued the category of time was a collective representation, with a system of symbols having commonly shared meaning to a social group. For instance, time is defined by the calendar, which people created in order to keep a record of social gatherings and rituals. He elaborated these phenomena based on his concept of a ‘social fact’ having an independent existence (Durkheim 1895).

Later anthropological analyses of time differed with, and even challenged, the Durkheimian ideas of time (El Guindi 2008; Gell 1996, 2000). However, Durkheimian ideas highlighted that different cultures or societies live in fundamentally different temporal dimensions – a concept known as ‘temporal cultural relativism’. Some anthropologists also presented their own models of time (cf. Bailey 1983; Leach 1961; Ramble 2002), but these were proven to be short lived due to various flaws (Adam 1994; Gell 1996; Munn 1992). However, anthropologists have acknowledged the complexities of studying time and have noted that while the nature of time is difficult to comprehend, humans have been measuring time precisely. Therefore, anthropologists study the social organization of time which involves calendar, clocks, time allocation, and other forms of timekeeping to understand various aspects and processes of culture (cf. Mughal 2014, 2017; El Guindi 2008; Gingrich and Swedlund 2002; Gross 1984; Iparraguirre 2016). Anthropologists have also studied time in relation to various scholarly approaches such as phenomenology (cf. Gell 1996; Munn 1992).

Western vs. non-western dichotomies in anthropology

Western and non-Western dichotomies in anthropology are not mere regional or geographic in nature. The dichotomization has more complex and deeper meanings in intellectual and political sense. In the beginning, anthropologists categorized many concepts like time into Western and non-Western based on the ideas intertwined in modernity and evolution. In Europe, the concept of ‘modernity’ has been associated with the Renaissance, which questioned the foundation of past knowledge (Ong 2015). Therefore, the discussions on ‘modernity’ involve a historical reference to Enlightenment and ‘progress’ in the European context. Modernity has generally been considered as a progressive merger of political and economic rationality with scientific objectivity. The concept of modernity is rooted in the emergence of capitalism as an inevitable and global form of unilinear evolution (Blim 2000; Lushaba 2006).

During colonization, Western powers imposed their ideas on their colonies. Therefore, ‘modernization’ is seen as a process of socio-economic development as well as change in belief systems turning non-industrialized, non-Western societies into something similar to the industrialized, Western world. Modernization theories involve dichotomies such as ‘traditional’ vs. ‘modern’ and ‘developed’ vs. ‘underdeveloped’. These dichotomies imply that postcolonial nations are ‘behind’ in the developmental process in relation to ‘the developed world’ (Gupta 1998). A related term, Westernization, is also used to indicate the process of modernization by inducing Western ideas into the non-Western world (Escobar 1991, 1995; Haferkamp and Smelser 1992). Edward B. Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan introduced the ideas of social and cultural evolution in American and British anthropology, respectively. For Morgan (1877) and Tylor (1871), societies could be ranked on a single scale. In this scheme, people at the bottom of this hierarchy were less intelligent (termed as “savage” or “primitive”) than those at the top (termed as “civilized”). Consequently, Western people were ranked higher up the ladder than non-Western ones. The majority of anthropologists had discredited such theories, partially if not entirely, until the 1920s (cf. Boas 1938; Lewis 2001).

Making distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and distancing non-Western societies in time was in fact recognizing them less ‘modern’ by Western anthropologists (Fabian 1983; Schulz 2012) also noted that such distinctions provided justifications for maintaining an oppressive relationship of the West with ‘the rest’ i.e. the non-West. Further, any production of anthropological knowledge in this way involves political dimensions as well. Time thus served as an instrument of power, much like space in the colonial era, which can be used for one’s own benefit.

During the 1920s to the 1950s, functionalist approaches, such as those of Malinowski (1945) and Radcliffe-Brown (1952), held the view that societies and cultures were stable in their own ways and only outside factors could bring about change. On the contrary, two major paradigms, diffusionism and cultural relativism, emerged in the American anthropological tradition to explain the transmission of cultural traits between Europeans and the indigenous tribes of America (Koppers 1955; Boas 1938) used the concepts of diffusion and modification while explaining culture. According to Boas, the cultural inventory of a community is the cumulative result of the diffusion of cultural traits, and that a culture while having its indigenous traits consists of many foreign ones and modifies them into its own context.

Despite these paradigmatic shifts, it took longer for anthropology to provide alternative analyses on certain issues while comparing the West and the non-West. Some other dichotomies also stem from this attitude of distinguishing Western and non-Western concepts of time. For example, Edward Hall categorized people into monochronic and polychronic groups. Hall (1984) described white Americans as monochronic because they concentrate on a single task at a time in contrast to Amerindians such as Navajo and Hopi whom he categorized as polychromic or multitaskers. Similarly, he also described Turkish market vendors as natural-born multitaskers. However, several paradigmatic shifts in anthropology resulted in changing the ways how Western anthropologists viewed and analyzed the non-West. The Western vs. non-Western dichotomization of time in anthropology mainly constructed the arguments in relation to resources, contextualization, linearity, cyclicity in addition to several other qualities, experience, and expressions of time.

Criticism on and irrelevance of the dichotomization

The Western vs. non-Western dichotomization of time was denounced and discredited by many anthropologists through various arguments. These arguments include, but not limited to, racism or ethno-centrism, debates that occurred due to paradigm shifts, globalization, multidisciplinary approaches, and doing anthropology at home.

Criticism on the dichotomization of time

The arguments over the temporal axis in non-Western or ‘traditional’ societies were stretched over the absence of time as a category of experience to highly complex notions of time in many anthropological studies. In ‘modern’ or Western conceptualization, the notion of time has been regarded as money due to capitalism, which can be ‘saved’ or ‘wasted’ in contrast to ‘traditional’ cultures where such conceptualization does not exist (cf. Gross 1984; Thompson 1967). For instance, Evans-Pritchard (1939, 1940) denied the prevalence of any such expression of time in the Nuer’s language as equivalent to the Western notion of time. According to Evans-Pritchard, time in the West was a notion that could be ‘wasted’ or ‘saved’ whereas the point of reference in the Nuer were activities themselves. He described the Nuer’s ecological time and structural relations in comparison to the Western concept of clock and calendric time. Similarly, Nowotny (1975) argued the most fundamental divide between modern industrialized and traditional non-industrialized societies lay in the ‘value’ accorded to time because of its relative ‘scarcity’ or ‘abundance’. Therefore, time appears to be a scarce resource to Western observers and Western economic analyses propose how to cope with this scarcity (Smith 1982; Bourdieu 1972) has explained that the concepts of time in traditional agrarian economies were appropriate to their own mode of production. According to Bourdieu, Western capitalist time is not adjustable to the specific mode of production in traditional agrarian economies.

Barbara Adam, a sociologist, argued that the anthropological categorization of ‘traditional’ time had a specific ‘framework of observation and interpretation’ by comparing these with Western notions of clock and calendric time, which are not the only sources of reference to time (Adam 1994). She also mentioned that such analyses overlooked the fact that various clocks and calendars existed even in the prehistoric non-Western world long before the West started using them. It can be supported through the evidence that people used shadow clocks and water clocks in ancient China, ancient Egypt, and Mesopotamia more than two millennia ago (Bruton 1982). Similarly, many anthropological studies have shown that the perception of time in non-Western societies was highly developed, and the expressions in their languages for the fine grading of time were clearer than Western ones (Gluckman 1977).

The Western vs. non-Western dichotomization also recognized the ‘traditional’ concepts of time as contextualized in contrast to those of the Western ones as non-contextualized. It was regarded so on the grounds that measuring time through calendar and clocks in the West is independent of any context. Similarly, as Harwood (1976) stated, the spatial axis predominated in ‘non-literate’ cultures in contrast to the precedence of the temporal or historical axis in ‘literate’ cultures. Such an assumption was, in fact, in response to the view that Western notion of time was non-contextualized. On the contrary, as Adam (1994) argues, the use of clocks and calendars does not necessarily label time as non-contextualized because referring to time as good or bad also exists in the West.

While describing the concept of the person in Bali, Geertz (1966) analyzed Balinese conceptualization of one another as generalized ‘contemporaries’ in terms of their personal identities through titles, kinship, and religious statuses. He argued that all conceivable people in Bali were present ‘simultaneously’, concluding that all person types were permanently represented by their tokens and one person could have multiple statuses. Bloch (1977) asserted that Geertz confused ideology with cognition in interpreting the Balinese time. Cognition, he argues, is a human universal whereas ideology is dependent on the context. All languages operate on ‘fundamentally identical logical premises’; therefore, all speakers must similarly ‘apprehend’ time. If people from the West and other cultures had profound differences in their notions of time, then the communication between these two could not have been possible. In other words, Maurice Bloch sought to refute temporal cultural relativism.

Functionalism and Structuralism in anthropology also popularized the Western and non-Western dichotomies. For instance, Lévi-Strauss (1963) categorized societies into ‘hot’ (modern) and ‘cold’ (primitive) ones. According to him, ‘hot’ societies have a sense of linear history whereas ‘cold’ societies have a noncumulative sense of time because of its cyclical repetitions in myths. Similarly, Leach (1961) associated repetitive, cyclical concepts of time (as in rituals) with non-Western societies and linear concepts of time with Western ones. Further, Bloch (1977) regarded cyclical time as ideological which originated from ritual dogma whereas linear time as being more rational, realistic, and rooted in experience.

Goody (2018) stated that the repetitive or cyclical pattern of human life and the world of nature, for instance, in the rites of passage in ‘traditional’ cultures, had been a reason for categorizing societies into ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ ones. Therefore, the dichotomization of time based on such qualities has been rejected. It has been argued that linear time dominated public life in the West due to its primary efficacy in the construction and management of dominant social institutions, but cyclical and other representations of time coexist with it and are not made invalid through this coexistence (Gell 1996). Further, contrary to Edmund Leach’s argument, Munn (1992) showed through the examples of Amazonian Barsana people that cyclical and linear time could not be expressed separately. Adam (1994) also discussed those anthropological analyses which categorized Western and non-Western times based on linearity and repetition, respectively. She maintained that such analyses did not consider Western festivals such as Christmas and Easter when making such comparisons. People in the West also reproduce time while repeating the cycle of their everyday life, for instance, by going to the office every day and then having the weekend once every week. Similarly, Gell (1996) argued periodic repetition implied a linear temporal extension.

Anthropologists have straightaway denounced the Western vs. non-Western dichotomization of time in recent analyses (e.g. Adam 1994; Barnes 1971; Bloch 1977; Gell 1996). Some even regarded such a dichotomization as an ethno-centric approach of Western researchers (Hoskins 1997; Gell 1996) refers to the objective conditions of existence in the world to the imaginative construction of time in cultures. He opposes the views that distinguish different types of time based on different types of processes, which happen in time. He argues there are only ‘other clocks and other schedules in different cultures:

“There is no fairyland where people experience time in a way that is markedly unlike the way in which we do ourselves, where there is no past, present and future, where time stands still or chases its own tail, or swings back and forth like a pendulum.” (Gell 1996)

Alfred Gell’s argument prompts several questions. Why then do anthropologists differentiate cultures from one another? Do they recognize only explicit processes and not the underlying rules associated with these processes and activities? If there is no fundamental difference in the concepts of time between cultures, should anthropologists attempt to mark all the world cultures as one? In order to extricate these issues, it is important to consider some points here. Firstly, time is a universal phenomenon and every society perceives it in its own way (El Guindi 2008; Hoskins 1997). Secondly, differences between various cultures in their concepts of time are because every cultural order has its own form of historical action, consciousness, and determination (Sahlins 1983). Thirdly, it is equally important to note that a culture may have differences within and not just similarities in its time reckoning system just like other aspects of culture (Cottle and Klineberg 1974; Fabian 1983; Green 1972). Therefore, anthropology today recognizes the cultural differences across world cultures based on specific social order and context in different parts of the world, which keep on changing over time.

Time and globalization: irrelevance of the dichotomization

Anthropologists have been analyzing cultural change for quite some time and have debated about diffusion and independent invention since early history of the discipline (cf. Boas 1938; Koppers 1955). However, since the 1960s, the interest in studying cultural change has increased in anthropology. After the Second World War, European colonies in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Caribbean became independent nations. This raised concerns for the West as to how the modernization process would occur in their former colonies. Escobar (1991, 1995) argues the creation of the Third World is the result of a post-colonial discourse on development. This turned peasants, women, and nature into the objects of knowledge and the targets of power by the practitioners of development. He also regarded the practice of development in the form of international aid agencies and corporate economic reforms as a form of ‘neo-colonialism’.

Neo-colonialism is the geopolitical practice of controlling a country by capitalism, commercial globalization, and cultural imperialism without any direct or indirect military or political control (Sartre 2001). In the early 1970s, a shift from analyzing the micro-level change to the larger economic and political developments of the world took place. This view is referred to as world-systems analysis, mainly developed by Emmanuel Wallerstein, which also used the core-periphery and dependency theories, asserting that the dominant rich countries extract resources from the poor ones (Wallerstein 1974). Regardless of who is exploiting and who is being exploited, at the heart of world-systems theory is the idea that countries in the world influence are being influenced by each other (cf. Inda and Rosaldo 2002; Mittelman 2000). One of the major differences between the theories of world-systems and globalization is that the former primarily assumes the dominant role of state and interactions at the nation-state level whereas the latter also encompasses other social and cultural factors (Forte 1998).

Marshall McLuhan, a media studies scholar, promoted the concept of the ‘global village’ in the 1960s, which denoted the flow of information particularly through virtual means of communication, supported the view of increasing closeness between the world cultures (McLuhan 1964). Later on, Giddens (1984) used the phrase ‘time-space distanciation’ to explain that social life consists of face-to-face as well as remote interactions. Increasing remote interactions have resulted in more connectedness and interdependency in previously distinct social systems. Similarly, the geographer Harvey (1991) coined the term ‘time-space compression’ to indicate ‘…processes that so revolutionise the objective qualities of space and time that we are forced to alter’. The terms ‘time-space distanciation’ and ‘time-space compression’ signal the process of globalization through which different cultures are coming closer to one another (Huebener et al. 2018; Inda and Rosaldo 2002). Further, ‘time-space compression’ or ‘time-space distanciation’ is not only applicable to extremely distinct and remote cultures, but equally applicable to cultures existing relatively closer to each other. For instance, the phenomenon of urbanization is also a ‘time-space compression’ in many countries where villages are now connected with cities through efficient transportation and electronic media.

The diffusion of ideas and commodities appears to standardize cultural expressions around the world, a feature known as cultural globalization (Hopper 2007). It has been argued that societies have always been in contact with each other through various means throughout history, but the contemporary focus of the globalization actors lies in the corporate interests of the capitalist economies (cf. Germain 1999; Nash 2001; Stiglitz 2002). Globalization theories discuss how different cultures are coming closer to each other because of the improved conditions of transportation, communication, trade, the media, and other economic and political factors. Economic cooperation, international political alliances, and multi-national companies are also seen as the integral dimensions of globalization (Day and Masciulli 2007; Appadurai 1996; Kearney 1995; Trouillot 2016). All these dimensions of globalization, or any other phenomena of a broader-level change, do not merely influence macro-level economics and regional or world politics but impact on almost every aspect of cultures across the world.

While non-Western societies have been in contact with the West for centuries, there has been little evidence of a wide scale cultural exchange. However, with an increased pace of cultural globalization in recent times, coupled with cultural imperialism either as Westernization or Americanization, has resulted in significant changes in the cultural perceptions and social organization of time. For instance, the temporal models such as calendars and other timekeeping methods have undergone shifts due to globalization and rural urbanization in Pakistan in recent decades (Mughal 2014, 2017). In the rural areas of Pakistan, the local lunisolar agrarian calendar is almost replaced by Gregorian calendar and people have started using clock time for marking various social and economic activities that were previously managed through different formal and informal temporal markers. Similarly, several other studies have shown that Western temporal models, such as Gregorian calendar and clock time are adopted by local communities in different parts of the world, at varying degrees of acceptance and resistance (cf. Birth 2006; Smith 1982). These temporal transformations trigger shifts in other elements of social organization as well (cf. Mughal 2014, 2017; Birth 2012; Goody 2018).

There is a great deal of anthropological literature produced in the last few decades to show that with more pervasive processes of globalization in recent decades, non-Western cultures have been influenced by the West. With increasing analyses of globalization, anthropologists now regard social experience as fluid that is evident in capital or labor flows in a global capitalist system (Andersson 2014; Appadurai 1990; Kürti 2008; Hendry and Wong 2006; Heyman and Campbell 2009), ‘which are in turn predicated on implicit notions of temporal flow or historical flux’ (Hodges 2008). Therefore, the recent anthropological analyses of time have negotiated the Western and non-Western dichotomization of time by discussing the ideas about modernity, traditional, “exotic”, and “others” in the context of globalization (cf. Bear 2014; Birth 2006; Holtzman 2004). Contemporarily, anthropologists regard social change as inevitable to every society and time is embedded, at times tacit, in social analysis through postmodernism. In these analyses, anthropologists have recognized the existence of multiple experiences of time without epochal references or dichotomization of ‘our’ and ‘their’ times in a pejorative sense.

Conclusion

This article has highlighted that there have been several processes or arguments which have challenged the Western and non-Western dichotomization of time from within the discipline. Among these, those mainly associated with the criticism by some anthropologists regarding such dichotomization as ethno-centric and the analyses of globalization are particularly significant.

Anthropology started taking serious interest in the study of time in the 1970s that focused directly on the conceptions of time; however, this field could not be sustained due to various reasons (Munn 1992). These reasons include the inherent issues in the discipline about the dichotomization of “we” the West and “other” – the non-West as an object of study which resulted in several complications about time and anthropology (Fabian 1983). Many anthropological studies have shown that non-Western societies have complex, highly developed notions of time that are well suited to social order in respective societies. Therefore, the dichotomization of time that was constructed based on early anthropological assertions on the West vs., “others” or “traditional” or “primitive” have been highly criticized.

Through various processes of globalization, Western influences on non-Western cultures have resulted in the adoption of Western temporal models. On the one hand, it has asserted that change is inevitable to all societies and time is central to socio-economic transformations. On the other hand, Western temporal models are now adopted, fully or partially, by non-Western cultures. Therefore, the dichotomization of time into Western and non-Western is overly becoming irrelevant to anthropological analyses as discussed in this article.

Bear (2016) notes that a recent reconciliation between the anthropological analyses of history and capitalism has created a ‘temporal turn’, generating ‘new theoretical insights into the times of capitalist modernity and vectors of inequality’. Therefore, anthropology will become imperative in relation to the solution of contemporary issues regarding environment, global trade, international conflicts, legalities, and identity as it recognizes the experience of multiple temporalities (Abram and Weszkalnys 2014; Awasis 2020; Cons 2020; Garza 2018; Hodges 2008; Ialenti 2020; Schulz 2012; Solomon 2019). However, anthropology will have to adopt more multidisciplinary approaches to study time. More research and debate on different uses of time in anthropology are needed, which will certainly enrich our understanding about time and anthropology. A holistic approach in addition to cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, and multidisciplinary analyses of time open the doors to enrich general anthropological theory.