It has been almost thirty years since Johannes Fabian published Time and the Other (1983), a scathing critique of the ways anthropologists have slotted the Other into “other” times—the “savages” or “primitives” said to resemble the West’s history. In many ways, his critique is still relevant today; the same kinds of discourse are used to explain contemporary politics in the Middle East with reference to supposedly ancient ethnic conflicts . But there are other temporal machinations at work these days as well. A fairly typical, recent example: a February 22 New York Times article on South Korea’s ubiquitous computing (“ For South Korea, Internet at Blazing Speeds is Still Not Fast Enough”)—years ahead of the United States. Instead of being slotted into the past, here Korea appears as the future—underscoring US fears of being overtaken by Asian economies. In this way, US futures are invoked in comparisons with the demographics, educational institutions, h...
Occasional posts on anthropologically interesting science fiction, anthropological futures and my own future as an anthropologist.