A primer for interdisciplinary research on time and future concepts
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| Title: | Main Title: A primer for interdisciplinary research on time and future concepts |
| Description: | Abstract: This document is a "primer". This means that it is meant to prepare projects in the CRC "Future Rural Africa" for discussions on the degree of universality and cultural relativity of future concepts. As a primer it does not provide a conclusion or closure of scholarly debates in the field but its function is to open up and to facilitate these debates. The document consists of two parts. The first, shorter, part is based on a short presentation that the author did at the onset of the interdisciplinary work in the CRC (back in 2017) and it primarily provides a brief model of how to conceive of interdisciplinarity in a collaborative research centre concerned with the study of future. The second part of the document was written towards the end of the first phase of the CRC and contains some concrete examples of debates on concepts of time and future. There is no claim to be comprehensive here since there has recently been a considerable boost in studies on the cognitive foundations of time and related domains such as space and causality. While case material from Africa has increasingly been included in these debates, much of the attention is devoted to underlying questions of cognition and linguistic relativity and not so much to the descriptions of diversity and similarity in concepts of time and future. The study of cultural relativity with regard to time concepts which flourished initially in anthropology and linguistics has now been shifted to research in economics and neighbouring disciplines that have a practical interest in development - which also happen to be the interdisciplinary fields that are relevant in the CRC. Abstract linguistic distinctions such as that between weak FTR (Future Time Reference) and strong FTR languages become associated with concrete cultural differences of leading a healthy life and saving for the future. This contribution looks critically at these typologies with reference to African case studies and it argues that research would benefit from a closer combination between descriptions of African case material and comparative issues. It is also noteworthy that the discussions often center around the notion of "time" rather than "future" but typically the one is implicated in the other so that many underlying arguments can be read for both, time and future. |
| Identifier: | 10.5880/TRR228DB.12 (DOI) |
Responsible Party
| Creator: | Thomas Widlok (Author) |
| Funding Reference: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG): CRC/TRR 228: Future Rural Africa: Future-making and social-ecological transformation |
| Publisher: | CRC/TRR228 Database (TRR228DB) |
| Publication Year: | 2021 |
Topic
| Subjects: | Keywords: Africa, African History, Anthropology, CRC/TRR 228, Culture, Data Management, Decision Making, Economic Development, Ethnography, Ethnology, Expert Interview, Field Experiment, Future-making, Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, History, Local Environmental Knowledge, Metadata, Observation, Qualitative Interview, Regimes of Translation, Research Data, Research Data Management, Social Science, Translation |
| Geogr. Information Topic: | Society |
File Details
| Filename: | Widlok_primer_on_interdisciplinary_work_2021.pdf |
| Data Type: | Text - Text |
| File Size: | 492 KB |
| Date: | Copyrighted: 31.01.2021 |
| Mime Type: | application/pdf |
| Language: | English |
Constraints
| Download Permission: | Free |
| Licence: | None |
Geographic
Metadata Details
| Metadata Creator: | Thomas Widlok |
| Metadata Created: | 01.02.2021 |
| Metadata Last Updated: | 01.02.2021 |
| Subproject: | C5 |
| Funding Phase: | 1 |
| Metadata Language: | English |
| Metadata Version: | V50 |
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| Page Visits: | 990 |
| Metadata Downloads: | 0 |
| Dataset Downloads: | 24 |
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Adequate reference when this dataset will be discussed or used in any publication or presentation is mandatory. In this case please contact the dataset creator.
