Against the Fetishisation of Plural Time - Rethinking Ways of Doing a Social History of Time

Discussants: 

Prabhu P. Mohapatra, (retired) Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi  

Zoltán Boldizsár Simon, Bielefeld University

From the viewpoint of social history, is time itself a plural entity or are there multiple forms of engagement in and with it? Pivoted around this question, Sinha attempts to rethink the current theory and practice of history writing by pointing to the pitfalls of the growing fetishisation of plurality and the ‘plural time’ framework. Engaging with a range of studies in History, Anthropology, and Sociology, Sinha provides a critical assessment of some of the leading frameworks on time studies, questions their foundational premises, highlights their limitations, and proposes an alternative framework that is attuned to privileging the approach of social history. The purposes of the latter, the book argues, is best served when time’s irreversible character is not diluted under the weight of plurality. Plurality in time is an outcome of practices and their historicisation; plurality of time can become an empty statement. Rather than defi ning what time is, the book casts that inquiry into the historical mould to explore how time, as a contestatory resource, becomes part of social relationships and what it does to them when scripts of power align themselves with the control of time.

Nitin Sinha is a social historian based at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. He has researched and published on themes of transport, labour, ecology, and law. His recent publications are on the history of domestic servants in India. He is the principal investigator of the ERC-funded project, Timely Histories: A Social History of Time in Early Modern and Modern South Asia.  He actively engages in public outreach by reflecting on contemporary political and social changes in India.

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Meeting-ID: 837 3240 7465
Kenncode: 449071