"Any Time Is Trinidad Time" Social Meanings and Temporal Consciousness
by Kevin
K. Birth In a detailed description of how people use models of time in their daily lives, Kevin Birth explores cultural ideas of time in rural Trinidad and the feelings of cooperation and conflict that result from using different models of time. Birth’s study contributes to the understanding of ethnic, class, and gender relationships in the Caribbean, and it is notable for its emphasis on how individuals manipulate and manage social differences on a day-to-day basis. Using ideas of time as a lens through which to watch these divisions evolve, he explores the implications of the existence of multiple models of time on social organization. While Birth’s ethnographic cases are derived from Trinidad, they shed light on the more general issue of how people employ time to construct, manage, and even manipulate social relationships.
|
"A timely book that deserves to be widely read. It deals with a globally contentious region by focusing, in a richly detailed and analytic fashion, on the internal and external aspects of nationalism, ethnicity, and religion of most of the states in the Middle East."—William Safran, University of Colorado
|
