bloody time and bloody scarcity: capitalism, authority, and the transformation of temporal experience in a Papua New Guinea village

Abstract

This article is about the beginning of time scarcity as a persisting and pervasive problem in a Papua New Guinea village.' I argue that to conceive of this process as merely a matter of changes in the ratio of time-supply and time-demand would be t o ignore the nature of indigenous cultural reality and would obscure a more complex process of temporal reorientation in which changing relations of authority play a key part. I focus on the mutually determining relationship of changing ways of thinking about and experiencing time and changing forms of authority. This relationship is part of a larger process of radical change in political economy and resistance t o such change.I suggest that new structures of authority help mediate new forms of temporal behavior and new ways of thinking about time t o Koragur villagers. Such new ideas may provide a rationale for accepting new impositions of authority; but, lack of socialization into Western industrial-style temporal concepts is both a cause of and a manifestation of resistance to these impositions. Both these new impositions of authority and the new temporal concepts are integral parts of a radically new form of political economy-one that is different in the quality of the social relations that comprise it and not simply in the quantity of demands that it places on people's temporal resources.In aid of this argument I comment on the kinds of assumptions about time scarcity that inform a great deal of recent social science. I take the position that Western industrial-style time scarcity, as a condition of sociocultural systems or as a dimension of individual exThis article argues that the development of perceptions that time is scarce is not simply the result of increases in the quantity of demand for a finite supply of time. Rather, in Koragur Village, Papua New Guinea, i t is part of the larger process of incorporation into a capitalist political economy. The imposition of authoritative control over temporal conduct b y external authorities and by new kinds of local leaders, together with the spreadof the idea that time is scarce, are seen as mutually determining moments of this process of incorporation.Villagers who retain indigenous temporal orientations see the unwelcome imposition of authority where a Western observer would see "time scarcity." These perceptions by villagers are, in a sense, more accurate than those of more acculturated individuals. Moreover, the process of acquiring industrial capitalist modes of thinking about, and experiencing, time is inseparable from struggles over the acceptance of new kinds of relations of authority. [temporal orientations, scarcity, economizing, leadership, peripheral capitalism]

Bloody time revisited: New observations on time in a Papua New Guinea Village

“…Such circumstances led me to argue in ‘Bloody Time’ that when villagers said things like taim i sot (time is short) or taim i no inap (time is insufficient) the experience they were describing probably was different from that of a Westerner experiencing ‘the anxiety of the impecunious consumer’ in the face of the ‘inexorable pace and entropic flow of time as a reified and impersonal substance’ (Smith : 506–508). In Kragur, however, rank‐and‐file villagers behaved as though they were less concerned with having too little time than with leaders' repeated attempts to constrain the autonomy to which they were accustomed in their everyday lives.…”

“… See Smith (: 509–510) for an illustrative quotation and a note on the impossibility of judging whether or not the number and variety of ways in which villagers could employ ‘time as a resource’ actually had increased since pre‐colonial times. …”

“… However, as I wrote in ‘Bloody Time’ (Smith : 513): ‘It would be an oversimplification … to see villagers neatly divided into two camps, for they also seem to be divided within … themselves … . few, if any, are negotiating the changes that immerse them with complete equanimity or single‐minded resolution’. …”

“Wasting time” the Veratan way

“…In other words, European clock time has been around Fiji long enough to have established more than just a transitional presence (cf. Smith 1982). Correspondingly, this article argues that Fijians value time in multiple ways, and that "time" in the 1.…”

Of Time, Body, and Scarcity

“…Most, if not all, of the so-called primitive societies had no word for the modern equivalent of &dquo;time&dquo; prior to their exposure to modern ideas (see Whorf, 1956;Smith, 1982). Indeed, a common complaint of &dquo;mod-erns&dquo; who encountered &dquo;primitives&dquo; during the colonial era was that &dquo;primitives&dquo; had little, if any, sense of time or its value as a commodity and organizing device-a complaint still echoed in such slurs as &dquo;native time,&dquo; &dquo;Indian time,&dquo; and the like.…”