Time in "Other" Societies: Regarding the Primitive, the Modern and the Baluchi

The anthropological study of primitive vs modern representations of time is explored via a discussion of research, highlighting the work of D. F. Eickelman (1977), who is critical of the tendency to strictly distinguish open, complex societies from primitive, closed ones, & prefers to apply the concept of historical horizon (ramified & discontinuous) to his study of Middle Eastern cultures. Also considered is the notion of complexity derived from a superimposition of a modern onto a traditional understanding of time. The case of Baluchi society illustrates how a culture whose historical horizon is based on noncumulative, nonlinear time can have a quantitative & segmented conception of time developed autonomously, not from external urban contact, a position that departs from Eickelman's. 24 References. C. Mariani