Cultural Timepiece Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Cultural Timepiece - Essay Example form and before the invention of the industrial clock Does traditional culture not reflect modern culture in earlier form, thus, to conclude that our conceptions of time are motivated by similar conditions For quite a period since the study of time began, it was emphasized by convention that modern and traditional societies perceive time in contrasts. Anthropologists suggested, more in favor of modern time, that traditional time is "cyclical rather than linear, qualitative rather than quantitative, reversible rather than irreversible, encapsulated in tradition rather than constituting the motor of history, organized by routine and practical tasks rather than by the clock, oriented to stability rather than change, geared to natural rather than calendrical rhythms, and reckoned ecologically rather than by an abstract scale" (Adam 1994, 504). With similar theories on traditional time, Whorf singled out the Hopi concept of time and suggested that its distinct difference from the Western concept was of time perceived as not being made up of discrete instances that follow each other but is characterized by a cumulative getting later (1956, 151). And likened to Whorf's analysis, Evans-Pritchard proposed that the movement of their time must be recognized as an illusion, unlike Western time which passes and progresses, because the tribal time structure stays constant, meaning that their perception of time is no more than the movement of persons through the structure. He further propose that the span of their tradition is limited compared to modern Timepiece 3 time, and that in their myth, the events do not have relative succession (1940, 107-8). These notions has provided us with an impression that the time of traditional societies were found by a radically obscure consciousness driven by primitive conditions. Somehow these model theories would, it seems, have us drift farther away instead of closer to understanding other cultures through their behavior towards time, and in a way convince us that our evolutionary relationship with these societies is incomprehensible. Moreover, if we are to consider these analyses as unanimously true and ideal, our alienation would be fueled by an assumption that these other people are actually molded with an alien makeup by some source alien from our world. And by the same exaggeration have us wonder whether our own civilized consciousness was in fact innate and there was never any need for it to have to grow out of evolution. Closer to home, Ingold presented a different set of dichotomies which is more in regard to industrialism and the household. He contrasted perspectives such that there is free time and clock time as opposed to all time is task-oriented; that there is work and leisure against the notion that all life consists of tasks; that there is creative art and the