Doubt, Conflict, Mediation

Laura Bear is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics, UK. For nineteen years, she has carried out archival and ethnographic research in India, especially West Bengal. She is the author of Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers, Bureaucracy and the Intimate Historical Self (2007), the forthcoming Navigating Austerity: State Debt and Speculation on a South Asian River (2014), and the novel The Jadu House (2000). She is a member of the Core Editorial Board for Economy and Society. This volume developed from her leadership (with Professor Stephan Feuchtwang) of the Economic and Social Research Council-funded research network and seminar series ‘Conflicts in Time: Rethinking “Contemporary” Globalization’.

• Notes on contributorsIntroduction: Doubt, conflict, mediation: the anthropology of modern time (Laura Bear)Economic times1 Immanent anthropology: a comparative study of ‘process’ in contemporary France (Matt Hodges)2 Post-industrial times and the unexpected: endurance and sustainability in Germany’s fastest-shrinking city (Fellix Ringel)3 For labour: Ajeet’s accident and the ethics of technological fixes in time (Laura Bear)Political times4 Historical narrative, mundane political time, and revolutionary moments: coexisting temporalities in the lived experience of social movements (Sian Lazar)5 Rethinking reproductive politics in time, and time in UK reproductive politics: 1978-2008 (Sarah Franklin)Bureaucratic times6 The time it takes: temporalities of planning (Simone Abram)7 The reign of terror of the big cat: bureaucracy and the mediation of social times in the Indian Himalaya (Nayanika Mathur)8 A wedge of time: futures in the present and presents without futures in Maputo, Mozambique (Morten Nielsen)Index