In the Meantime - Toward an Anthropology of the Possible

The "meantime" represents the gap between what is past and the unknown future. When considered as waiting, the meantime is defined as a period of suspension to be endured. By contrast, the contributors of this volume understand it as a space of "the possible" where calculation coexists with uncertainty, promises with disappointment, and imminence with deferral. Attending to the temporalities of emerging rather than settled facts, they put the stress on the temporal tactics, social commitments, material connections, dispositional orientations, and affective circuits that emerge in the meantime even in the most desperate times.

About the author

Adeline Masquelier is Professor of Anthropology at Tulane University. She is author of Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town (Indiana, 2009) and Fada: Boredom and Belonging in Niger (Chicago, 2019). She is a former executive editor of the Journal of Religion in Africa and past president of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.

Deborah Durham teaches at the University of Virginia. She conducts research in Botswana and Turkey and is the co-editor of Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy (Indiana, 2007) and Elusive Adulthoods: The Anthropology of New Maturities (Indiana, 2017). She is an Editor at Hau Books and is Deputy Editor for Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory.

Product details

• Authors: Adeline Durham Masquelier
• Assisted by: Deborah Durham (Editor), Adeline Masquelier (Editor), Masquelier Adeline (Editor)
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.03.2023
• EAN: 9781800738867
• ISBN: 978-1-80073-886-7
• No. of pages: 240
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); Cultural Studies, Social Theory, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Social Theory, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Social and cultural anthropology