Chapter 3…All We Have Is Time
Think of time as…
…a river.
It flows on and
on…can never
step in the same
river twice.
…a pendulum.
Back and
forth…alteration
of day and night
…as cyclical.
Follows the
continual return
of the seasons.
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Our sense of time is that it marches on
relentlessly and impersonally. We live
with a mechanical sense of time because
our culture is so dominated by machines.
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As a species do we have an innate sense of time?…a
biological clock?…a cognitive aptitude?…that gets adjusted
by the particular cultural experience?
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Or…our sense of time is purely a cultural construction?
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What about our sense of time here? We are very clock
oriented…we micro-manage our time very precisely and are
almost impossibly busy.
Other cultures sense of time can be radically different.
Perhaps no-one wears a watch!!
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 A seasonal sense of time…much less hurried.
Two categories…work and leisure
Work =
Leisure =
virtue =
laziness =
social status
privileging self
But…there are big cultural pressures to work, to spend, to be materialist,
because this equals success. Those not driven to be successful, in education, in
career, in being materialist, tend to be judged negatively.
Are there other ways we judge people based on time?
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Philip Zimbardo...The Secret Powers of time
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“Are our concepts of time and space and
matter given in substantially the same form
by experience to all people? Or are they
conditioned by the particularities of language
and culture?”
 Is the experience the same worldwide and then conceptually warped
or channeled differently due to local custom? Or, is the experience
itself shaped and molded by culture?

We count the passage of time.
 Seconds, minutes, hours, day, years, centuries,
millenia…
▪ As this time passes is our experience of our world,
meaning our culture, built as we would build a
sandcastle? Is it accumulated in all cultures or is this
peculiar to a culture with a method to store information,
namely writing? Would a culture without a system of
writing have a progressive notion of time? What kind of
culture would not have a conception of time?
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Use of time concept to discriminate…
 Stone age peoples…have not advanced beyond
stone tools. Implies inferiority in reference to
other cultures outside of material technology.
Why not call that form of society, stone tool
peoples?
Number approx. 400 people. Live along the banks of the Maici river.

First of all, they have no words for numbers and simply do
not count. Anthropologist Daniel Everett tried to teach them
to count for 8 months and gave up. They have no words with
numeric sense and do not count. They have no past tense in
their language…everything exists in the present. Their
phonemics is limited, eight consonants and three vowel
sounds.
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The Grammar of Happiness
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The experience of time is related to a
particular form of life – to one’s occupation,
gender, age, class, and race – all of which are
felt personally and are embedded in a larger
culture and its history.
Gender – division of labor
Class – sense of entitlement
Ethnic – discrimination (incarceration
demographics: aboriginal pop. 4%, account
for 24% of prison population)
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Family Time…in major decline as
consequence of busy lives. Both parents
have/wish to work. The 1950’s ideal of Momat-home was not satisfactory for women.
They were bored.
Life Time…life expectancy cross-culturally.
Rich vs. Poor, access to health care etc.
Age/lived time…mandatory retirement,
ongoing debate. Even on campus at UPEI.