Janet Hoskins
The Play of Time
Kodi Perspectives on Calendars, History, and Exchange
$32.95, £22.95 paperback
9780520208926
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Janet Hoskins provides both an ethnographic study of the organization of time in an Eastern Indonesian society and a theoretical argument about alternate temporalities in the modern world. Based on more than three years of field work with the Kodi people of the island of Sumba, her book focuses on Kodi calendrical rituals, exchange transactions, and confrontations with the historical forces of the colonial and postcolonial world. Hoskins explores the contingent, contested, and often contradictory precedent of the past to show how local systems of knowledge are in dialogue with wider historical forces.
Arguing that traditional temporality is more complex than many theorists have realized, Hoskins highlights the flexibility and relativity of local time concepts, whose sophistication belies the cliche of simple societies living in a world outside of time.
Arguing that traditional temporality is more complex than many theorists have realized, Hoskins highlights the flexibility and relativity of local time concepts, whose sophistication belies the cliche of simple societies living in a world outside of time.
"Those who assert the globalization of culture or question the validity of pursuing ethnographic investigations into small-scale self-generating societies should read Hoskins's magnificent study of Kodi social and conceptual worlds in order to have such views disabused. . . . Rich in ethnographic detail."—Signe Howell, Ethnos
"A landmark volume in the ethnography of Eastern Indonesia and an exemplary study of structure and history."—Kenneth M. George, Pacific Affairs
"Hoskins's work combines superb ethnography, an extremely high level of sophistication, and a remarkable component of humanistic sensitivity. The result is a book of serious reflection that creatively challenges and extends many aspects of the best previous scholarship in a variety of areas, including ritual studies, exchange theory, and the dynamics of modernization and local resistance."—Harry J. Benda Prize Committee
"A landmark volume in the ethnography of Eastern Indonesia and an exemplary study of structure and history."—Kenneth M. George, Pacific Affairs
"Hoskins's work combines superb ethnography, an extremely high level of sophistication, and a remarkable component of humanistic sensitivity. The result is a book of serious reflection that creatively challenges and extends many aspects of the best previous scholarship in a variety of areas, including ritual studies, exchange theory, and the dynamics of modernization and local resistance."—Harry J. Benda Prize Committee
Winner, 1996 Harry J. Benda Prize, Association for Asian Studies
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