Against the Fetishisation of Plural Time Rethinking Ways of Doing a Social History of Time

Nitin Sinha, "Against the Fetishisation of Plural Time: Rethinking Ways of Doing a Social History of Time "
English | ISBN: 3111696499 | 2025 | 129 pages | EPUB | 2 MB
From the viewpoint of social history, is time itself a plural entity or are there multiple forms of engagement in and with it? Pivoted around this question, Sinha attempts to rethink the current theory and practice of history writing by pointing the pitfalls of the growing fetishisation of plurality and the 'plural time' framework. Engaging a range of studies in History, Anthropology, and Sociology, Sinha provides a critical assessment of some of the leading frameworks on time studies, questions their foundational premises, highlights their limitations, and proposes an alternative framework that is attuned to privileging the approach of social history. The purposes of the latter, the book argues, is best served when time's irreversible character is not diluted under the weight of plurality. Plurality in time is an outcome of practices and their historicisation; plurality