In Cultural Ecology 2017 we speculated on big questions about the future of life in the Anthropocene. Question: How has industrial and post-industrial capitalism shaped our notions of time? Will anyone ever again have “too much time on my hands”?
The two readings were
- Tim Ingold, “Work, time and industry” in The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill.
- Anna Tsing pp.55-96 in The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins.
The reading was supplemented by Bonin Bough’s lecture on Hackonomy
The reading could of course be accompanied by the classic 1981 Styx debut of “Too Much Time on My Hands”:
Updates for Too Much Time on My Hands
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In 2022 I revisited the Ingold chapter in a course on the History of Anthropological Thought:
- This material was for Cultural Ecology 2017. I revisited it in April 2020 as Work, Leisure, Tasktime, & Coronavirus Time.
- Julia Brown’s Are You Living in Haste? on The Familiar Strange (November 2017) raises some key points about time.
- See “You’re Too Busy. You Need a ‘Shultz Hour'” by David Leonhardt in the New York Times (April 2017).
To cite: Antrosio, Jason. 2017. “Too Much Time on My Hands?” Living Anthropologically website, https://www.livinganthropologically.com/cultural-ecology-2017/too-much-time-on-my-hands/. First posted 16 April 2017. Revised 9 April 2020.