Time is Power: Temporality and Caste

deadline for submissions: 
October 30, 2024
full name / name of organization: 
Gaurav Pathania and Bonnie Zare, Virginia Tech and Eastern Mennonite U
contact email: 

We are bringing out an edited collection of essays with the working title Time is Power: Temporality and Caste. Time is an ontological phenomenon organized around humans’ need for social interaction and collective life, often compelling individuals to be chrono-normative or abide by a rigid clock. Currently little scholarship exists which examines the power of time and temporal agency in an environment organized by systems of caste and other intersecting identities.

Participating in group life depends on a shared agreement about temporal practices. These temporal regimes are not neutral; instead they carry ideology about what and who deserves power. As historians D. Edelstein, S. Geroulonous, and N. Wheatly affirm, “power operates by arranging, managing, and scaling temporal regimes and conflicts” (2020). Such conflicts are experienced when time scales clash and one group must repeatedly adjust. For example, people around the globe are asked to fit their lives to a western-mandated business time standard, which demands punctuality and fulfilling rigid deadlines. Yet meeting those marks is highly influenced by a person’s degree of privilege. 

A person or group’s access to power impacts how they may exercise control over their time, leading to more or less favorable outcomes. Disability Studies scholar Alison Kafer has drawn attention to why society makes "disabled bodies and minds meet the clock” rather than society bending “the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds” (Kafer qtd. in Samuels, 2017). Beginning with sociologists working in the 1960s all the to Brittney C. Cooper speaking in 2017 and beyond, scholars have examined how a white-controlled clock dishonors CP (Colored People’s) time. India is known for operating on IST or “Indian Stretchable Time” but such a broad generalization overlooks the large diversity of temporal agency and time work occurring there. Yet currently, no monograph explores time and caste; this volume aims to employ intersectional analysis to explore how the span and rhythm of time may alter according to a person’s caste, level of economic deprivation and degree of social capital. 

 

Essays may follow a number of lines of inquiry, including

  • Temporalities of Caste and Generational Change

    • Education, Timing and First generation Learners

  • Time, Space and Bodily Autonomy

    • Changing perceptions of milestones and the implications for marginalized people including queer people

  • Temporal Agency, Hope and the Self

    • The relationship between time and healing in post-atrocity context

  • Sacred Time and Caste/Ritual Practices

    • Karma theory as a Temporal Framework

    • Ways of resisting or negotiating time in relation to  Brahminical Hindu stages

  • Time theft, employment and caste

  • Identity, Interaction and Space

  • Bridging time and space through online media and performance

  • How time and caste reflect upon each other in literature, film and/or art

 

  • Questioning the Temporality of Caste and Affirmative Action 

  • Waiting as a basis for counter cultural practices

  • Time in a Business or Entrepreneurial context

  • Reclaiming time for Political Ends - Protest movements and moments

Please send the following items to the editors: Bonnie Zare (bonzare@vt.edu) and Gaurav Pathania (gaurav.pathania@emu.edu): 

  • an abstract (500-700 words excluding bibliography) 

  • an author’s biographical note (maximum 150 words)
    If desired, you may also provide a descriptive outline or any further elaboration (maximum 1000 words, optional).

Due date: 30th October, 2024
Full manuscripts due by 15 January, 2025.

After publication, every effort will be made to have each individual chapter appear on SCOPUS, the largest indexer of global research. Contributions are welcome from multiple disciplines and may draw on a variety of methods. For instance, a given chapter may be based on qualitative data analysis, on theory, on  autoethnography, or may be an analysis of this theme in fiction or film. 

We will review and select abstracts based on their quality and relevance and communicate a decision by November, 2024. The editors will make suggestions about the eventual manuscripts to form a high quality, relevant and unified volume. If you have questions, we invite prospective authors to contact the named editors directly by emailing them together.