THE HONG KONG ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY
AND THE HONG KONG MUSEUM OF HISTORY
PRESENT
An Anthropological Talk by Angel Naydenov
Toward an Anthropology of Time and Recognition
Friday 13 December 2024, 7:00pm
Hong Kong Museum of History
Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
China's Sichuan Province provides an excellent ethnographic case for rethinking human time in relation to social recognition. Hiding in plain sight, the region's familiar hedonistic ethos entails a particular construction of selfhood that negates both hierarchy and accumulated time. For such negation to be possible only certain aspects of the self (sensory, playful, comic) are recognised as relevant to its realisation. Sichuan's hedonistic disposition is thus marked by an emphasis on concrete recognition between potentially equivalent subjects. It exists alongside a second logic of abstract recognition: that of linear progress and competition, in which hard work and struggle in comparison to abstract others by reference to formal measures (wealth, property, education) orient the self toward future gratification. These two logics underline a basic existential tension between presentism and linearity in Chinese society and suggests that the way selves ascertain their worth socially is fundamental to their sense of being in time.
Angel Naydenov's research examines the entanglements of time, value, and selfhood in rural China. His first book manuscript, Rhythms of Realisation: Time, Value, and Recognition in the Mountains of Southwest China, is based on 17 months of fieldwork in Sichuan and explores the dominant value pursuits through which subjects seek self-realisation and thus find their way in time.