Small islands and the large temporal questions : Eriksen’s contribution to studies of island temporalities

Abstract

Already in his 2001 book Øyeblikkets tyranni (Tyranny of the moment), Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s lifelong engagement with critical ethnographic and theoretical discussions on time and temporalities was cemented. In this paper, I explore the meaning and perception of ‘wait/waiting’ in the context of small island territories (SITs), with special focus on the Faroe Islands in the Northeastern Atlantic. The navigation between chronometric time and traditional temporalities, which influences the multilayered cultural practices of waiting, is examined as an expression of shifting island temporalities. When is waiting experienced as slow or fast, as a short-term or continuous activity? Drawing on anthropological studies from the Faroe Islands, this paper connects island temporalities to geo-physical characteristics of SITs. Inspired by Eriksen’s work on time and globalization, as well as by international small island culture studies, I am also digging into the art of waiting as a decelerating resistance against (‘new’) clock time in small and remote islands. Waiting is not ‘dead time’ or ‘empty time’. As Eriksen (2018) stressed, waiting can be suffering, as in the case of refugees waiting for their permit to stay in the country of arrival; but it can also be associated with hope and agency. [excerpt]