Ethnographies of Waiting Doubt, Hope and Uncertainty

We all wait ? in traffic jams, passport offices, school meal queues, for better weather, an end to fighting, peace. Time spent waiting produces hope, boredom, anxiety, doubt, or uncertainty. Ethnographies of Waiting explores the social phenomenon of waiting and its centrality in human society. Using waiting as a central analytical category, the book investigates how waiting is negotiated in myriad ways. Examining the politics and poetics of waiting, Ethnographies of Waiting offers fresh perspectives on waiting as the uncertain interplay between doubting and hoping, and asks "When is time worth the wait?" Waiting thus conceived is intrinsic to the ethnographic method at the heart of the anthropological enterprise. Featuring detailed ethnographies from Japan, Georgia, England, Ghana, Norway, Russia and the United States, a Foreword by Craig Jeffrey and an Afterword by Ghassan Hage, this is a vital contribution to the field of anthropology of time and essential reading for students and scholars in anthropology, sociology and philosophy.

Preface and AcknowledgementsForeword, Craig Jeffrey1. Worth the Wait: Introduction, Andreas Bandak and Manpreet K. Janeja2. “Great Expectations?: Between Boredom and Sincerity in Jewish Ritual ‘Attendance’”, Simon Coleman3. Hope and Waiting in Post-Soviet Moscow, Jarrett Zigon4. Time and the Other: Waiting and Hope among Irregular Migrants by, Synnøve Bendixsen and Thomas Hylland Eriksen5. Waiting for God in Ghana: The Chronotopes of a Prayer Mountain, Bruno Reinhardt6. Providence and Publicity in Waiting for a Creationist Theme Park, James S. Bielo7. Waiting for Nothing: Nihilism, Doubt and Difference without Difference in Post-Revolutionary Georgia, Martin Demant Frederiksen8. Not-Waiting to Die Badly: Facing the Precarity of Dying Alone in Japan, Anne AllisonAfterword, Ghassan HageIndex

Manpreet K Janeja is Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.Andreas Bandak is Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.