Antropologicheskij forum, 2017, no. 34

MODERNIZATION OF RURAL TIME: ORIENTATION BY HEAVENLY BODIES AND CLOCKS

Stanislav Petriashin

The Russian Museum of Ethnography
4/1 Inzhenernaya Str., St Petersburg, Russia
s-petryashin@yandex.ru

Abstract: The article is devoted to the transformation of Russian rural timereckoning practices based on observation of heavenly bodies in their interaction with clocks and clock-time in the process of modernization (end of 19th — 21st cc.). The study’s sources consist of published and archival materials and also ethnographic materials collected in the Middle Ural region (2015–2016). The works of N. Elias, E. Thompson and T. Ingold were useful to formulate and analyze the structure of time-reckoning practices. The change of basic temporal reference point — from the sun in the 19th c. to clocks since the 20–30s of the 20th c. — has its effect, primarily, in mediation of astronomical rhythms and human activity by clock-time. Also, in the end of the 19th c. mechanical clocks were set with the sun, while in the 21st c. time-reckoning practices (based on observation of heavenly bodies) can be set with a clock. Shadow-measuring practices, which were used to determine clock-time, have been known in Russia since the 14th c. and can be valued as substantive agent of rural time modernization. The article shows that the time-reckoning practices in question were not only gradually displaced by mechanical clocks, but were also transformed and adapted to clock-time (and associated forms of labour and leisure disciplination), and contributed to its reception and expansion.

Keywords: rural time, modernization, heavenly bodies, shadow measuring, clocks.

To cite: Petriashin S., ‘Modernizatsiya selskogo vremeni: orientatsiya po nebesnym svetilam i chasam’ [Modernization of Rural Time: Orientation by Heavenly Bodies and Clocks], Antropologicheskij forum, 2017, no. 34, pp. 156–178.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/034/petriashin.pdf