Book discussion on ‘Against the Fetishisation of Plural Time: Rethinking Ways of Doing a Social History of Time’. It was chaired by Awadhendra Sharan. Discussant: Prathama Banerjee.
ZOOM ID: 88220539260 PASSCODE: csdsdelhi
From the viewpoint of social history, is time itself a plural entity or are there multiple forms of engagement in and with it? Pivoted around this question, Nitin Sinha attempts to rethink the current theory and practice of history writing by pointing to the pitfalls of the growing fetishisation of plurality and the ‘plural time’ framework. Engaging with a range of studies in History, Anthropology, and Sociology, Sinha provides a critical assessment of some of the leading frameworks on time studies, questions their foundational premises, highlights their limitations, and proposes an alternative framework that is attuned to privileging the approach of social history.
Nitin Sinha is a social historian based at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. He has researched and published on themes of transport, labour, ecology, and law. He is the principal investigator of the ERC-funded project, Timely Histories: A Social History of Time in Early Modern and Modern South Asia. He is the author of Against the Fetishisation of Plural Time: Rethinking Ways of Doing a Social History of Time (2025).
Prathama Banerjee is Professor at Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
Awadhendra Sharan is Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
Wednesday, 12 November 2025, 4 pm, Seminar Room and Zoom https://bit.ly/4p6flOG
