ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts an ethno-graphic consideration of the temporal and spatial interconnection of global events both large and small from a fieldwork-based perspective. It investigates how simple everyday acts, movements and decisions of the kind that are performed on a continuous basis – such as turning left or right, deciding to stop for a coffee, walking down one street rather than another – have radical consequences for a person’s future life. By considering how such commonplace actions do not exist in isolation but are necessarily intertwined and contiguous with large- and small-scale events around the world, the chapter aims to offer an ethnographically grounded exploration of the relationship between action, contingency and the future. It follows William James’s argument that there is always some form of practical, as opposed to merely theoretical or conjectured, connection between present and future events.
