ABSTRACT
In the modern Euro-American culture, time is a dead thing, a disembodied ghost no longer embodied in nature; the moment struck dumb by the striking clock, the deadening character of routines, schedules and endlessly counted and accounted time. By contrast, in most cultures, for most of history, time has one supremely different quality; time is alive. And is lived as such. The Euro-American image of time is a machine, a factory assembly line chucking out identical hours, each unremarked and indistinguishable. In The Silent Language, anthropologist Edward T. Hall examined the way time is processed and structured by different cultural groups. Hall divided time into two categories: monochronic and polychronic. Monochronic time, like money, can be saved or spent, whereas polychronic time is more flexible, characterised by several activities taking place at once. The model of time favoured by a culture or individual has wide-ranging effects: for instance, on consumer preferences.
