How others die—reflections on the anthropology of death [1972]

Anthropology delivers for the people purposes, for visions of progress and evolution, for projects of colonization, for schemes of development is never of a disinterested, objective sort. Critique of allochronism is important, but there is more in anthropological discourse and practice that can make us think about construction with time. Anthropology is concerned with ultimate foundations of knowledge; it tries to give specific explanations and interpretations. This chapter argues that the production of meaning, builds on constructions with time. A contradiction arises when the people turn around, as it were, and deny the people whom investigated coevalness by pronouncing on them an allochronic discourse. The story of the dead bird and the temporal conceptualizations are detected. Both Carlo Ginzburg and Bennetta Jules-Rosette provide a background for the attempt in the chapter is to show the connection between omens and stories of fulfilment in certain kinds of anthropological discourse, for example, evolutionism.