Craig Jeffrey, University of Oxford

Timepass: Youth, Class and the Politics of Waiting in India

CRAIG JEFFREY is a University Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St. John’s College.

7 February 2011, 4pmAJ Herbertson Room

School of Geography & The Environment,South Parks Road, Oxford

“We all wait. Waiting is a characteristic feature of modernity; during the twentieth century the increasing regimentation of time in the West created multiple settings – such as traffic jams, offices, and clinics – in which people waited. But what of long-term waiting? What of situations in which people have been compelled to wait for years, decades, or whole lifetimes not as a result of their voluntary move-ment through modern spaces but because they are durably unable to realise their goals? This presentation examines these questions through describing the cul-tures and politics of educated unemployed young men in north India. I highlight a widespread culture of “timepass” (passing time) among young men and the man-ner in which they respond to waiting, culturally and politically. I conclude that wait-ing, far from being a passive activity, can be the seed-bed for novel cultural ex-periments and forms of radical politics.”

2011 SOGE Seminar Series