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Time's up, timed out: reflections on social time and legal pluralism

This essay connects two longstanding anthropological themes by reconsidering Durkheim's distinction between social time and personal time through the lens of legal pluralism; I also turn the temporal lens the other way, to reflect on legal pluralism. Drawing on the work of the von Benda-Beckmanns, I begin by suggesting that we might look for illuminating connections between social time and legal pluralism wherever people make urgent demands of law, and wherever states turn to law as a means of social engineering. That possibility informs my essay and choice of examples, all from the United States. First, I review two major pieces of social legislation that were explicit in their social engineering goals. Next, I consider the temporalities inscribed in the eligibility requirements for social programs set up under the broad terms of those acts. In the conclusion, I return to the question of how social time and legal pluralism might be mutually informing in ways that shed fresh light on both themes – blurring the line between social time and personal time, and considering legal pluralism as extending to the interrelation of memberships and subjective attachments.