Document Type
Article
Abstract
In this article, Stefan Helmreich delivers an ethnographic report on an international academic conference of physical and biological oceanographers held in Goa, India, shortly after the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004. Juxtaposing scientific discussions of the tsunami with novelist and anthropologist Amitav Ghosh's early 2005 visit to the hard-hit Andaman Islands, Helmreich examines various styles of narrating time in circulation in the wake of the disaster. Centering his attention on marine scientists, Helmreich discusses a tension between geological time and what he calls oscillating ocean time, a genre of time that takes in such long durée processes as ocean circulation as well as such rapid changes as tides and waves, which he argues are densely entwined with the turbulent temporality of human activity and sociality.
Repository Citation
Helmreich, Stefan. "Time and the Tsunami." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 6, no. 3, 2006, pp. 1–15. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol6/iss3/10
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