Aja kultuurilised käsitlused ja vaade katastroofimõtlemisele
Cultural accounts of time and a perspective on catastrophe thinking

Summary/Abstract: The article examines an anthropological perspective on changes in imaginations of time from traditional societies to modernity and postmodernity and their connection to catastrophe thinking. In traditional societies time was cyclical and the future related to fatalism; risk and catastrophes were attributed to supernatural forces and were managed by means of ritual. Modernity brought along a turn: time became linear; the human being was placed at the centre of the world, and emphasis shifted to progress and risk management. This lessened the role of fatalism, while increasing individual responsibility. In the postmodern situation, this equilibrium has disintegrated. The meaning of the past has weakened and the future causes fears, as a result of which people focus on the present („presentism“). Catastrophe thinking becomes central, reflecting uncertainty and the crisis of temporal orientation. The article claims that in order to exit this crisis one should turn toward comparative anthropological analysis and restore practical models from traditional accounts of time. Ritual and collective practices, such as mourning, help conceptualise catastrophes and cope with them, transforming them into tolerable experieences. Thus the future can again be treated as a field for active engagement, not only the source of fears.

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