Making the time: The cultural constitution of temporality in Betania, Mexico

The processes by which time, typically considered universal and homogenous, is recast as lived, social, time---inherently particular and invested with local meanings---are investigated. The research examines Yucatec Maya speakers in the village of Betania, Quintana Roo, México. Using a combination of historical analysis, participant observation, and structured and unstructured interviews, as well as grammatical and discursive investigations of genres of Yucatec Maya writing and speech, the thesis traces the development of current Betanian temporal metaculture. Through an analysis of the Conquest of México and the major contemporary religious and politico-economic structures of temporality, as well as the competing discourses surrounding the Daylight Saving Time debate, the thesis shows that time is always constructed out of relationships that index and are indexed by specific socio-historical constellations. Thus time is inherently semiotic, and particularly deictic. The thesis concludes by arguing that the significance of this research for anthropology lies in a deeper appreciation of the semiotic constraints on temporality, while the importance to philosophical inquiry is in sketching an ethnographically nuanced indexical relation between Being and Time