Abstract:
This paper explores re-enactments of temporality in an unusual ethnographic fieldsite: Mani Hill research station is an over hundred-year old scientific institution in forested mountains in North Eastern Tanzania, which hosted first botanical and forestry research, and later tropical medical science, passing its apogee in the mid-20thcentury. Today, activity– scientific and otherwise–is suspended, and while the station continues to exist, hardly any medical science occurs. A fieldsite with little present and an overabundance of pasts; its unusual dearth of social activity, and its deep history, allow us to narrow in on the temporal aspects of ethnographic presence. The paper uses insights from this unusual field site to draw attention to the crucial performative and temporal dimensions of any ethnographic fieldwork, and to the potential of experimental modes of engaging temporality, to understand both the social worlds and histories that we study, and our awkward place as anthropologists within them.