African and non-African concepts of time: to contrast or not to contrast? The geo-political convenience of dichotomization, Thought and Practice

Abstract

This critique offers analytic reasons for suspecting that political economics drives the enduring philosophical debates concerning a purported contrast between ‘African’ and ‘Western’ concepts of time. In particular, the essay illuminates flawed and self-refuting assumptions underlying the recurrent hypothesis that certain metaphysical beliefs peculiar to Africans are causally responsible for the poor quality of development policy as practiced by Africans. Such a hypothesis neglects how economic conditions actually result from what people think and do. It is shown that drawing a causal connection from culture-specific metaphysical beliefs to economic practices is a mistaken project, flawed both by its logical incoherence and by overlooking the structure of individual intentions which comprise some component of the causal sequences involved in the practice of developmental economics, if it is driven by individuals’ beliefs. These results achieved a-historically suggest why a prevailing intercultural debate explicitly focused on the practical aspects of divergent beliefs about the nature of time, may be implicitly an enduring conflict about control over its use