What can we learn about temporality by studying different ways of measuring time, institutional time regimes, and (a)typical experiences and creations of time when growing older? This introduction sets perspectives on this question from the anthropologies of ageing, ethics, and temporality. Understanding humans as time beings, we argue that attention to connections between large‐scale history, collective temporal registers, and small‐scale singularities of the experience of time can reveal and destabilize common representations of ageing and time. We propose an analytical direction that acknowledges and attends to situations of uncertainty and suffering, while also foregrounding questions about ‘the good’, not only through paying attention to cultural values such as ‘active ageing’, ‘filial piety’, or ‘desired dependency’ (and critiques of them), but also smaller scale, oppositional, and atypical values and poetics of ageing and time. We introduce the contributions in the special issue with close‐up ethnographies from Canada, Denmark, India, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, and the United States, and the core argument across the contributions regarding how time manifests in multiple ways but is ontologically groundless. This lays the ground for critiquing various dogmas about age and time and opens up possibilities of affording plural temporalities in social life.

中文翻译：

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介绍。衰老的时间存在者：老年的时间性与伦理


通过研究测量时间的不同方式、制度性的时间制度以及 （a） 变老时的典型经验和时间创造，我们可以从时间性中学到什么？本导言从老龄化、伦理学和时间性的人类学出发，对这个问题提出了看法。将人类理解为时间存在者，我们认为，关注大尺度历史、集体时间记录和时间经验的小尺度奇点之间的联系可以揭示和破坏衰老和时间的常见表征。我们提出了一个分析方向，承认并关注不确定性和痛苦的情况，同时也突出了关于“善”的问题，不仅通过关注诸如“积极老龄化”、“孝道”或“期望的依赖”（以及对它们的批评）等文化价值观，还通过关注较小规模、对立和非典型的价值观以及衰老和时间的诗学。我们介绍了特刊中来自加拿大、丹麦、印度、日本、吉尔吉斯斯坦、乌干达和美国的特写民族志的贡献，以及关于时间如何以多种方式表现但在本体论上毫无根据的文章的核心论点。这为批判关于年龄和时间的各种教条奠定了基础，并为在社会生活中提供多元时间性开辟了可能性。