Time and the NGOther: Development and temporalities in an Ecuadorian coastal village

Abstract

This article looks at divergent and competing understandings of temporalities in Estero de Platano, a fishing village in the Esmeraldas province of Ecuador. Through a discussion of how time can structure experience and exist as cultural capital, I explore issues of temporalities through an ethnographic lens. Specifically, I show how way how differences between NGO temporalities and local temporalities come to bear on the kind of knowledge that NGOs produce and disseminate about communities. I argue that the management of time in the village by development actors was part of a wider project of creating new imaginaries of the future. I show how mutually engaged, yet often incompatible bids for temporal projections around the future of Estero do Platano shape social and financial relationships in the village. I argue that development interventions have attempted to bridge heterogeneous temporalities through standardizing practices, and conclude that anthropology of NGOs can explore time as a site of not just production of “the other” (as per Fabian)—but as a site where subjectivities are negotiated in the present through different visions of the future.