Waiting: elements of a conceptual framework

Abstract

Waiting has become an important topic for the social sciences and a metaphor for the situation of young people in a variety of regions. This essay proposes to take a step back from metaphors of waithood, stuckedness, timepass or boredom to newly ask what waiting is and what social consequences it has. I see waiting as the evaluation of a situation; by social framing, this evaluation can coagulate into a specific action. Both evaluation and action are characterized by future orientation, passivity, uncertainty, stasis, and absence of intrinsic value. Waiting, I show, is an important medium of social cooperation on the one hand, of the allocation of resources on the other. Both lead to the unequal distribution of waiting. Those who have to wait can wait in competition to each other or jointly, and joint waiting can become a seed of social critique. Building on these elements of a conceptual framework, I ask if there is anything specific about waiting in Africa. I argue that contemporary waithood is produced and reproduced by global economic structures, and I describe ways in which these can translate into an unequal distribution of waiting – in Africa and beyond.