a-series - b-series

is two interpretations of time, the a-series being like the growing within time of a budding flower, and the b-series like the succession of isolated happenings like a string of beads.

. . . . by Gell (1992: 149-55) between what he calls (following McTaggart) the A-series, in which time is immanent in the passage of events, and the B-series, in which events are strung out in time like beads on a thread. Whereas in the B-series, events are treated as isolated happenings, succeeding one another frame by frame, each event in the A-series is seen to encompass a pattern of retensions from the past and protections for the future. Thus from the A-series point of view, temporality and historicity are not opposed but rather merge in the experience of those who, in their activities, carry forward the process of social life. Taken together, these activities make up what I shall call the 'taskscape', and it is with the intrinsic temporality of the taskscape that I shall be principally concerned in this section.' (Ingold temporality of the landscape).

a series b series, n.All

a series b series