Fabian's study is a classic in the field that changed the way anthropologists relate to their subjects and is of immense value not only to anthropologists but to all those concerned with the study of man. A new foreward by Matti Bunzl brings the influence of Fabian's study up to the present.

Time and the Other is a critique of the notions that anthropologists are "here and now," their objects of study are "there and then," and that the "other" exists in a time not contemporary with our own.