Temporalities of Care in More-Than-Human Design

The traditional way of considering time as a linear trajectory toward infinite human progress limits how our relationship with more-than-human entities such as animals, plants, land and waters provides alternative perceptions of time, which can help tackle environmental injustices and climate change. We provide a concept of temporalities of care to unlock plural expressions of time as informed by more-than-human care practices, things we do to maintain the more-than-human world we cohabit. The concept is exemplified through an example study we conducted with humans and their dog companions, which revealed a set of sensitising concepts (synchrony, sequence, repetition, latency and asynchrony) that shed light on care time relations, which are informative of care practices. We contribute with definitions and examples for sensitising concepts.