Cultivating temporal attunement: Unfolding the seasonalities of an unsettled river landscape

Abstract

This article argues for the importance of cultivating temporal attunement through experimental tools and methods aimed at instigating reflective conversations on variegated temporalities within participatory processes. It contributes to, and develops on, research on seasons as rhythmic phenomena, temporal conflicts and efforts to make temporalities visible for reflections in participatory contexts. Drawing on this research, I develop ‘the Rhythmical Calendar’— a tool which foregrounds temporal, and with it seasonal, mismatches and conflicts in a case of participatory planning for the Danish River landscape of Gudenå. From here, I draw out three analytical themes from the Rhythmical Calendar: 1) embodied mismatches, 2) interpersonal mismatches and 3) more-than-human mismatches. In the first theme, I highlight how temporal mismatches in coordination can become embodied as affect in the shape of e.g., anxiety, stress and loss. In the second theme, I unfold the multiple seasons connected to human practices and the discrepancies between them. And in the third theme, I focus on relations to more-than-human actors through experiences with environmental mismatches in timing and coordination and reflections on the co-constructing of seasonal rhythms. I conclude that tools, such as the Rhythmical Calendar, are important prerequisites for attuning people to questions around time and temporality and that it is pivotal to include this knowledge in collaborative governance processes to realign rhythms in efforts to navigate in and manage conflicts.