Time with houseplants
A sociological analysis of temporalities, affective entanglements and practices of care
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3951019 |
|---|---|
| Authors | G Carabelli (0000-0001-7427-3923, Queen Mary University of London, corresponding author), Dawn Lyons, Dawn Lyon (0000-0002-8534-2194, University of Kent) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 73 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1441-1459 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00380261251335747 |
| OpenAlex | W4409844454 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 50 |
This article contributes to a sociology of time and rhythm as well as a sociology of human-plant relations. It argues that sociology should take an interest in houseplants because studying human-plant relations in the domestic sphere offers novel possibilities for exploring wider sociological themes such as multispecies interactions, intimacy and identity as well as time and everyday life. The article analyses houseplant care practices and their significance for (re)shaping everyday rhythms and routines during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we discuss plant care as re-making time in lockdown during which new rhythms emerge and plants themselves become temporal devices which structure everyday life. Second, we discuss how affective human-houseplant bonds resulting from routine care-practices lead to a new feeling for time that materialised as an intensification of the present. In the final part, we position our empirical data within the broader literature on the transformative potential of everyday life. This leads us to explore plant care as the making of new habits and routines that can reshape our understanding of the present and future. Overall, this article shows how the practices of domestic plant care in lockdown including recognition of the temporalities and rhythms of the plants themselves reshaped the experience of time of our respondents
Epistemology · Political science · Social science · Sociological research · Sociological theory · Sociology · Temporalities · Temporality · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Participatory Visual Research Methods · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
Plant awareness disparity
Preventing Plant Blindness
Living with Houseplants
Plants, Vegetables, Lawn
Arts of Inclusion, or, How to Love a Mushroom
Impacts of the Covid‐19 pandemic on human–nature interactions
Boreal Plants That Enchant
Growing Methods
Matters of care
Melting time and confined leisure under Covid-19 lockdown
A plant by any other name
Rupture, repetition, and new rhythms for pandemic times
Cultural ecology
Community gardening in Hellinikon as a resistance struggle against neoliberal urbanism
The rules are all over the place’
Planting in the pandemic
Time Spacemakers and Entrainment
Human–Nature Relations in Suburban Gardens
Greening home
Care of the Species
Domestic Wild
On showing and being shown plants ‐ a guide to methods for more‐than‐human geography
Living with plants and the exploration of botanical encounter within human geographic research practice
More-Than-Human Histories
Listening to plants
Making time for soil
Remaking time
Caring for soil life in the Anthropocene
Time, Consumption and the Coordination of Everyday Life
Abyssal intimacies and temporalities of care
Community gardens as feminist spaces
Synchronization of the Corona Crisis
Introduction
Attending to grape vines
Questioning care cultivated through connecting with more-than-human communities
Therapeutic landscapes during the Covid-19 pandemic
Work, boredom and rhythm in the time of Covid-19
Care and affective relations
The coronavirus and the temporal order of capitalism
Taking Love Seriously in Human-Plant Relations in Mozambique
Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene
Multispecies Studies
The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography
Anticipatory Care
From the anthropocene to the planthroposcene
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |