Afterword: Temporalities of care and transformative potentials

Abstract

In this afterword, I discuss the collected articles’ theoretical potential for thinking about care beyond political critique and illuminating how its multiple temporalities collide and collude in driving social change. Together, the contributions demonstrate the significance of multiple temporalities of care—biographical, family, institutional, state—to grasping its productive potential in reworking pasts, presents, and futures. Critically examining these temporal dimensions of care offers insights into its ambivalent transformative effects and thus ultimately reveals the full potential of care as a theoretical concept in anthropology.