Considering temporality for SES analysis with reflections from urban food forests and orchards

Social ecological systems research has noted various understandings and experiences of time, however, these engagements tend to be underdeveloped. In this paper, we consider how SES analyses can make diverse experiences of time more apparent and better support SES research, management, and policy making. To consider how diverse temporal experiences might be better integrated in SES, we sketch how time and temporality have been addressed in SES research and in the social sciences and humanities. We argue that insights from social science and humanities, as well as other adjacent disciplines, have paved the way for thinking critically, relationally, and intentionally about time and temporality. To illustrate how temporality can be considered and the usefulness of such consideration, we discuss conceptual insights in relation to a series of vignettes from ongoing research in urban food forests and orchards. Bringing together these insights and key concerns of SES research, we propose a series of questions for explicitly engaging with temporality, oriented around the concepts of relational change, space and place, and bodies and practice. We suggest that a more explicit and critical temporal focus is vital for SES scholars’ recent calls and efforts to more meaningfully engage with diverse ontologies, world views, and experiences.