Negotiating, making and knowing seasons: Extending the geographies of seasons

Barry's Geographies of the Seasons advances seasonality beyond meteorology toward questions of justice, coloniality, multispecies relations, labor, and even “aseasonal” futures. Building on this intervention, this commentary develops three complementary lines of inquiry. First, a cross-sectoral perspective complicates critiques of agricultural “aseasonality” by showing that technologies such as storage, cold-chain infrastructure, and access to distant markets may reduce post-harvest losses, extend marketing periods, and enhance farmers’ capacity to negotiate seasonal constraints. Second, an interdisciplinary dialog between environmental phenomenology and political economy highlights that seasons are both lived through bodies and environmental encounters and organized by schools, companies, markets, infrastructure, and state regulations. Third, a cross-cultural perspective draws on East Asian environmental temporalities, for example, the Twenty-Four Solar Terms, to challenge the assumption that seasonality constitutes a single intermediate scale between weather and climate.