ABOUT BOOK

This paper opens up the relationship between vulnerability and the temporalities of care. It takes ‘care’ as not just ~a material practice that supports, manages and sustains vulnerable bodies, but as a temporal practice, one that ~produces time in situations that are otherwise felt to be stuck or ‘chronic’. It draws on some co-written anecdotes ~about the use of ‘watchful waiting’ by medical practitioners working in general practice in the UK’s National ~Health System (NHS) to think through the meanings of waiting in relation to chronic health and mental health ~crises. The offer of ‘watchful waiting’ as a response to ‘chronic crisis’ becomes a test case for understanding a ~more general condition of watchful waiting as a form of care, in a context in which waiting for healthcare has ~become an agony for many, experienced as a form of abandonment or a key sign of health service failure. The ~paper attempts to re-think ‘waiting times’ within a wider history of the temporalities of care, in order to elucidate ~the ways an offer of waiting can itself be understood as a response to vulnerability through a practice of staying ~with or alongside the chronic temporalities of others.