Abstract
Forest bathing is one of the practices that harness the healing capacity of forests, with the therapeutic benefits of green environments proven across various disciplines. Drawing on an ethnographic study of healing forest practices in Sweden and Finland, this paper explores environmental imaginaries of more-than-human care work(ers). By environmental imaginaries, we refer to worlding practices that involve deeply connecting with nature and ways of ‘imagining nature’ that allow us to reimagine our relationships with the natural world. We term these ‘healing forest imaginaries’. Building on feminist posthuman theorizing, we pay close attention to the material and figurative contributions of trees and plants to healing imaginaries. We challenge the view of nature as merely a backdrop for these practices, recognizing how forests, trees, and other beings actively co-constitute the healing experiences for humans. This active collaboration with more-than-human nature allows for an exploration of how the ‘healing forest’ is configured and the forms of care work that more-than-human entities engage in within these imaginaries. We illustrate how healing forest imaginaries configure phytomorphic, anthropomorphic, and technomorphic care workers, each involved in different forms of affective care work. These imaginative nature-culture entanglements cultivate the human ability to respond to and notice the surrounding ‘more-than-human’ work. Theoretically, this study contributes to more-than-human organizational research by expanding the emerging debate on more-than-human care relations and by bringing environmental imaginaries into the debate. Recognizing, reimagining, and making visible the often-underappreciated care work of more-than-humans carries important ethical implications for alternative forms of organizing in the Planthropocene.