- Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Benjamin, Walter. 1982. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1882–1940.)
- de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Debord, Guy. 1956. “Theory of the Dérive.” Internationale Situationniste.
- Ingold, Tim. 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge.
- Minkkinen, Panu. 2022. “Ethnography in Motion, or Walking With W.G. Sebald.” Social & Legal Studies 31 (3): 347–364. https://doi.org/10.1177/09646639211027338.
- Moretti, Costanza. 2016. “Walking.” In A Different Kind of Ethnography: Imaginative Practices and Creative Methodologies, edited by Denielle Elliott and Dara Culhane, 69–84. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Solnit, Rebecca. 2000. Wanderlust: A History of Walking. New York: Viking.
- Vergunst, Jo Lee, and Tim Ingold. 2008. Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315234250.
Chapter 7. Walking and Movement in Ethnographic Research
Image: “|.÷..|” by d28b73, via flickr, licensed under CC BY 2.0
At a glance…
Walking and movement are critical ethnographic methods that challenge ocularcentrism by reorienting attention toward the body, environment, and multisensory experience. As methodological interventions, they disrupt dominant sensory hierarchies and open new pathways for interpreting place and social life. Movement shapes perception, attunes researchers to the mundane and overlooked, and invites speculative and reflexive modes of ethnographic representation. Walking can also function as a form of resistance, reorientation, and relational engagement.
Learning objectives…
By the end of this chapter, students you be able to:
- Explain how walking functions as an ethnographic method and how it contributes to embodied, multisensory, and reflexive research practices.
- Critically assess the dominance of visual perception in ethnographic traditions and identify the value of attending to other senses such as touch, smell, and proprioception.
- Analyze how movement generates new insights into space, memory, and social interaction, and how walking can expose alternative narratives and subaltern realities.
- Reflect on how walking can challenge structured spatial orders and power dynamics, particularly through its association with improvisation, interruption, and openness.
- Describe how walking influences thought, perception, and writing, and recognize its role in shaping the ethnographer’s own positionality and imagination.
- Apply walking-based observational and reflective techniques to fieldwork exercises and evaluate how movement reshapes their understanding of place and relational dynamics.
In this chapter…
7.1. Introduction: Barefoot corrections
7.2. Movement as (re)formation
7.3. Walking: To disorient and reorient
7.4. Reflections on walking
7.5. Walking: Negotiations with Vafa
7.6. Learning activities
7.7. Suggested readings
7.8. Other resources
7.9. Works cited
7.1. Introduction: Barefoot corrections
*You can read the following text in whatever “order”.
[4] Ocularcentrism, and its inherited potential of adopting an objectifying gaze and drowning out other senses, is followed by physiological divisions of labour and the perceived superiority of the hands over feet. Visualism and the functions of hands to use, master, and manipulate each offer a kind of epistemic authority and often seem to share in a motivation for control that is denied to other senses. While an inter-sensory dependence is always active and necessary, both hands and sight become–in Johannes Fabian’s words–“synonymous with understanding” (1983, 106) and a kind of empirical precision. Walking, smelling, and tasting for instance, seem more dependent on other senses for confirmation and qualification, more open and subject with greater vulnerability to the object of perception.
[5] Anthropologist Tim Ingold wonders about the implications of sensory biases and how they shape our perception, assessments, and subsequent inhabitation of the environment. He draws a correlation between the mechanization of footwork and “modernity” and notes that “modernity” has increasingly insulated itself from the actual ground or tactile affairs, and that the push for civilization has resulted in the “withdrawal” of the intellect from other sensory spheres (2011). As he articulates, the hands correspond with reason, feet with nature, hands intelligence, feet instinct. Modernity invokes a degree of distance from the ground, remaining conceptually intact only as it is able to differentiate itself from nature, instinct, risk, and uncertainty. In the chapter ‘Culture on the Ground’ Ingold explores what walking might offer to restore a sense of touch, and to ground and balance us. What might it mean to think with our feet?
[1] Our worlds are necessarily drawn up through the associations of our various senses, as our perceptions are arranged by them. The dominant empiricist approach posits perception as a neutral purveyor for collecting and conveying “data” of the world “out-there” to the understandings “in-our-heads.” Historian of senses Constance Classen reminds us, however, that there has long been debate over the separation of intrinsic senses as well as their ‘rankings’ in perception. Classen explores the correlation between sense perception and culture. Sense hierarchies are, she contends, to an extent ordered by culture as they shape and are shaped by political and historical processes (1993, 5). As Fabian provokes, “[w]hat makes a reported sight more objective than a reported sound, smell or taste? Our bias for one and against the other is a matter of cultural choice rather than universal validity” (1983: 107–108).
[2] Visualism is generally the primary mode of perception, in part this is a result of neurobiological propensity towards sight, it is also, however, accentuated by political and cultural inclinations. It is not that sight in itself is problematic but rather that an over-reliance on it comes at the expense of other senses and neglects the ways in which all of our senses interact and depend on one another. The prioritization of sight—and subsequent blunting, numbing, or discrediting of its counterparts—yields particular analytical lenses and configurations of the world. Ingold importantly cautions against an assumed domineering characteristic of sight; he stresses that to see is not unequivocally to reduce, control, and appropriate representations. And indeed, along with other authors, he reminds that critiques of visualism alone reinforce perceived divides between senses.
[3] Taking the consequences of sensory division to an extreme end, Marshall McLuhan contends that visualism has had detrimental cognitive effects, leading to objective, linear, analytic, and fragmented modes of thought that blunt and numb other forms of understanding (1964). The overextension of sight to McLuhan’s mind mitigates “humane involvement” and lends “the power to act without reacting,” (1964, 4) which alienates and de-personalizes interactions bringing about societal reorganization accordingly. Timothy Mitchel similarly interrogates the political implications of visualism, arguing that implicated in the act of viewing is a degree of power and authority, an ‘apparent realism’, a “rendering up of the world as a thing to be viewed,” and the capacity to see without being seen (2004). Mitchel scrutinizes the colonial European/Western gaze; through the instance of the ‘Exhibitionary Order’ he details the consequences of an over-reliance on a detached and unfeeling sight. These consequences are characterized by objectification—which interprets things as objects to be looked at rather than forces which affect our sensorium, the empirical authority of expressing facticity primarily through appearance, and the refusal to explore the contours, illusions, limits, and genesis of this sense. This imbalanced sensory order relegates other senses as subordinate and ancillary, neglecting qualities that elude visual expression as well as the ways in which sight relies on other senses.
[6] Exploring walking as a method partakes in the interdisciplinary “sensory turn”. This shift challenges the divisions of the sensorium in an effort to appreciate the interdependence of senses, their critical influence on interpretation, and forms of perception beyond sight. Focusing on other senses can strengthen our imaginations and help to appreciate experience as a manifestation of complex relations between senses and external stimuli. Walking enlivens our senses and demands an inter-sensory focus, this makes it an apt method to disrupt “physiological divisions of labour” (Ingold) and impressions of senses as isolated and functioning independently from one another. Instead, walking asks us to notice the ways in which our senses draw up our experience together, and how footfalls and tactile experiences enable and push us to think.
[7] Attending to a broader range of senses may offer new ethnographic insights and assessments. This flexibility is important to a cosmological imagination if indeed—as Classen argues—sense myopia is inadequate for apprehending other forms of perception, orders, and ways of inhabiting the world. Walking as a method, and subsequent reflections on that process, is conducive to these aims and an effective way to correct sensory biases and contend with their consequences.
7.2. Movement as (re)formation

Movements—as seemingly mundane as walking— partake in the continual construction of a place. As everyday patterns of movements (re)create spaces, walking serves as an active technique to “contribute to the ongoing formations of place” (Ingold 2011, 44). Thus the possibility to resist or subvert an external and imposed direction is also always present.
Walking assumes whatever meaning one invests in it. Rebecca Solnit differentiates between kinds of walking from “practical locomotion” with a destination in mind and as a means to an end, and ‘subsets’ of walking that involve “investigations” “rituals” and walking as an end in itself (2000). As Solnit remarks, both thinking and walking in themselves and for their own sake are resistant to production-oriented systems, cast as a kind of labour which “does” nothing. Walking as resistance may also come in the form of noticing—as Moretti describes— “discordant voices, alternative visions of reality, or moments that suggest that things could be otherwise” (2016, 82).
An embodied and active imagination importantly brings these dimensions of a space into view; fragments of meaning are momentarily enlivened as one moves through them, offering hints of subaltern realities. Taking notice of the aspects which haunt social realities, absences that shadow them, and speculative possibilities that linger, are important for intervening in the transposed order and carving out forms of resistance. Cognizing social lives involves tracing historical nuances and envisioning alternative accounts of a place, informing a valuable analytical force for ethnography.
Spaces are always overlaid and filled with different memories, meanings, and histories; walking through them prompts a speculative imagination as to what is not there, what was there, or what could be there. Movement as a method is therefore conducive to the ethnographic imagination and process of interpretation and writing.
Equally, the space acts on its inhabitants and visitors, nagging at them; as Benjamin muses: “[t]he space winks at the flaneur. What do you think may have gone on here?” (1982, 419). This highlights the constructive capacity of ethnographies and writing too, as emphasizing underlying aspects of a place has brings them into being. As noted in section 7.4, ethnographies create social realities rather than merely discovering them insofar as they help to discerning which stories, histories, and realities are represented and shared. In this sense, by choosing to focus on understated, marginal, or discordant realities ethnographies may partake in the continual formation of a place.
7.3. Walking: To disorient and reorient

Walking at a contemplative pace lends insights into the intricacies of place. This practice offers promising potential to the aims of ethnography to craft intimate accounts, disorient and reorient the reader, and draw out new perspectives—through the surprising, spontaneous, routine, and mundane. Methodical movements through land/cityscapes prompts the re-emergence of things lost in the view from “above” (de Certeau 1984), affording the time to notice the distortions and subtleties of a space. Pedestrian views slip from the transposed “planned city” as cultural lives slip from political significance, each bleeds out from the imposed order in distinct dynamic deviations. There is, as de Certeau evokes, an “inversion” of the city’s “panopticon” which renders “a blindspot” in the “theoretical constructions” and “planning” of the place (1984). The distance and interplay between a constructed order and the corresponding spatial realities of a place are often revealed as one navigates through them. These features are important to ethnographic accounts as they illustrate the different meanings attributed to a place, thereby providing greater intimacy and awareness.
Perpetual grounded movements—which are stilled in planned projections— draw up the everyday patterns of lived spaces and make collective places what they are. As Walter Benjamin notes, “[s]treets are the dwelling place of the collective”, which are “eternally unquiet, eternally agitated” (1982, 423). Memories, symbols, political values, and cultural dimensions are anchored in places, embracing slow and immersive locomotion urges techniques of noticing them. This is an effective ethnographic strategy as it brings different negotiations of power, space, and place into view. Moving and navigating through collective places prompts us to notice the ways our actions shape and are shaped by those around us—both humans and otherwise. This provides an idea of who is in/excluded; how power is spatially distributed, expressed, or contained; and how aspects of a place might be (dis)connected to one another. The material configurations of a place direct, enable, and inhibit various movements, in doing so, they take on their own rhythm and become imbued with distinct political and cultural values. In this sense, walking as an ethnographic method partakes in the material turn, directing greater focus to other-than-human entities that structure our surroundings and experience. Walking also requires that the mind, body, senses, landscape, and others be in constant conversation with one another, relaying responses and reactions. Taking notice of these features is valuable to the immersive and intersubjective demands of fieldwork. In turn, this may also help to discern the whole of a collective/place which is greater than the sum of its parts by accounting for the exchanges between them.
Movement is also conducive to the process of thinking and writing. Wandering feeds the imagination, in expanding the view it enlivens new perspectives and spurs thoughts in different directions. Walking is an ‘imaginative’ strategy, referring–in Appadurai’s (1996) words—not to a ‘detachment from reality, but rather to a complex engagement with it’ (from Moretti 2016). As such it provides a new way of thinking, and of thinking about, in, and of a place. Walter Benjamin refers to a “walking consciousness” to which, he offers, the “[c]ategory of similarity” has “only minimal relevance”(1982, 418). The insinuation seems to be that walking demands a presence of mind and body, a naivety and open-endedness with the potential to suspend usual preconceived classificatory schemes. As Solnit evokes, “[t]he rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking” (2000, 5), a slow pace favours measured and careful rumination, affording the time to compose and recompose thoughts. Walking welcomes free but anchored thinking, not mired by the confines which so often impose themselves in states of deliberation or immobility, but grounded nonetheless in an ever-changing scene and sensory awareness. This elicits a kind of learning that goes beyond instruction and imitation to the attention required by embodied experiences and practical activity (Ingold 2011).Writing itself can be framed as a kind of “perambulation” (Pandian 2017) that carves out distinct routes around things, inflects different perspectives, explores, imagines, and frames various scenes, sometimes with a destination in mind and other times welcoming digressions.
7.4. Reflections on walking

Notwithstanding the importance of walking in producing ethnographic data, the process itself is often overlooked in final accounts. As Ingold and Vergunst write, “ethnographers…are accustomed to carrying out much of their work on foot [yet] it is rare to find ethnography that reflects on walking itself” (2008, 3). Attention to the process of walking—and moving more generally—and the dialectic between interpretation and space has much to offer ethnographic accounts. Following Clifford and Marcus’ critiques in ‘Writing Culture’, reflecting on the process of walking—as a strategy for observation and familiarization—can serve to highlight ethnographic data as “created” rather than “discovered” (Minkkinen 2022, 355) and to situate the author in the account. These methodological techniques call attention to the “partial truths” and “complex encounters” that make up ethnographic accounts (Clifford & Marcus 1986), they lend greater transparency over processes of interpretation, and mitigate the risks of attempted objective representations. This reflexivity acknowledges the “production” of ethnographic data as a kind of a collision between the author and the “object” of study to adopt a more critical awareness of the risks inherent to studying, cognizing, interpreting, and representing the life of others.
Constantly subject to chance encounters, the methodical, routine act of walking is also paradoxically unpredictable. Spontaneity of the kind that often characterizes a walk is in fact a key advantage to ethnography (Moretti 2016, 81). It opens the subject, or ethnographer up to the kinds of interruptions and contingencies that make for stronger and more nuanced ethnographic accounts. It is the unexpected, inexplicable features that elude generalizations about a place or people which makes the methods of ethnography important. The capacity to attend to and highlight these aspects reveals a key methodological strength.
The pedestrian is subject to uncertainty, unpredictability, and other eyes, contingencies that are always present in ethnographic research but rendered particularly salient by public pedestrian life. Both the spontaneity and intersubjectivity of walking entails being touched back by one’s surroundings, bringing this sense to light in final accounts is methodologically and theoretically valuable. Again, critical (self)reflections that situate the author in the account call attention to the production of ethnographic knowledge, in de-stabilizing epistemic authority they provide more open and constructive places for critical discussion.
Movement inevitably also calls on a broader range of senses. Ethnographies are always already ‘embodied’, movement simply invites more expansive sensory engagement to unearth new dimensions of both place and people. Focus and reflection on this wider repertoire of perception enriches ethnographic accounts to account for dimensions beyond text-centered expressions. By offering multiple forms of possible engagement, this process is also conducive towards the aim of making academic work more accessible and reaching a wider readership.
7.5. Walking: Negotiations with Vafa

Vafa is a philosopher dog, tracing his intellectual and literary ancestry to notable predecessors like Cerberus from Lucian’s *Dialogues of the Dead* and the characters from Ibn al-Muqaffa’s *Kalila-wa-Dimna*. Proudly part of this distinguished kinship, Vafa also connects with the unnamed narrator in Kafka’s *Investigations of a Dog* and the popular internet meme, the Doge. His philosophical musings and reflections continue the legacy of these iconic canine thinkers. We hope that this conversation with Vafa encourages you to attend to the intersensory and improvisational nature of fieldwork through movement.
After we’ve had our respective naps and a long game of tag, Amelia proposes that we go for a walk. Do we agree on the type of walk, I cue. Yes.
We get just a few feet from home and I am flooded with new smells, new sounds, the sun flickering down from the trees and into my fur, and the warm evening pavement and grass on my paws. I am overwhelmed; too excited to move; I just need to pause.
Every plant is in bloom; every sidewalk crack accommodates a different moss; the ground is riddled with rises and divots, its uneven surface pressing on my paws; the green and brown grasses mix releasing new smells and changing textures; the soil is filled with mysterious little disruptions; the direction of the wind has switched since I was last out, carrying a distinct breeze of smells; and the oaks that line our block leave a great trail of odours and pollen that makes my nose tickle. As I smell and feel them, they are all causes for pause—for awe—and command my total sensory immersion.
I feel a little tug—come on Vafa, lets go! Amelia insists on sprinting the first block to “wake up.” I admit sometimes I like doing this, but right now I tell her I’m enjoying my state of somnambulism, as things muse at me before I can discover them.
I return the tug—to where? I thought we agreed we have no destination, we are just out for a walk?
You’re right Vafa we are, but walking is not what we’re doing right now—right now, we are stopped, smelling and feeling the ground.
I had anticipated this. But is that not part of the type of walking we agreed on? I retorted. Why do you insist that we keep moving if you’re supposedly not destination-oriented? You don’t even know where you are going and you are in a rush to get there.
Persistent, she provokes: don’t you want to explore? And see new things?
(As if I am the one who is being lame; I am being inquisitive, probing, adventurous, while she is dissatisfied at my sensitivity and noble resistance.)
Sure, I do, but there’s lots to explore right here; you could spend lifetimes on this block alone—this square meter in fact! You’re not exploring right—still—even after all your reasoning and rhyming on the values of wandering, still you don’t. We agreed on a type of walk, no? A wander, one with the objectives—since that seems to be how you like to think—to be outside, to be moving without a destination and without elevating our heart rates excessively, to immerse our full sensorium, to be pulled by whatever might capture our nose (eyes for you maybe), and to take better notice of spaces. After your attempted critique of ocularcentrism, still you equate “exploring” with “seeing new things” and let your eyes alone direct you.
My olfactory capacities would completely confound your imagination! You could never possibly write up the extent of them, try as you may. I am sooooo much better at this than you—your own activities! and still you think you can access this through reason and representations. Even as you articulate the impossibility of doing so, still you try, undermining yourself at every turn.
You are right Vafa. Take your time and I’ll take mine. You know, you are an inspiration—keep tugging back at me, I am listening, I hope you can see and understand my weaknesses.
Let’s not even get into the other ones, I caution. Though now that you mention it I did have a small point about the write-ups.
I’m all ears.
In all your writing for walking you cite many other authors for their words, their reasonings, questions they raise, and the imagination they lend you. Yet I see I am cited nowhere—not even a mention—despite the fact that as we already agreed, I embody your lessons, teach you—or at least try—and am the source of your inspiration! It is a nice practice really, citing; in attributing someone’s contributions, it’s like they are almost there. In a way it is a gentle assertion of a kind of presence that indicates co-creation—Vafa…you are doing this all the time! Rather than every few phrases, every few steps.
(I decided to bypass the fact that she interrupted—I welcome digressions.) You mean my peeing?
Yes! You add to the smells and the affect of each place for those who come after you, gently (re)asserting your presence.
Right, so to return, it’s like I peed all over your writing but it is totally invisible.
As soon as we get home I will make better acknowledgement of your contributions and inspirations. The problem is that your contributions are less tangible, there is no text source to indicate, so it’s difficult to “cite” conventionally, you understand?
The persistence of human conceit, I thought!!
Oh, I thought you like bending conventions too? At least theoretically you do, and when it suits you you seem perfectly happy ignoring them. And I thought that going beyond text-centered expression is “necessary”—your words right? I am sure you can use your imagination.
I hear the noise of the light and am suddenly compelled to cross the street. Why are we going this way—I turn and look, really?—nevermind: Amelia learns slowly. On the other side we walk past a group of people. They are hanging out and playing music, many of them say hi to me and smile. We walk a little further and I feel my legs realizing I am getting tired. To go all the way around this block seems too ambitious. At this thought, I stop and turn around.
Vafa, I am convinced of walking aimlessly, but we just walked by all of those people; we can’t immediately turn and walk right past them again. They will think that something is wrong—that we have lost something; that we are lost.
So you care more about the hypothetical perception of a group of strangers, and allow this to direct your movements, more than how I feel? I will make a concession here—not only your eyes direct you, you also let other people’s eyes direct you!
She says nothing but relents. She feels shy now I can tell so as we walk past I compensate, and in an effort to distract everyone from the awkwardness I seem to have elicited, am particularly exuberant in my hellos, jumping on and smelling everyone.
7.6. Learning activities
Learning by doing
Move along a route–this can be either one you don’t usually take, or one that you do. The point of this exercise is observational, so without specifying a destination, just move and immerse yourself in the environment. Begin and let yourself acclimate to the surroundings. Start taking notes after a few minutes.
You will need: some note-taking devices, photo-taking device, and potentially a partner.
During your walk take notice of :
- Movement and Order: Observe how paths, signs, landscaping, and other features influence your movement. Do they encourage or discourage you to follow them? Reflect on how your movement subverts or adheres to the imposed order of the landscape. Are you guided or restricted? Consider what values these elements project or reflect.
- Other relational aspects: who else uses the space? Notice how your movement is shaped by others around you. How do you interact or negotiate space with them? Note any social interactions or adjustments you make
- Rhythm and Time: Determine the prevailing rhythm of the space. Note the general activity levels in the space. Is it bustling with people, vehicles, or natural movements (like wind or water)? Is it more serene and quiet? Observe if there are any specific times when the activity level changes, such as end of class time or lunch break. Pay attention to the soundscape. What are the dominant sounds, and how do they contribute to the rhythm? Look at the movement patterns visually. Are people moving quickly or leisurely? Are there any repetitive actions or movements? Now reflect on how you establish your own rhythm within this environment. Reflect on how you fit into or contrast with the prevailing rhythm. Are you moving at the same pace as the environment, or do you find yourself moving differently? Consider how you interact with the environment. Do you stop frequently, take detours, or follow a direct path? How do these actions shape your rhythm? Your emotional and physical state can also influence your rhythm. Are you feeling relaxed, stressed, tired, or energetic? Think about any strategies you used to adapt to or resist the prevailing rhythm. Did you find yourself speeding up to match others, or did you intentionally slow down?
Now, reimagine the space. At different points along your walk, imagine what could be there instead of what is currently present. Start by describing the current state of the space. What is present? How is it used? Then imagine different scenarios–what was there, what could be there, what will be there? Reflect on the historical and future potential of the space. What changes or developments could transform this environment?
Other activities
- Try walking with your eyes closed. Notice how your other senses compensate. Reflect on how this changes your perception of the space. What do you notice when your vision is taken away?
- Try walking barefoot. Notice the textures and sensation under your feet. How does being barefoot–as a different ‘method’ of walking–change your interpretations? As Ingold prompts, can you think of any analogous metaphorical shifts of ‘being barefoot’ in other methods?
- Take photos as you feel compelled. Later, looking at them together, reflect on the themes they represent. Do they capture the essence of your walk, how?
Reflection and Discussion
After your walk, find a quiet place to sit and reflect on your experience. Consider how walking as a method influenced your observations and understanding of the space. Write down your thoughts and insights.
If you are doing this activity as part of a class or group, come together to share your experiences. Discuss the different observations made and how the act of walking shaped your perceptions of the environment.
7.7. Suggested readings
Vergunst, J.L. & Ingold. (2008). Ways of Walking Ethnography and Practice on Foot. Routledge.
This volume contains a collection of ethnographic accounts that explore the practice of walking across a range of cultural contexts. The authors discuss themes of movement, place-making, landscape, and social life. The interdisciplinary contributions of this volume provides wide ranging perspectives. Together, they provide an enriched account of studies of embodiment and techniques of the body and emphasize the importance of movement by foot to the human experience.
Ingold, T. (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge, and Description. Routledge
Though not focused solely on walking, this book provides detailed and imaginative accounts of experience, movement, and embodiment. Ingold probes at fundamental questions of experience through a series of essays that explore–among other things–perception, materiality, experiences of the senses, description and drawing.
Solnit, R. (2000). Wanderlust. Viking Penguin Group
In this book, Solnit explores the practice of walking and its relationship to aesthetics, culture, philosophy, and politics. She draws on a range of different histories of walking and locate forms of resistance and subversion in seemingly pedestrian gestures. In describing the connections between thinking, walking, and the imagination, Solnit argues for the increasing importance and necessity of walking.
Sebald, W. G. (1995). The Rings of Saturn.
This book follows the wanderings through the Suffolk coast and Sebald’s mind, it includes a series of meditations that meanders through themes of history, memory, melancholia. The poetic prose “wanders”, embracing tangents and digressions about eccentric figures, histories, landscapes, and unfolding events. The text is highly descriptive, imaginative, and illustrative, drawing up many visuals in the readers mind, and punctuated with photographs. Sebald’s intellectual concerns over loss, identity, and decay also shape the entries throughout.
de Certeau, M. (1980). The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press.
De Certeau’s text draws attention to the omissions of social sciences in their formal understandings of culture, in the everyday mundane practices of people on the ground which subvert generalizations and categorizations. Chapter 4, the Walking in The City’, specifically addresses the practice and process of walking and what it has to offer more intimate and tactile cultural impressions. He differentiates between structures of power and actual life, concerned with the aspects of social life that slip out from imposed orders.
7.8. Other resources
- A Line Made by Walking, 1967, Richard Long.
- Urban Wilds and Modern Mythology: A Conversation with Gavin Van Horn. October 2019. Edge Effects Podcast.