{"id":2066,"date":"2025-01-01T17:00:29","date_gmt":"2025-01-02T00:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mulmod\/?p=110"},"modified":"2025-07-16T06:59:27","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T13:59:27","slug":"chapter-7-walking-and-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/multimodalethnography\/2025\/01\/01\/chapter-7-walking-and-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 7. Walking and Movement in Ethnographic Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image: “|.\u00f7..|” by d28b73, via flickr<\/a>, licensed under CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n

At a glance…<\/h5>\n

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\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Learning objectives…<\/h5>\n

By the end of this chapter, students you be able to:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Explain how walking functions as an ethnographic method<\/strong> and how it contributes to embodied, multisensory, and reflexive research practices.<\/li>\n
  2. Critically assess the dominance of visual perception in ethnographic traditions<\/strong> and identify the value of attending to other senses such as touch, smell, and proprioception.<\/li>\n
  3. Analyze how movement generates new insights<\/strong> into space, memory, and social interaction, and how walking can expose alternative narratives and subaltern realities.<\/li>\n
  4. Reflect on how walking can challenge structured spatial orders and power dynamics<\/strong>, particularly through its association with improvisation, interruption, and openness.<\/li>\n
  5. Describe how walking influences thought, perception, and writing<\/strong>, and recognize its role in shaping the ethnographer\u2019s own positionality and imagination.<\/li>\n
  6. Apply walking-based observational and reflective techniques to fieldwork exercises<\/strong> and evaluate how movement reshapes their understanding of place and relational dynamics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    In this chapter…<\/h5>\n

    7.1. Introduction: Barefoot corrections<\/a>
    \n    7.2. Movement as (re)formation<\/a>
    \n    7.3. Walking: To disorient and reorient<\/a>
    \n    7.4. Reflections on walking<\/a>
    \n    7.5. Walking: Negotiations with Vafa<\/a>
    \n    7.6. Learning activities<\/a>
    \n    7.7. Suggested readings<\/a>
    \n    7.8. Other resources<\/a>
    \n    7.9. Works cited<\/a><\/p>\n

    7.1. Introduction: Barefoot corrections<\/h2>\n

    *You can read the following text in whatever \u201corder\u201d.<\/p>\n

    [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\u2013in Johannes Fabian\u2019s words\u2013\u201csynonymous with understanding\u201d (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.<\/p>\n

    [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 \u201cmodernity\u201d and notes that \u201cmodernity\u201d has increasingly insulated itself from the actual ground or tactile affairs, and that the push for civilization has resulted in the \u201cwithdrawal\u201d 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 \u2018Culture on the Ground\u2019 Ingold explores what walking might offer to restore a sense of touch, and to ground and balance us. What might it mean to think\u00a0with<\/i>\u00a0our feet?<\/p>\n

    [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 \u201cdata\u201d of the world \u201cout-there\u201d to the understandings \u201cin-our-heads.\u201d Historian of senses Constance Classen reminds us, however, that there has long been debate over the separation of intrinsic senses as well as their \u2018rankings\u2019 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, \u201c[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\u201d (1983: 107\u2013108).<\/p>\n

    [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\u2014and subsequent blunting, numbing, or discrediting of its counterparts\u2014yields 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.<\/p>\n

    [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\u00a0overextension\u00a0<\/i>of sight to McLuhan\u2019s mind mitigates \u201chumane involvement\u201d and lends \u201cthe power to act without\u00a0re<\/i>acting,\u201d (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 \u2018apparent realism\u2019, a \u201crendering up of the world as a thing to be viewed,\u201d and the capacity to see without being seen (2004). Mitchel scrutinizes the colonial European\/Western gaze; through the instance of the \u2018Exhibitionary Order\u2019 he details the consequences of an over-reliance on a detached and unfeeling sight. These consequences are characterized by objectification\u2014which 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.<\/p>\n

    [6]\u00a0 Exploring walking as a method partakes in the interdisciplinary \u201csensory turn\u201d. 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 \u201cphysiological divisions of labour\u201d (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.<\/p>\n

    [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\u2014as Classen argues\u2014sense 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.<\/p>\n

    Back to Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

    7.2. Movement as (re)formation<\/h2>\n
    \"\"
    A line made by walking n(not Richard Long). Image\u2019s Source<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Movements\u2014as seemingly mundane as walking\u2014 partake in the continual construction of a place. As everyday patterns of movements (re)create spaces, walking serves as an active technique to \u201ccontribute to the ongoing formations of place\u201d (Ingold 2011, 44). Thus the possibility to resist or subvert an external and imposed direction is also always present.<\/p>\n

    Walking assumes whatever meaning one invests in it. Rebecca Solnit differentiates between kinds of walking from \u201cpractical locomotion\u201d with a destination in mind and as a means to an end, and \u2018subsets\u2019 of walking that involve \u201cinvestigations\u201d \u201crituals\u201d 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 \u201cdoes\u201d nothing. Walking as resistance may also come in the form of noticing\u2014as Moretti describes\u2014 \u201cdiscordant voices, alternative visions of reality, or moments that suggest that things could be otherwise\u201d (2016, 82).<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    Equally, the space acts on its inhabitants and visitors, nagging at them; as Benjamin muses: \u201c[t]he space winks at the flaneur. What do you think may have gone on here?\u201d (1982, 419). This highlights the constructive capacity of ethnographies and writing too, as emphasizing underlying aspects of a place has brings them into being.\u00a0As noted in section 7.4,\u00a0ethnographies\u00a0create<\/em>\u00a0social realities rather than merely\u00a0discovering<\/em>\u00a0them 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.<\/p>\n

    Back to Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

    7.3. Walking: To disorient and reorient<\/h2>\n
    \"\"
    walking near Ho\u0302tel des Invalides Paris 1972 from Wikimedia. Image\u2019s source<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    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\u2014through the surprising, spontaneous, routine, and mundane. Methodical movements through land\/cityscapes prompts the re-emergence of things lost in the view from \u201cabove\u201d (de Certeau 1984), affording the time to notice the distortions and subtleties of a space. Pedestrian views slip from the transposed \u201cplanned city\u201d 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 \u201cinversion\u201d of the city\u2019s \u201cpanopticon\u201d which renders \u201ca blindspot\u201d in the \u201ctheoretical constructions\u201d and \u201cplanning\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

    Perpetual grounded movements\u2014which are stilled in planned projections\u2014 draw up the everyday patterns of lived spaces and make collective places what they are. As Walter Benjamin notes, \u201c[s]treets are the dwelling place of the collective\u201d, which are \u201ceternally unquiet, eternally agitated\u201d (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\u2014both 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.\u00a0Walking 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\u00a0whole<\/em>\u00a0of a collective\/place which is greater than the sum of its parts by accounting for the exchanges between them.<\/p>\n

    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 \u2018imaginative\u2019 strategy, referring\u2013in Appadurai\u2019s (1996) words\u2014not to a \u2018detachment from reality, but rather to a complex engagement with it\u2019 (from Moretti 2016). As such it provides a new way of thinking, and of thinking\u00a0about<\/i>,\u00a0in<\/i>, and\u00a0of<\/i>\u00a0a place. Walter Benjamin refers to a \u201cwalking consciousness\u201d to which, he offers, the \u201c[c]ategory of similarity\u201d has \u201conly minimal relevance\u201d(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, \u201c[t]he rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking\u201d (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 \u201cperambulation\u201d (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.<\/p>\n

    Back to Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

    7.4. Reflections on walking<\/h2>\n
    \"\"
    Reflection of walking. \u00a9 Tomas Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com \/ Wikimedia Commons. Image\u2019s Source.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Notwithstanding the importance of walking in producing ethnographic data, the process itself is often overlooked in final accounts. As Ingold and Vergunst write, \u201cethnographers\u2026are accustomed to carrying out much of their work on foot [yet] it is rare to find ethnography that reflects on walking itself\u201d (2008, 3). Attention to the process of\u00a0walking\u2014<\/i>and moving more generally\u2014and the dialectic between interpretation and space has much to offer ethnographic accounts. Following Clifford and Marcus\u2019 critiques in \u2018Writing Culture\u2019, reflecting on the process of walking\u2014as a strategy for observation and familiarization\u2014can serve to highlight ethnographic data as \u201ccreated\u201d rather than \u201cdiscovered\u201d (Minkkinen 2022, 355) and to situate the author in the account. These methodological techniques call attention to the \u201cpartial truths\u201d and \u201ccomplex encounters\u201d 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 \u201cproduction\u201d of ethnographic data as a kind of a collision between the author and the \u201cobject\u201d of study to adopt a more critical awareness of the risks inherent to studying, cognizing, interpreting, and representing the life of others.<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    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.\u00a0Both the spontaneity and intersubjectivity of walking entails being\u00a0touched back<\/em>\u00a0by one\u2019s 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\u00a0production<\/em>\u00a0of ethnographic knowledge, in de-stabilizing epistemic authority they provide more open and constructive places for critical discussion.<\/p>\n

    Movement inevitably also calls on a broader range of senses. Ethnographies are always already \u2018embodied\u2019, movement simply\u00a0invites more expansive sensory engagement\u00a0to 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.<\/p>\n

    Back to Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

    7.5. Walking: Negotiations with Vafa<\/h2>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Vafa is a philosopher dog, tracing his intellectual and literary ancestry to notable predecessors like Cerberus from Lucian\u2019s *Dialogues of the Dead* and the characters from Ibn al-Muqaffa\u2019s *Kalila-wa-Dimna*. Proudly part of this distinguished kinship, Vafa also connects with the unnamed narrator in Kafka\u2019s *Investigations of a Dog* and the popular internet meme, the Doge. His philosophical musings and reflections<\/a> 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    After we\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    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\u2014for awe\u2014and command my total sensory immersion.<\/p>\n

    I feel a little tug\u2014come on Vafa, lets go! Amelia insists on sprinting the first block to \u201cwake up.\u201d I admit sometimes I like doing this, but right now I tell her I\u2019m enjoying my state of somnambulism, as things muse at me before I can discover them.<\/p>\n

    I return the tug\u2014to where? I thought we agreed we have no destination, we are just out for a walk?<\/p>\n

    You\u2019re right Vafa we are, but walking is not what we\u2019re doing right now\u2014right now, we are stopped, smelling and feeling the ground.<\/p>\n

    I had anticipated this. But is that not part of the type of walking we agreed on? I retorted.\u00a0Why do you insist that we keep moving if you\u2019re supposedly not destination-oriented? You don\u2019t even know where you are going and you are in a rush to get there.<\/p>\n

    Persistent, she provokes: don\u2019t you want to explore? And see new things?<\/p>\n

    (As if I am the one who is being lame;\u00a0I\u00a0<\/i>am being inquisitive, probing, adventurous, while she is dissatisfied at my sensitivity and noble resistance.)<\/p>\n

    Sure, I do, but there\u2019s lots to explore right here; you could spend lifetimes on this block alone\u2014this square meter in fact! You\u2019re not exploring right\u2014still\u2014even after\u00a0all your reasoning and rhyming on the values of wandering, still you don\u2019t. We agreed on a type of walk, no? A wander, one with the objectives\u2014since that seems to be how you like to think\u2014to 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.\u00a0After your attempted\u00a0critique of ocularcentrism, still you equate \u201cexploring\u201d with \u201cseeing new things\u201d and let your eyes alone direct you.<\/p>\n

    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\u2014your own activities! and still you think you can access\u00a0this<\/i>\u00a0through reason and representations. Even as you articulate the impossibility of doing so, still you try, undermining yourself at every turn.<\/p>\n

    You are right Vafa. Take your time and I\u2019ll take mine. You know, you are an inspiration\u2014keep tugging back at me, I am listening, I hope you can see and understand my weaknesses.<\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s not even get into the other ones, I caution. Though now that you mention it I did have a small point about the\u00a0write-ups<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    I\u2019m all ears.<\/p>\n

    In\u00a0all your writing for walking\u00a0you 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\u2014not even a mention\u2014despite the fact that as we already agreed, I embody your lessons, teach you\u2014or at least try\u2014and am the source of your inspiration! It is a nice practice really, citing; in attributing someone\u2019s contributions, it\u2019s like they are almost there. In a way it is a gentle assertion of a kind of presence that indicates co-creation\u2014Vafa\u2026you are doing this all the time! Rather than every few phrases, every few steps.<\/p>\n

    (I decided to bypass the fact that she interrupted\u2014I<\/i>\u00a0welcome digressions.) You mean my peeing?<\/p>\n

    Yes! You add to the smells and the affect of each place for those who come after you, gently (re)asserting your presence.<\/p>\n

    Right, so to return, it\u2019s like I peed all over your writing but it is totally invisible.<\/p>\n

    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\u2019s difficult to \u201ccite\u201d conventionally, you understand?<\/p>\n

    The persistence of human conceit, I thought!!<\/p>\n

    Oh, I thought you like bending conventions too? At least\u00a0theoretically<\/i>\u00a0you do, and when it suits you you seem perfectly happy ignoring them. And I thought that\u00a0going beyond text-centered expression is \u201cnecessary\u201d\u2014your words right? I am sure you can use your imagination.<\/p>\n

    I hear the noise of the light and am suddenly compelled to cross the street. Why are we going this way\u2014I turn and look, really?\u2014nevermind: 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.<\/p>\n

    Vafa, I am convinced of walking aimlessly, but we just walked by all of those people; we can\u2019t immediately turn and walk right past them again. They will think that something is wrong\u2014that we have lost something; that\u00a0we\u00a0<\/i>are lost.<\/p>\n

    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\u2014not only your eyes direct you, you also let other people\u2019s eyes direct you!<\/p>\n

    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.<\/p>\n

    Back to Table of Contents<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n

    7.6. Learning activities<\/h2>\n

    Learning by doing<\/h5>\n

    Move along a route\u2013this can be either one you don\u2019t 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.\u00a0Begin and let yourself acclimate to the surroundings. Start taking notes after a few minutes.<\/p>\n

    You will need: some note-taking devices, photo-taking device, and potentially a partner.<\/p>\n

    During your walk take notice of :<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Movement and Order:\u00a0<\/strong>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.<\/li>\n
    2. Other relational aspects:<\/strong>\u00a0who 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<\/li>\n
    3. Rhythm and Time:\u00a0<\/strong>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?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

      Now,\u00a0reimagine the space<\/strong>.\u00a0At 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\u2013what 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?<\/p>\n

      Other activities<\/strong><\/h5>\n