This book introduces and critically explores walking as an innovative
method for doing social research, showing how its sensate and
kinaesthetic attributes facilitate connections with lived experiences,
journeys and memories, communities and identities. The book situates
walking methods historically, sociologically, and in relation to
biographical and arts-based research, as well as new work on mobilities,
the digital, spatial, and the sensory.
The book is organised into three sections: theorising; experiencing; and
imagining walking as a new method for doing biographical research. There
is a key focus upon the Walking Interview as a Biographical Method
(WIBM) on the move to usefully explore migration, memory, and urban
landscapes, as part of participatory, visual, and ethnographic research
with marginalised communities and artists and as re-formative and
transgressive. The book concludes with autobiographical walks taken by
the authors and a discussion about the future of the walking interview
as biographical method.
Walking Methods combines theory with a series of original ethnographic
and participatory research examples. Practical exercises and a guide to
using walking as a method help to make this a rich resource for social
science researchers, students, walking artists, and biographical
researchers.
