Paper short abstract:

The format of city walks combines urban ethnological approaches with educational work, taking into account perception, emotion and embodiment as well as polyphony, multiple perspectives and ambivalences. City walks point to glocal traces and also change, e.g. for socio-ecological transformation.

Paper long abstract:

The paradoxes and effects of globalisation and colonialism shape interpersonal and transcultural relationships. In cityscapes, global relations of dependency and inequality with all their interdependencies become tangible on site.

How are post/colonial traces and globalisation reflected in urban space? Where do connections between trade and capitalism, racism and (forced) migration become visible? How do we deal with these traces and how can we include them in educational work? If these traces and contexts are man-made, how can we work (activistically) against or with them and how do we want to shape urban space?

The format of city walks can combine urban ethnological approaches with educational work and take into account aspects of perception, emotion and embodiment (cf. sensory ethnography & embodied ethnography). Strolling through the city is about showing diversity, change of perspective, power critique, polyphony and ambivalences, integrating subaltern, marginalised voices and negotiating narratives and spaces of memory. In this process, the city is accessed and explored with the experiential knowledge of all participants, transforming together while walking together.

City walks can also point to options for action, change and utopias, such as to places of socio-ecological transformation.

I would like to offer some basic reflections on the potential and ethnological aspects of this format of educational work, as well as describe some examples of walking tours.