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- Convenors:
-
Ewa Klekot
(University SWPS, Warsaw)
Dani Schrire (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
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- Discussant:
-
Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch
(Society of Swedish Literature in Finland)
- Formats:
- Workshops
- Stream:
- Bodies, Affects, Senses, Emotions
- Location:
- VG 4.106
- Start time:
- 28 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
In a "sitting society" (Ingold 2004) like ours, dwelling is often associated with stasis. Our nomadism is one of moving capsules, not bodies. We propose that dwelling encompasses bodily movement. In this panel/workshop we will explore movement in the form of walking as a prerequisite for dwelling.
Long Abstract:
Dwelling tends to be associated with stasis and being placebound even though movement is the most common way for us to gather place knowledge and establish relationships with places. Consequently, it has been recognized that "dwelling is accomplished not by residing but by wandering" (Casey 2009). Today, there is a growing research interest in walking both as an everyday practice and as an ethnographic method. In this panel/workshop we aim to explore different facets of dwelling in movement. Hetherington has noted (2003) that "whereas we enter our houses through the front door, we enter our homes through our slippers". Indeed, we will investigate walking as a social practice and a place-making practice, with special focus on the role of multisensory aspects in establishing "home" through movement. What acoustic, olfactory and tactile dimensions associated with our homes are born out of and/or are experienced through walking? How is walking used to communicate belonging? What stories are performed in our patterns of movement? How can we as scholars document the narrativity in bodily practices?
The panel consists of 1(-2) sessions of paper presentations and 1(-2) sessions of walk & talk outdoors as well as indoors during which we jointly explore walking habit[at]s.
We welcome both traditional paper presentations on theme of walking and dwelling, as well as shorter contributions for the walk & talk in the form of reflections, sharing experiences, proposals for walking explorations etc.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the architecture and design of Alpine huts, most of which are accessible only by foot. What does their materiality tell us about the notion of walking, and what kind of effect do these exert on the physical practice?
Paper long abstract:
Alpine huts, as these were built in the Alps from around 1870 onwards on the initiative of the mountaineering associations in rapid succession and which have been maintained and renovated up to today with considerable effort, have brought forth a unique architectural type. The latter is strongly influenced by the ideas of nature and movement as developed by the urban bourgeoisie, and may well be read as expressive of its Utopias with respect to lifestyle, body and identity.
The contribution seeks to localize this, to date, less recognized historic and semantic architectural form as a cultural programme. The huts, understood as assemblages of materialised and immaterial knowledge, constitute an outstanding example of the processes of place-making referring to being underway. As places in which one, in fact, rests; by way of these, acts of walking are originated in situ and in a nutshell. These structures, which are (or were) for the most part only accessible by foot, are simultaneously stages, guides to a life form defined by walking. Their material structure, including rooms for shoes and drying facilities equipped with racks for sticks, ice picks and crampons, and where footwear is out of bounds in the parlours, have furniture designed for the regeneration of fatigued walkers, the multisensoric treatment of body, mobility and accommodation. This makes the case study interesting, furthermore, for discussing epistemological and methodological questions of a comparatively conceived ethnographic cultural analysis of "walking-home".
Paper short abstract:
Suburbia is usually considered as a terrain of closed shapes of cars and fixed forms of dwelling. My paper traces habitual Friday evening walks in Israeli suburbia as it creates a lexicon of consciousness-body-city assemblage ( Brian Morris, 2004), making a place for emergent aspects of dwelling.
Paper long abstract:
The Israeli suburb is geographically very close to the city, a part of it sometimes, and thus is in intense dialogue with it. This nearness, I show, sets the conditions for a spatial and material dialogue, mainly based on ornamental surroundings and affections, consistently experimenting the contemporary emergent aspects of several kinds of "structures of feelings" (Williams, 1977). As in a dialogue, these are not dialectical relations of the encounter of closed forms, as one might expect considering the nature of suburbia, but rather a place-making for a careful multiplicity, where every system is "affecting and being affected" (Wylie, 2005). Learning from the somewhat bourgeois city of Rishon LeZion and especially from the habitual Friday evening walks of its suburb's residents, I present a catalogue of consciousness-body-city assemblages (Morris, 2004) created in these walking practices. Through this catalogue of assemblages, I address the materials and traces of these walks, examining their part in the re-generation of the usually-perceived fixed forms of dwelling of suburbia.
Paper short abstract:
Through a study with German nationals of Asian and African origin, the research aims to understand social categories (e.g. nationality, gender) as embodied experiences in the context of travel. Methods are walking interviews, the production of essays by participants and observations during travels.
Paper long abstract:
My research explores the relation between travel and self-identity. Drawing from ethnographic data collected through a phenomenological approach of young German nationals of Asian and African origin, the research aims to understand how social categories such as nationality, ethnicity or gender are experienced, embodied, performed, negotiated, contested, transformed and reproduced in the context of travel. How is living in or belonging or being associated with/to nations, to a certain gender and to other social categories such as ethnicity reflected, embodied, performed and contested in travel practices and experiences? I follow the idea of Sara Ahmet (2004) that "lived emotions […] are part of larger material and discursive structures of the nation-state" and stress the importance of the body as the field where limits and possibilities for the subject are negotiated. What is a person thinking and feeling when wandering through unfamiliar streets? What feelings, what reflections are triggered by travelling and the encounter in travel and how do these experiences matter after travel? In order to document the narrativity of bodily practices, the methodology is based on (a) walking interviews in which I particularly focus on the description of emotions and feelings during and after travelling, (b) on production of essays and travel journals by participants (e.g. photo elicitation) and (c) participant observation of participants during their travels. By using these techniques I aim at highlighting the interplay of emotions, feelings and rational reasoning on self-identity that accompanies the subject during and after her/his travels.
Paper short abstract:
Developing Halbwachs' insights on the social construction of pilgrim space, I compare movement of Catholic and Protestant pilgrims in the Holy Land. By looking at liturgical practices, use of material objects, and co-presence of others I examine differences in ways of dwelling.
Paper long abstract:
Maurice Halbwachs' Sacred Topography of the Gospels situated Holy Land pilgrimage as a prototype for the social construction of memory and space. The textually and liturgically embodied sacred text is transported by pilgrims and clergy from churches throughout the world to the Holy Land; there it is imposed on the surface of Israel/Palestine to create a place in which foreign Christians can dwell - a Holy Land in the Christian image. The sacralized sites then serve as material proof of the veracity of the text, so that they sense that they are "walking on the pages of the Bible" (Engberg 2016) or re-enacting the Ur-drama of the final passion of Christ.
Drawing on theoretical and ethnographic descriptions of walking (Casey 1996, de Certeau 1984, Ingold and Vergunst 2008, Österlund-Pötzsch 2010, Solnit 2000), and three decades of experience guiding Christian groups, I seek to compare directed movement of Catholic and Protestant pilgrims on Holy Land tours. How do different liturgies and practices of text reading shape different patterns of movement and gazing? Does the co-presence of (which?) others enhance or detract from pilgrims' sense of belonging? How do the romantic and mass gazes (Urry 2002) interact in shaping different pilgrims' senses of space and comfort? How are equality, hierarchy or exclusion among pilgrims manifested through movement, sitting and standing? In what ways do the use of material objects such as candles, Bibles, rosaries or I-pads affect pilgrim movement? How do closed-circuit broadcasters and earphones change pilgrims' sense of being in place?
Paper short abstract:
This presentation looks at the popularization of walking, a new keyword in the urban lifestyle of Seoul, South Korea, and shows how certain modes of everyday-life walking get influenced by a broad range of socio-material processes.
Paper long abstract:
The presentation discusses the case of Bukchon, a district in Seoul that has not only been attracting international and local tourists since the turn of the millennium, but also been turning into an increasingly attractive residential area - an alternative to high-rise apartment blocks in the rest of much of the city. In the context of city tourism, the community building program by the Seoul metropolitan government, and the growing need for an alternative living environment, I will argue that the narrative construction of walking "as a fundamental component of a good life" is central to upvaluing the Bukchon area. Empirical works in architecture and urban studies, which have emerged as widely read popular scientific literature in Korea, support this narrative by introducing methodological knowledge about walking: from associative walking or "flanerie" - in terms of Walter Benjamin, where this and other American and European writers such as Michel De Certeau, Joseph A. Amato, Rebecca Solnit, and David de Breton are actively cited - to walking with a GPS tracker, an accelerometer, to using a walking diary. It is shown that anthropological theories of place-making, embodiment, and walking get further applied to and instrumentalized in related areas such as urban planning and the fostering of city tourism. In this regard, this presentation also touches upon the constitutive moment of ethnography - that an ethnographic work always co-produces the field of research.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the theme of walking and its relationship to reading in the comics of Kevin Huizenga.Looking at several stories from his work, I discuss the way the crossing of distance in space and time re-centers the narrator and the reader in an act of dwelling.
Paper long abstract:
The suburban landscape of the Midwest is Kevin Huizenga's chosen setting, and this chapter considers how the comics format mirrors the landscape featured in Huizenga's work. Situated within a vocabulary that exploits the conventions of "situational" comics like Blondie and Gasoline Alley as well as the contemplative sparseness and restraint of John Porcellino, Huizenga's work is uniquely attentive to the marking of time through an acquaintance with space. The reader is reminded of the physical action that attaches to the production of the Comics form. Taking the rectangular frame as its basic unit of measurement, "On Walking" shows Huizenga's use of the similarly rectangular frames of sidewalk paving, and links the process of walking to the process of reading. Simultaneously, Huizenga demonstrates how the consistency of size and shape—of paving stone and of Comics panels—calls the reader to make meaningful connections between them about the nature of Dwelling.
Crossing physical distances contrasts with crossing time distances. Beginning with his short story "Walkin'," and in subsequent stories, I explore the consistently paced frames used to meditate on how time and space are traversed. By referencing the physical movements in the panels, Huizenga deftly provides instruction on the physical labor necessary to elicit the mental labor that allows a reader to cross, and make meaning from, the ellipses between frames.
Paper short abstract:
My paper addresses the tension between ethnographic archives and the ephemeral, engaging with the possibilities of finding room for walks in such archives. I engage the implications of such an endeavour for both the ethnographic archive and for the study of walking as a cultural practice.
Paper long abstract:
The evident tensions between archiving and walking offers an opportunity to examine both of them critically. The tension between archives and performance in general has been highlighted in a number of studies (e.g., Taylor 2003; Gunhild and Gade 2013). Walking in particular challenge transcription, which sometimes results in highly experimental modes of narrating them (e.g., Wylie 2005). One should also consider the tension between folkloristic or ethnographic archives and ephemera collections - whereas the former implicitly or explicitly document performances (oral narratives, rituals, crafts), the latter store materials, saving them from the status of rubbish and transforming them into durable status (Thompson 1979; Elsner and Cardinal 1994). Engaging walking as a cultural practice raises questions of categorization as it is on the one hand the most mundane performance that almost all Homo sapiens share, but as Marcel Mauss showed (1934) it is a practice that is also learned and cultivated. Taking these considerations I intend sketching some characteristics of a possible (archival) home for walks.