Walking ethnography: the polyphonies of space in an urban landscape

ABSTRACT

This article has two aims. The first is to reflect on the suitability of walking in ethnography, as a form of embodied and social knowing, where both the sensory and emotional perceptions evoked during the walk and the experiential, analytical and relational knowledge of the spaces traversed allow access to a detailed understanding of ethnohistorical settings. The second is to take an ethnographic view of the practices that produced the city of Donostia-San Sebastián (Basque Country, Spain), illuminating them through three ethnohistorical walking tours. These tours illustrate the gradual destruction of the city’s water landscape, which occurred in parallel with uneven urban development, as well as recent acts of resistance. In this regard, involving both processes in the walking ethnography presented here highlights the potential of walking in reclaiming the right to the city.

KEYWORDS:

• Walking ethnography
• urban landscape
• spatial practice
• mobilities
• resistance

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all those who have read or listened to previous versions of this material, the walkers who helped me with the research and Wendy Baldwin for her careful translation of the manuscript. The thoughtful and supportive comments of the reviewers helped me sharpen and improve the paper.

Author’s note

Previous versions of this article were presented at different workshops and published in Basque in a local journal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research presented in this article was funded by the Feminist Anthropology Research Group AFIT at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) IT 10–30.

Notes on contributors

Miren Urquijo

Miren Urquijo is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Basque Country, where she teaches Anthropology of Space. She holds a PhD in anthropology, with a focus on rural tourism, agriculture and gender. Her current research interest is the performance of rurality. She has published on rural tourism, gender, ethnographic stagings or scenifications, mobility and inclusive pedagogy.