Interseriality and Different Sorts of Walking: Suggestions for a Relational Approach to Urban Walking

Abstract

In this article, we attempt to develop a meta-language for a relational approach to urban walking that is able to account for walking as a mutable, embodied, materially heterogeneous and distributed activity. Following the perspective on walking as developed in a series of articles by Jennie Middleton, we develop a notion of the walker as a socio-technical assemblage. By recognising walking as an ongoing relation of different series of walking assemblages or ‘sorts of walking’, it becomes possible to study the mediation of these series through the focus on objects of passage: things or triggers that transform one walking assemblage into another via the process of appraisal. We suggest interseriality as a concept capable of handling a ‘relation of relations’; i.e. how different sorts of walking relate to one another and how the ongoing transformation of a walking assemblage ultimately also produces a mutable but sustaining walking person. Finally, we suggest a focus on boundary objects. Since walking assemblages cannot help but to transform in order to sustain, walks always include a series of different sorts of walking: the possible co-presence of different sorts of walking thus depends on boundary objects.

Key Words:

• Urban walking
• Walking studies
• Assemblages
• Materiality
• Shared space

Additional information

Funding

Funding. This study was carried out within the research project Urban Walking funded by grants from the Swedish Transport Administration, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and the Swedish Research Council Formas dnr 250-2010-370.