RESPONSABILIDAD OBJETIVA O SUBJETIVA. TEORÍAS

Pedestrian practices have been researched by diverse disciplines using methodologies of a different nature according to the dimensions of the act of walking they want to explore.

The more functional approaches that consider ‘walking as a means of solving other problems’ (Kärrholm et al. HI"a, H"), such as those of engineering, transport research, health, etc., mobilise predominately quantitative research methodologies. On the other hand, we find approaches in the line of what Lorimer (HI"", "J) calls a ‘cultural-interpretative mode’ that apply methodologies focused on generating more holistic understandings of pedestrian practices, generally by means of essays, qualitative methodologies, artistic performances, among others. The latter is the research context of my own investigation. I briefly review, then, how urban walking has been researched from qualitative perspectives during the last two decades in order to set the background and

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the value of the ethnographic research methodology through which I learnt about everyday walking in Santiago de Chile.

I address those works that empirically explore urban walking considering the level of participation their methodologies involve. I do not want to suggest a participant strategy is a priori better than other options. The adequacy of a methodological strategy responds to the particularity of the diverse research’s questions and interests. However, as I show here, urban walking has tended to be empirically studied through interviews, diaries, auto-ethnography, and not so much by creating a relationship with walkers through which the researcher can delve into the everyday lived experiences of others. Thus, more participant research is necessary when the main research concern is the embodied and emplaced everyday experience of walking.

Among those works using a less participant methodological strategy, we find Sonia Lavadinho’s (HI"") doctoral research in which she investigates the opportunities for walking to play a central role in a multimodal transport system, comparing the cases of Lausanne, Geneva and Bilbao. She mixes quantitative and qualitative methods arguing that different dimensions and representativeness accomplished by each of them are complementary within her research. Even when she engages with participant observation and auto-ethnography, her writing and conclusions are based mainly on analysis of secondary data (urban plans, statistical data, cartography) together with insights of her own observations in each place. The embodied experience of pedestrians from their own point of view does not have relevancy for her outcomes.

Another example is Matos Wunderlich’s (HI"P) research. She carried out intensive fieldwork in Fitzroy Square in London. Part of her work involved observing passers-by’s rhythms in order to explore ‘how time is expressed and represented in everyday urban

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spaces’ (PgX). Through regular observations and video-recordings for a period of a year she visually represented the rhythms of different everyday practices (walking among them). Based on her exhaustive register she produced spectral diagrams to ‘represent the rhythmical temporal structure of temporal events at Fitzroy Square’ (PgX). In addition to the video-recordings, she made use of other research techniques such as on-site narratives and interviews. Although these techniques are ethnographically oriented, the main methodological strategy is non-participant.

Finally, another key work is the one developed by Rachel Thomas in Grenoble. She took four places in the city to observe continually how people walked. She describes her methodology as a ‘sensory ethnography’ of mobile experiences on foot (HIIX). Even when the observations she presents follow Clifford Geertz’s precept of ‘thick description’, she did not enter into contact with walkers. Of course, to define what can be called

‘ethnographic’ in the urban context is a not a straightforward discussion. Being part of spaces of anonymity and continuous flow may be enough to claim that ‘participant observation’ is being conducted since the researcher is part of the anonymous flow of the place. This leads us to the sharper discussion about how to define participation in contexts of anonymity. However arguably, I do not consider this methodology as participant in the sense that the voices of those who walk, and through their paces create those places, remain unnoticed. Yet, the conclusions of Thomas’ sensory research are highly valuable.

She distinguishes different ways of walking based on sensory appreciations such as visual orientation, body gestures, trajectories or co-presence rites, advancing analysis of urban environment interactions and how walking contributes to the life of urban spaces.

I suggest that the limitation of these non-participant observations is related to learning the viewpoint of those who walk: their stories. As in any methodological decision there is something you gain and something you miss. By observing through video-recordings or

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from fixed spots for a period of time, it may be possible to gain knowledge about the places and the specificity of walking through them. Another advantage is intervening less in the situations the researcher wants to investigate. On the other hand, walkers’ subtler experiences and their relationship with the place, their memories, remain silent.

Considering the fact that my work needed to engage with those subtler experiential details and also because I needed to observe how walking is part of people’s lives and routines, I chose a participant strategy: an ethnography involving walking with people.

Now I review those works that have included more participant techniques. By using the word ‘participation’ I mean interacting with people from talking about their practices and/or being with them while they walk. I am considering participation in a broad sense:

the intention of the researcher to grasp through interacting with walkers what happens in the very moment of the practice. Therefore, I consider here those works whose methodological core is interacting with people, observing or/and talking.

Augoyard’s (["JaJ] HIIa) work is one of the first empirical inquiries into everyday urban walking. His interest is to explore urban everyday life in the relation between people and the space they dwell. His methodology is based on observing and talking. He is convinced that everyday experiences cannot be fully understood by quantitative data or graphic reductionism such as maps. Therefore, he argues for the need to listen to inhabitants’

narrations of their daily walks. To accomplish this, he recognises the problem of the immediateness of everyday experiences. As is often depicted, he conceives everyday practices occurring in a kind of unaware or automatic attitude that he characterises as

‘forgetful’ ("J). Thus, how to ask people about their everyday practices? In order to avoid abstractions and generalization in people’s answers he interviewed walkers in three different moments. In a first interview the researcher explains to the participant what the research is about and asks the participant to ‘recount in a few weeks’ the walks she or he

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had made from that moment onwards (H"). Then one or two more interviews can be arranged in order to talk with people about what they remember of their walks. Doing this he tried to appeal to what he calls ‘protentional memory’, which he explains as a ‘memory of the present’ (HI). He accedes to it by means of signifying walking experiences as memorable through his initial request.

Another relevant approach is Middleton’s (HIIJ, HI"I, HI""a, HI"c) research in London.

She explores matters of pedestrian lived experience such as temporality, arguing and showing that multiple temporalities are enacted while walking the city (HIIJ, "JXP).

Compared with Augoyard’s work, she deepens engagement with individual experiences of walking. She does not only ask people to recount their experiences in a future interview, but to maintain a register of them in a ‘photo-diary’, a technique based on Zimmerman and Wieder’s ("Jaa) ‘diary, diary-interview method’. Middleton’s (HIIJ, "JXX) research relies on ‘a mixed-method approach, including a postal survey, experiential walking photo diaries, and in-depth interviews’. She goes further than Augoyard in exploring not only what is memorable through an interview but also what can be registered in more intimate and personal reflections.

Few researchers have conducted ethnographic research on urban walking practices. This is surprising giving the relevance walking has had for ethnographers in their fieldwork (Ingold and Vergunst HIIga), and regarding the enthusiasm that the use of walking interviews and walking research techniques have had during the last decade in social sciences (see Kusenbach HIIP, Thibaud HIIg, Carpiano HIIJ, Evans and Jones HI"", Myers HI"", Yi'En HI"X, Bates and Rhys-Taylor HI"a). Ethnography has a tradition in helping understanding social and cultural complexities from first-hand experience of people’s particular ways of living and points of view. The body of the researcher becomes part of the emerging multiplicity of what people do and talk about. Within the few

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ethnographies that have been carried out on urban walking, I particularly note the one of Lee and Ingold (HIIc) in Aberdeen, Scotland. While it was focused on the entire region, it looked into people’s practices of walking in the town. They carried out an ethnography to explore ‘the relationship between walking, embodiment and sociability’ deploying a set of diverse methods: ‘participant observation, in the form of sharing walks’; observation;

auto-ethnography; semi-structured interviews and archival research on history and material culture; some participants wrote walking diaries during one week; photographs and sound recording (cg). They explain that not all of them suited all the participants. I think this flexibility in applying different techniques gives freedom to the researcher for adapting to fieldwork possibilities and better suits each situation. I followed more or less the same criterion within my own work, applying research techniques to the extent they accommodated research participants’ possibilities as well as researcher safety.

Another example of an ethnography on pedestrian practices is the one Miguel Ángel Aguilar Díaz (HI"c) undertook in Mexico City. In his case, the research subject is urban walking, specifically about the sociabilities that emerge through walking in public spaces.

He used different techniques such as in-depth interviews, go-along interviews, photographic registers, and observations of the places people walked. In total, he did eighteen interviews and go-along interviews. Through them Aguilar Díaz describes how people walk the city and explores people’s present and past stories of walking in Mexico City.

These ethnographic examples inspired my own methodological decisions, as I looked for a description of pedestrian experiences considering walkers’ stories and reflections. In order to create this research path I also examined recent work from mobilities studies, which explore how to ‘be-there’ when mobile practices are deployed. My research responds to the call for new methods launched by Urry (HIIa, PJ), who stated: ‘Research

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methods also need to be “on the move”’. How to ‘be-there on the move’ becomes a new concern that guides a diversity of methodological efforts (see Murray HI"I, Vannini HI"H).

Many of the responses are related to ethnographic oriented techniques undertaking participant observation of people’s everyday life with an increasing use of technological resources, especially video recording, something I also included in my ethnography as I show below.