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.

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