Walking and well-being: landscape, affect, rhythm

This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of group walking practices in the Hampshire countryside, investigating the embodied, affective and social practice of the shared walk and its relation to the individual pursuit of wellness. Responding to the growing literature in qualitative health geography using ‘therapeutic landscape’ as a conceptual framework, group walking practices are approached in this thesis from a perspective of more-than-representational theories of social practice that aims to address group dynamics and the role of social relations for the establishment of therapeutic spaces. While also drawing attention to the embodied and affective nature of experience, this thesis opens a discussion between health geography and cultural geographies on the issues of the body, mobility and collective experience. Further, the thesis aims to place the study findings within the wider cultural phenomena of ‘walking for health’ through an exploration of practices of assemblage. Deleuzian assemblage theory, both as a pragmatic analytical tool and an ontological position, offers a new approach to thinking health and place relationally, arguing for a distribution of agencies and providing a framework for tracing their emergent effects across complex networks.The thesis finds its empirical focus in ethnographic fieldwork with five walking groups as well as individual mobile interviews. The findings discussed in the thesis firstly pertain to the significance of social relations for well-being, exploring the kinds of socialities that are produced while walking together, and arguing that the shared walk has the potential to establish a place-specific social aesthetic that can be experienced as restorative. Secondly, the rural walkscape as a therapeutic landscape is analysed as a specific outcome of place-based rhythms, implicated in the performativity and mobility of the body in the creation of a restorative place/practice. It is found that the shared walk is characterised by specific rhythmic qualities and that walking as a health practice is subject to a range of norms, regulations and performative styles.The findings and conceptual development in this thesis contribute to an interrogation of the complex processes through which therapeutic landscapes are established, practiced and experienced. The thesis also contributes to more-than representational geographies of embodiment, affect and landscape, which are intimately tied up in the production and performance of both wellness and place

Understanding everyday mobilities through the lens of disruption

Our research has aimed to elaborate on the ways in which movement, and the lack of it or its disruption, is socially, culturally and materially contingent. In this chapter, moments when mobilities become ‘disrupted’ in some way offer a lens through which socio-spatial interdependencies and mobile injustices are revealed. Our ethnographic data clearly illustrates that disruptions to mobilities are more often than not triggered by events outside of the transport system. Thus, we argue that we need to move beyond transport in understanding the intricacies of relational mobilities, and how they are negotiated and maintained at the micro level

Interdependent, imagined, and embodied mobilities in mobile social space:Disruptions in ‘normality’, ‘habit’ and ‘routine’

This article draws on ethnographic research of everyday mobilities to further understanding of interdependent mobilities practices in relation to normality, habit and routine. The contention here is that a rethinking of ‘normality’, ‘habit’ and ‘routine’ reveals how mobilities are interdependent, imagined and embodied. We draw from Lefebvre's (1991) notions of social space and rhythmanalysis to illustrate the relationality of these aspects of mobility. In doing so, we build on recent theorisations of habit in the field of mobilities, which have opened this concept as a key site for interrogating body–society relationships arguing that both ‘routine’ and ‘normality’ have similar potential in revealing the regulation and control of everyday spaces. We consider everyday embodied engagements with mobile space and how these become normalised, habitualised and routinised. This paper draws from a Research Council UK Energy Programme funded project, ‘Disruption, the raw material for carbon change’, which uses ‘disruption’ as a lens through which to reveal potential for changes in mobility practices that result in carbon reduction. Our exploration of interdependent, imagined and embodied mobilities concurs with existing scholarship in the mobilities field that argues for a rethinking of individualised conceptions of ‘normality’, ‘habit’ and ‘routine’ in seeking an understanding of mobilities that are socially, culturally and materially contingent.</p

Doing sonic urban ethnography: voices from Shanghai, Berlin and London

Matters of sound and listening are increasingly being attended to across the social sciences and humanities, reflecting what has been termed a ‘sonic turn’ since the early 2000s. In urban ethnographic research, scholars are starting to pay attention to the role of sound in social relations, in expressions of identity and senses of belonging, as well as in processes of othering. In this paper, we explore the theoretical and methodological opportunities of sonic urban ethnography, that is, an urban ethnography that foregrounds sound and listening in theoretical and methodological ways. We argue that the promise of sonic urban ethnography lies in its ability to interrupt the predominant focus on text and the visual by developing expanded practices of listening for alternative ways of knowing and engaging with the urban. We share four empirical vignettes from Shanghai, Berlin and London that illustrate, in their different ways, the power exercised through sound in the urban environment. Our discussion of the empirical cases highlights three key ‘lessons’ for doing sonic urban ethnography

Doing sonic urban ethnography: Voices from Shanghai, Berlin and London

Matters of sound and listening are increasingly being attended to across the social sciences and humanities, reflecting what has been termed a ‘sonic turn’ since the early 2000s. In urban ethnographic research, scholars are starting to pay attention to the role of sound in social relations, in expressions of identity and senses of belonging, as well as in processes of othering. In this paper, we explore the theoretical and methodological opportunities of sonic urban ethnography, that is, an urban ethnography that foregrounds sound and listening in theoretical and methodological ways. We argue that the promise of sonic urban ethnography lies in its ability to interrupt the predominant focus on text and the visual by developing expanded practices of listening for alternative ways of knowing and engaging with the urban. We share four empirical vignettes from Shanghai, Berlin and London that illustrate, in their different ways, the power exercised through sound in the urban environment. Our discussion of the empirical cases highlights three key ‘lessons’ for doing sonic urban ethnography.声音和听觉问题越来越受到社会科学和人文科学的关注，反映了自二十一世纪初以来所谓的“声音转向”。在城市民族志研究中，研究者们开始关注声音在社会关系、身份和归属感表达以及他者化过程中的作用。在本文中，我们探讨了声音城市民族志的理论和方法论机会，即以理论和方法论方式强调声音和听觉的城市民族志。我们认为，声音城市民族志的前景在于它能够通过扩展听觉实践来寻找了解和参与城市的替代方式，从而打破对文本和视觉的主要关注。我们分享了来自上海、柏林和伦敦的四个实证案例，这些案例以不同的方式说明了在城市环境中通过声音所行使的权力。我们对实证案例的讨论强调了进行声音城市民族志的三个关键“教训”。Peer Reviewe