Walking utopias. The politics of walking in art and anthropology

Bibliographic Data

ID18995493
AuthorsR Sansi (0000-0001-7084-9243, Department of Anthropology Goldsmiths, University of London London SE14 6NWUnited Kingdom, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume29
Issue1
Pages141-155
Publication date2021-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0964-0282 • E-ISSN: 1469-8676
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1469-8676.12749
OpenAlexW3097085646
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited13

Walking has become a common form of practice in contemporary art. Recent anthropology has been influenced by art walking practices. In this paper, however, I show significant differences between art walking and what we could call ‘Walking anthropology’. The former is more explicitly engaged, in many cases, in the ‘politics of walking’. These politics, on the one hand, could be based on ideas of walking as an everyday prefiguration of a future utopian society. Yet on the other hand, walking art could also be a critique of existing forms of everyday power and mobility as they are inscribed in the landscape and the city. In walking anthropology these concerns with the politics of walking seem less evident. Comparing artistic and anthropological practices and discussions of walking, my final objective is to critically evaluate the concepts of ‘politics’ and ‘utopia’ in art and anthropology

Aesthetics · Anthropology of art · Art · Art history · Contemporary art · Epistemology · Ethnography · Everyday life · Inscribed figure · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Utopia · Anthropology · Art, Politics, and Modernism · French Urban and Social Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Law · Philosophy