Walking the streets

Embodied experiences of place making in Old Bhopal, India

Bibliographic Data

ID5874822
AuthorsAnasua Chatterjee (0000-0002-2795-0941, West Bengal State University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-10-27
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-1381 • E-ISSN: 1741-2714
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/14661381251392068
OpenAlexW4415599759
LanguageEN
References cited37

Most Indian cities are rarely conducive to walking, given their congested nature and dearth of pedestrian-friendly planning. Especially, old urban centres premised on heritage conservation and tourism are densely packed with pedestrians, vehicles, and vendors which obstruct smooth movement. Besides, their varied sights, sounds, smells and textures present a sensory overload, that often overwhelms the visitor. For the ethnographer, however, the very factors that disrupt movement present moments of pause, providing unexpected opportunities to observe and engage more deeply with the setting. Drawing on my experiences of walking in Old Bhopal, this paper argues that walking, as an embodied, sensorially-oriented spatial practice offers valuable methodological lens to engage with the heterogeneous, dense and often chaotic landscapes of Indian cities. I build on sociological perspectives that foreground the 'everyday', and phenomenological perspectives that centre the 'body-in-place' to locate the fragmented stories and obscure rhythms that shape everyday life in such contexts

Embodied cognition · Ethnography · Everyday life · Heritage tourism · Lived experience · Phenomenology (philosophy · Precarity · Temporality · Tourism · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Spatial and Cultural Studies

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