This exciting new volume focuses on how humans inhabit their environment, considering 'techniques of the body' and walking behaviours to better understand the variety of embodied meanings. Its original collection of work has contributions from anthropologists, sociologists, geographers and specialists in education and architecture offering a broad readership of new, innovative and previously overlooked ideas.
52 Ways to Walk is a short, user-friendly guide to attaining the full range of benefits that walking has to offer--physical, spiritual, and emotional--backed by the latest scientific research to inspire readers to develop a fulfilling walking lifestyle. We think we know how to walk. After all, walking is one of the very first skills we learn. But many of us are stuck in our walking routines, forever walking in the same place, in the same way, for the same time, with the same people. With its thought-provoking and evidence-backed weekly walk routine, 52 Ways to Walk will encourage everyone to improve how they walk, while also encouraging them to seek out new locations (many on their own doorsteps), new walking companions (our brains age better when we mix up our fellow walkers), new times of the day and night, and new skills to acquire while walking. Inspirational, backed by science, illuminated with human anecdote, and bolstered with how-to tips, 52 Ways to Walk will inspire, challenge, support, and encourage everyone to become more ambitious with their walking practice, revealing how walking may be the best-kept secret of the supremely healthy and happy, the creative and well-slept--those with the best posture and sharpest memories. Just about everything, it appears, can be improved and enhanced by clever and judicious walking. It turns out you actually can get more from life, one step at a time.
Walking is the most popular exercise in the world. Here Jacques MoraMarco infuses walking with an Eastern, holistic approach to fitness. He encourages people to walk to reduce stress, increase vitality, and become more balanced and centered. He also introduces the concepts of chi and different ways of breathing. Although this way of walking offers a very gentle workout, the method will produce noticeable results in improved energy levels, physical fitness, and mental well-being. -- Walking is a simple, inexpensive, and injury-free form of exercise suitable for people of all ages and fitness levels. Millions of people walk for exercise every day -- in the park, down the street, or at the local shopping mall -- Unlike other walking titles, The Way of Walking demonstrates how to enhance every walk by incorporating Eastern health practices -- Jacques MoraMarco is an established authority on Chinese health and martial arts
This book explores everyday walking in contemporary urban life. It brings together important theoretical and empirical insights to understand how the ‘walkability’ of urban spaces can be imagined, planned for, and experienced. The book focuses on the everyday experiences of the urban walker, the bodily experiences of walking, and different walking research methods. It goes beyond the conventional focus on walkable places by delving into the ways in which urban space is consumed and produced through different ways of walking. Drawing on fieldwork in the UK and international secondary sources, the book examines how walking is socially and materially co-produced, focusing on pedestrian practices, infrastructures, and the social nature of walking. Chapters in the book offer key explorations of the cultural and social inclusions and exclusions of navigating the city on foot. The book considers transport planning and policy promoting pedestrian movement, pedestrian infrastructures, the politics of walking, and social interactions of urban pedestrians. The book offers vital analyses of how different but overlapping dimensions of walking and their relationship with urban space are often overlooked, and the importance of centring the lived experiences of walking in understandings of pedestrian practices. This book provides a timely contribution to the field of mobilities due to a growing interest in urban walking. It will be of interest to students and scholars of urban studies, human geography, sociology, and public health.
Is walking a subversive act? For the authors of WAYS OF WALKING, it can be. Some walk across forbidden lines, violating laws to seek freedom. Some walk to bear witness to social injustice. Still others engage in a subtler subversion, violating the social norm of rapid, powered transportation to notice what fast travelers miss. WAYS OF WALKING brings together 26 writers who reflect on walks they have taken and what they have discovered along the way. Through walking, these authors become more attuned to the places they move across, more attentive to intricate ecologies and layered histories. and more connected to themselves as well. Their small steps of rebellion lead to unexpected discoveries.
"You never get a second chance to make a first impression." Have you ever heard this saying? Before we get a chance to say a word, our gestures and manners have already spoken for us. Though some of the rules of good manners change, others remain constant. This book is about the constants: the least you need to know to make a good first impression. As Clarence Thomas once said, "Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot." Use this book as a master key to open those doors.
As a research methodology, walking has a diverse and extensive history in the social sciences and humanities, underscoring its value for conducting research that is situated, relational, and material. Building on the importance of place, sensory inquiry, embodiment, and rhythm within walking research, this book offers four new concepts for walking methodologies that are accountable to an ethics and politics of the more-than-human: Land and geos, affect, transmaterial and movement. The book carefully considers the more-than-human dimensions of walking methodologies by engaging with feminist new materialisms, posthumanisms, affect theory, trans and queer theory, Indigenous theories, and critical race and disability scholarship. These more-than-human theories rub frictionally against the history of walking scholarship and offer crucial insights into the potential of walking as a qualitative research methodology in a more-than-human world. Theoretically innovative, the book is grounded in examples of walking research by WalkingLab, an international research network on walking (www.walkinglab.org). The book is rich in scope, engaging with a wide range of walking methods and forms including: long walks on hiking trails, geological walks, sensory walks, sonic art walks, processions, orienteering races, protest and activist walks, walking tours, dérives, peripatetic mapping, school-based walking projects, and propositional walks. The chapters draw on WalkingLab’s research-creation events to examine walking in relation to settler colonialism, affective labour, transspecies, participation, racial geographies and counter-cartographies, youth literacy, environmental education, and collaborative writing. The book outlines how more-than-human theories can influence and shape walking methodologies and provokes a critical mode of walking-with that engenders solidarity, accountability, and response-ability. This volume will appeal to graduate students, artists, and academics and researchers who are interested in Education, Cultural Studies, Queer Studies, Affect Studies, Geography, Anthropology, and (Post)Qualitative Research Methods.
Presents a plan for American cities that focuses on making downtowns walkable and less attractive to drivers through smart growth and sustainable design
