‘Walking … just walking’: how children and young people's everyday pedestrian practices matter

Abstract

This paper considers the importance of walking for many children and young people's everyday lives, experiences and friendships. Drawing upon research with 175 9-to 16-yearolds living in new urban developments in south-east England, we highlight key characteristics of (daily,t aken-for-granted, ostensibly aimless) walking practices, which were of constitutive importance in children and young people'sfriendships, communities and geographies. These practices were characteristically bounded, yet intense and circuitous. They were vivid, vital, loved, playful, social experiences yet also dismissed, with ashrug, as 'just walking'. We argue that 'everyday pedestrian practices' (after Middleton 2010, 2011) like these require critical reflection upon chief social scientific theorisations of walking, particularly the large body of literature on children'sindependent mobility and the rich, multi-disciplinary line of work known as 'new walking studies'. In arguing that these lines of work could be productively interrelated, we propound 'just walking'-particularly the often-unremarked way it matters-as akind of phenomenon which is sometimes done a disservice by chief lines of theory and practice in social and cultural geography.

(Just) a walk with the dog? Animal geographies and negotiating walking spaces

“…For many in the western world, walking is mundane, taken-for granted and ostensibly aimless (Horton, Christiensen, Kraftl & Hadfield-Hill, 2014). It might be considered aimless in the sense of walking purely for walking sake -that is, with no clear end purpose or destination in mind.…”

Walking ethnography e entrevistas na análise de experiências estéticas no Cerrado

“…The relation during the walk is not one of researcher-participant, but one in which all are experiencing the phenomenon (HORTON et al, 2014). The authors comment that both researcher and participant are looking at the world, and not looking at each other.…”

“…The results indicate that the data obtained in the walk are deeply affected by the landscapes where the walks take place, emphasizing the importance of the environment. In turn, Horton et al (2014) used both techniques (semistructured interviews and walks) to discuss the importance of walking for the daily experiences of children and adolescents in England. Unlike Evans and Jones (2011), the two techniques were not put in comparison, but produced narratives for analysis and discussion, thus being used in a complementary manner.…”

Circulations and the Entanglements of Citizenship Formation

“…Likewise, mobility features prominently in the literature on children and young people's geographies (e.g., Barker et al 2009). In both such instances, however, mobility is used somewhat generically to refer to a broad array of phenomena ranging from the dissemination of policy through global governance networks, to young people's experiences of transnational migration (e.g., Hopkins and Alexander 2010) and the everyday movement of young people to and from home, school, and elsewhere (e.g., Harker 2009;Skelton 2013;Horton et al 2014). Such research has been fruitfully informed by a "new mobilities paradigm" that emphasizes the relational character of mobility and immobility (Adey 2006;Hannam et al 2006;Sheller and Urry 2006).…”