ABSTRACT
Walking has been a prominent topic of philosophical reflection both throughout the history of Western thought and, more recently, in the field of cultural history. Recent cultural historical studies of walking have ranged from discussions of the connection between walking and specific genres of writing, across military history, fashion, art and architecture, to the consideration of walking as a protest movement (see Amato 2004; Jarvis 1997; König 1996; Solnit 2000; Wallace 1993). With so much ground to cover, cultural historians have tended to concentrate their attention on the Western world, leaving it to anthropologists to document the non-Western cases they have set aside (Amato 2004, 15). Yet with its focus on cultural difference, the discipline of social anthropology has up to now had rather little to say about what is perceived to be a universal attribute of human nature – namely, the ability to walk upright (for example, Keesing 1981, 13-14). Only with the contemporary rise of interest in the evolution and history of bodily skills has walking been returned to the anthropological agenda (Ingold 2000; 2004), adding to the demand not only for genuinely comparative studies of walking practices in both Western and nonWestern societies, but also for reflection on the role of walking in anthropological enquiry itself. This chapter seeks to advance both these aims by comparing two modes of walking – one Western, the other non-Western, but both practised in the same environment – that I have studied ethnographically.
