ABSTRACT

Rather than regarding stumbling, tripping and falling as a matter for Goffmanesque social repair or an opportunity for the governance of risk, Mike Michael suggests that the mis-step can be treated as a ‘device’ that affords a speculative engagement with social processes. ‘Walking Falling, Telling: The Anecdote and the Mis-step as a “Research Event”<th>’ develops this argument through three autobiographical anecdotes about mis-stepping: falling down the stairs, tripping on a mountain slope and slipping on a pavement. Here, anecdotalizing the mis-step in its specificity also suggests particular conceptualizations of ‘walking as a method’ in terms of its ‘emergently causal’, ‘parasitical’ and ‘topological’ possibilities.