Gioia Woods

Bio: Gioia Woods is an academic researcher from Northern Arizona University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Natural (archaeology). The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 2 publications receiving 232 citations.

Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Abstract: In what case do you like reading so much? What about the type of the wanderlust a history of walking book? The needs to read? Well, everybody has their own reason why should read some books. Mostly, it will relate to their necessity to get knowledge from the book and want to read just to get entertainment. Novels, story book, and other entertaining books become so popular this day. Besides, the scientific books will also be the best reason to choose, especially for the students, teachers, doctors, businessman, and other professions who are fond of reading.

Culture on the Ground The World Perceived Through the Feet

Abstract: Classical accounts of human evolution posit a progressive differentiation between the hands as instruments of rational intelligence and feet as integral to the mechanics of bipedal locomotion. Yet evolutionists were modelling pedestrian performance on the striding gait of boot-clad Europeans. The bias of head over heels in their accounts follows a long-standing tendency, in western thought and science, to elevate the plane of social and cultural life over the ground of nature. This tendency was already established among European elites in the practice of destination-oriented travel, the use of shoes and chairs, and the valorization of upright posture. It was further reinforced in urban societies through paving the streets. The groundlessness of metropolitan life remains embedded not only in western social structures but also in the disciplines of anthropology, psychology and biology. A more grounded approach to human movement, sensitive to embodied skills of footwork, opens up new terrain in the study of ...

Driving in the city

Abstract: ERHAPS THE most famous and most reproduced piece of writing from Michel de Certeau’s many works ‐ anthologized or extracted almost to distraction ‐ is the seventh chapter from The Practice of Everyday Life called ‘Walking in the City’. In this article, I want to use that chapter as a jumping-off point, as a means of indexing and interrogating the nature of some (and only some) of the practices of the modern city. In particular, I want to lay the practice of walking that de Certeau uses as a sign of the human alongside the practice of driving. I want to argue that a hundred years or so after the birth of automobility, the experience of driving is sinking in to our ‘technological unconscious’ and producing a phenomenology that we increasingly take for granted but which in fact is historically novel. This new and very public sense of possession (de Certeau, 2000) which is also a possession of sense, constitutes a radically different set of spatial practisings of the city which do not easily conform to de Certeau’s strictures on space and place and should at least give us pause. The article is therefore in three main parts. In the first part, I will do no more than outline some of de Certeau’s thoughts on spatial practices in the city. In the second part, I will then argue that de Certeau’s work on everyday life needs to be reworked to take into account the rise of automobility and the consequent changes in how space is ordered, changes that cannot easily be subsumed into his account of the city. The third part of the article will argue that these changes have been even more far-reaching than might at first be imagined, as developments like software and ergonomics rework how automobility is practised, and that these developments presage an important change in the nature of this particular form of habitability. The article then concludes by returning to de Certeau’s vision of everyday life in the city in order to take up again some of the challenges he bequeathed to us.

Sense and the city: exploring the embodied geographies of urban walking

Abstract: Within UK pedestrian policy, walking is promoted as a sustainable mode of transport that benefits both the body and mind. However, much policy discussion assumes all walking to be the same and a largely self-evident means of transport, whilst many academic engagements with walking are highly abstract theorisations that lack any systematic empirical exploration of actual pedestrian practices. As such, there is little that unpacks the experiences of those who navigate, negotiate, and traverse the city streets in their day-to-day lives. In contrast, this paper aims to situate and understand the practice of everyday walking in the unfolding experiences of urban pedestrians. Walking is positioned and understood as a socio-technical assemblage that enables specific attention to be drawn to the embodied, material and technological relations and their significance for engaging with everyday urban movements on foot. The analysis draws upon in-depth interview and walking photo diary data from participants in the in...

A Chance to Catch a Breath: Using Mobile Video Ethnography in Cycling Research

Abstract: Under the rubric of transport much previous research on everyday mobility has focused on understanding the more representational and readily articulated aspects of everyday movement By way of contrast, emergent theorisations of mobility suggest that an understanding of the less representational – those fleeting, ephemeral and often embodied and sensory aspects of movement – is vital if we are to fully understand why and how people move around Accordingly, the ability of conventional methods to complement new research agendas, particularly those related to issues around the sensory, affect and embodied experience has been called in to question This paper contributes to the burgeoning literature on mobile methodologies by critically discussing a theoretical and methodological journey towards mobile video ethnography in the context of a project researching cycling in London, UK between 2004 and 2006 In doing so it highlights three ways in which mobile video ethnography can contribute to research

Walking as an Aesthetic Practice and a Critical Tool: Some Psychogeographic Experiments

Abstract: This paper gives an account of a fieldwork exercise in Paris which attempted to relate social theory and fieldwork practice. The paper begins with a brief historical review of different perspectives on the practice of walking, as a form of movement through the city with aesthetic and critical potential. A more detailed account is then given of the particular theories and practices of the avant‐garde group known as the Situationist International, which are drawn upon for the fieldwork exercise. The paper then reflects on the problems encountered in trying to apply these ideas in a fieldwork exercise, and concludes with some comments on improvements and further developments.