Uma geografia do caminhar

Abstract

This research seeks to explore the dialogue between geography and walking, investigating this encounter and reflecting on a fertile ground for discussions to call the geography of walking. To circumscribe and discuss the intersection between geography and walking, we consider, therefore, the act of walking as a phenomenon that reflects the experiences of human beings and that move the geographic space, allowing us to defend the idea of walking as a form of geographic experience. Therefore, the investigation is guided by two fronts of reflections. In the first, we seek to present the trajectory of the human being from its origin as a species to the present day. Understanding this context is crucial to demonstrate how Homo sapiens populated the planet and how this process developed. The meanings and ways of conceiving the act of walking have pluralized throughout our history, a history that was naturally made of movement. Analyzing this diversity of understandings is fundamental to establish a concrete relationship between walking and inhabiting the world. In a second moment, we enter into the relationships between geography and the act of walking, surrounding how human movement is associated with the process of genesis, emergence and consolidation of geographic science. From this narrative, it is possible to define the founding bases of this moving geography: experience, space, world, inhabiting, body, rhythms, existence, perception and senses are some examples of the elements that intertwine to guide the reflections that converge in the idea of walking as a geographic experience. The research shows that it is precisely through the movement of the body that we cross space and act and interact with things, people and places. This bodily interaction and our ability to socially share experiences is what makes it possible for us to create the images, symbolisms and meanings of everything. This is how we can see the unfolding of a geography of walking. Knowledge that is built through the embodied experience of the human being who, by nature, is a walker.