Social Anthropology

De Certeau's writings of the act of walking have spoken to anthropologists and other scholars in different ways since their publication. In the field of mobility studies, his emphasis on practice provides the foundation for a range of work on everyday experience in the constitution of urban life. ‘The pedestrian’ appears as a person who enunciates tactics in resistance to the gazing strategies of the planner. Yet for de Certeau the action of being is more important than the categorical identification of a type of actor. I read his use of ‘pedestrian’ in an adjectival sense, in that figures (including figures of speech) may have pedestrian qualities. From this perspective, walking speaks through its gestures. I explore these themes by drawing on a collaborative fieldwork project of walking along small urban rivers in Scotland, where the river environments provide a relief from merging of seeing and reading that occupies the walker along the street. Working with a poet enabled consideration of the generative capacity of language and gesture beyond de Certeau's sense of the enunciative.

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Collins, John F. 2015. Revolt of the saints: memory and redemption in the twilight of Brazilian racial democracy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 480 pp. Pb.: £20.99. ISBN: 9780822353201.

This article discusses the relationship between nomadic people and the figure of the nomad in a European context. Based on a discussion of the presence of the figure of the nomad in European folk imaginary and in the social sciences, from Pierre Clastres's (. . New York: Urizen) work on stateless societies, to Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy of Nomadology (1986. . New York: Semiotex(e)) and Braidotti's (. . New York: Columbia University Press) nomadic feminism, the article employs a ‘nomadic’ perspective on ethnographic work of mobile people. It argues that ideas contrasting the nomadic and the state can be put to use for epistemological purposes.

Exile is an ancient concept of political displacement expressing the enduring consequences for those affected by it. At least since antiquity exile has been a particular existence but also a form of figuration for those writing about it. This slippage contributed to a widening gap between experiences of exile as a condition of displacement and the qualities the figure symbolises, thus complicating the question of who may be considered exiled under what circumstances. Using this slippage between condition and figure productively, this article first traces the figure through Edward Said and outlines the exile's relation to other key figures of mobility and diaspora. A second analytical move compares this figure to anthropological research and to the particular case of Palestinians living in exile ‘at home’. Once reinstated as a condition of displacement for the anthropology of mobility, exile illuminates the subjective and temporal dimensions of political displacement and its enduring aftermath. It helps us to grasp the myriad processes by which people are excluded, allowed and forced to move, while also illustrating the forced movement of boundaries and political projects across and around people.

The flâneur acts as a key figure for understanding the relationship between the individual, modernity and the city. A reference to dandy young gentlemen, who walked, performed and loitered within the arcades of late 19th‐century Paris, the flâneur has transitioned from a literary and theoretical figure to one used in mobile urban ethnographies. The flâneur, traditionally male, is a figure of pedestrian mobility whose sensorial and mobile engagements with the urban landscape generate distinct forms of creative practice. For this reason, the flâneur has been invoked in relation to the methods and experiences of the ethnographer, who moves and takes note in similar ways. This paper conducts a review of extant literature on the flâneur in ethnographic research, which shows a strong connection between this key figure and its ties to a European tradition dealing with Anglo‐European (post)modernities. It has also inspired a range of methodological innovations in urban ethnography more broadly. Finally, through the case of Tokyo, the paper asks the question of who is drawn to flânerie and who is deterred from it, demonstrating how the transgressive potentialities of flânerie are only desirable for some.

Jusionyte, Ieva. 2015. Savage frontier: making news and security on the Argentine border. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. 304 pp. Pb.: US$29.95. ISBN: 9780520286474.

The tourist has long been a common but often demeaned figure of modern popular culture. Only from the 1970s did social scientists such as Erik Cohen, Valene Smith and particularly Dean MacCannell treat the tourist seriously as a conceptual figure. The past 40 years has seen both the proliferation of numbers and types of tourists on the move and a much more fine‐grained conceptualisation of the figure of the tourist, who can be examined in terms of both embodied performances and inner, mental voyages rather than objective classifications. Many tourists are competitive about their travel destinations, their experiences, their tastes and the care with which they treat both their hosts and the destination environment, and tourism researchers have their own moralisations, using measures of social and cultural impact and environmental sustainability. Anthropologists are challenged to apply their ethnographic research methods to these temporary sojourners, on the move, often focused on their social and bodily pleasures. Such conditions and the often cosmopolitan research milieux promote a convergence of anthropological and other social science research methods and concepts, with some productive multidisciplinary results. Anthropologists' research on ethnic tourism, trekking and rites of passage tourism, volunteer tourism, medical tourism and many other specialised forms of travel including couch surfing and philanthropy demonstrate the continuing leading position of the discipline under very different and often difficult circumstances.