Binding: Paperback
Description: The book starts by discussing the significance of walking for the experience of being human including a comparative study of the language and cultures of walking. It then reviews in detail relying on archaeology two turning points of human history: the emergence of cave art sanctuaries and a new cultural practice of long - distance pilgrimages implying a descent into such caves thus literally the void ; and the abandonment of walking culture through settlement at the end of the Ice Age around the time when the visiting of cave sanctuaries also stopped. The rise of philosophy and Christianity is then presented as two returns to walking. The book closes by looking at the ambivalent relationship of contemporary modernity to walking where its radical abandonment is combined with attempts at returns. The book ventures an unprecedented genealogy of walking culture bringing together archaeological studies distant in both time and place and having a special focus on the significance of the rise of representative art for human history. Our genealogy helped to identify settlement not as the glorious origin of civilisation but rather as a source of an extremely problematic development. The findings of the book should be relevant for social scientists as well as those interested in walking and its cultural and civilisational significance or in the direction and meaning of human history.
Title: Walking Into The Void A Historical Sociology And Political Anthropology Of Walking
Author(s): Horvath Agnes (University College Cork Ireland)
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Barcode: 9781138214491
Pages: 218 Pages, 7 Halftones, Black And White; 7 Illustrations, Black And White
Publication Date: 10/17/2017
Series: Contemporary Liminality
Category: Social & Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography