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As I walk through the entrance of the park, a wave of wind hits my face. The very first thing I see is a sign reading all the park rules. Obviously all the regular and basic laws apply, as well as the park rules for example no bikes on the basketball courts and no driving on the baseball fields. People navigate and understand them by reading and understanding the signs posted around the park and are posted online. After recognizing this, I began to walk the path...

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Newbridge Road Park - 2600 Newbridge Rd Bellmore, New York 11710

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Newbridge Road Park in Bellmore, NY has five ball fields, a football field, multipurpose field and an indoor ice rink. Field number 1 has lights for night games. The facility has seating areas, restroom facilities and vending machines. Newbridge Road Park also has basketball courts, handball courts, tennis, playgrounds and waterfront jogging paths.

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To give a brief overview of the park, it is located on the water on the south part of Long Island. The space was previously an open field until the government decided to make a park for the community, as more and more families decided to live and move into the area. The park keeps the open field concept while adding a landfill, some baseball fields, basketball, tennis, and pickle ball courts, and a nice-sized playground. Also, there is an indoor ice skating rink where hockey teams play and practice, a public pool where many people visit during the summer, and a dog park for all dogs to enjoy. The park opens with a view of the playground to the right, the courts in front, and the fields to the left along with the walking path, which is where I will be going...

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Before I was able to make I to the path, I looked over and saw people playing basketball. While I did not take this picture myself, and these are not the people I saw playing that day, this photo is of the same court and shows how this space promotes some of the best social interactions between all types of people. When walking through the park it is impossible to not see people interacting. Whether it’s pickup basketball games, league wide baseball games, or families and friends playing on the playground, this park is the perfect representation of what a community should have. Also, being that this park recently had work done on the basketball courts, hoopers from all over Long Island and even the city come to this park even though it is generally small. After seeing a nice shot, I decided to continue...

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The second thing I noticed was a baseball practice for little league. Again, I did not take this picture but it is of the same baseball field that I saw. Parents were sitting in the stands watching their kids practice. Behind me I heard kids screaming on the playground and bikes soar past me. From what I have seen in this park, I think that everyone can and should feel welcomed here. There are no restrictions on who can come to this park and the people that do come to the park are all here for the same thing, to enjoy the outdoors and connect with friends. I am not saying that their are not people who are worried that others will judge them based on race or gender, however I am saying that based on what I've seen, everyone is welcoming of each other. Passing the fields, I notice the welcome center and ice skating rink...

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It's tough to say who really holds the power at the park. Is it the government, the park workers, or maybe even the people? In my opinion, when I walk into the ice skating rink and see a worker at the front desk who has all the information on the park details, that person is who holds the power at the moment. This is because they have to power to close the park, lock the courts, and turn off the lights, which takes away the ability to use the park. It is rare to see park rangers or police at this park because of the fact that it is a very peaceful and upstanding community. This is a photo of the ice skating rink, past it is the public pool. I began to see a somewhat empty parking lot and the last baseball field...

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When I first saw the question about economic factors, I thought to myself that there was no way someone's economic situation would limit them at this park. That was until I saw the parking lost and thought of something. While overall access to the park is public, there are some factors that could limit access to this space, if somebody is unable to make it to the park due to not having a car or bike. There is also no public transportation close to the park besides the Long Island Rail Road. The hidden costs include the mode of transportation, if not walking, and the people equipment or sports gear that is required to play a certain sport, for example tennis rackets. The park does not offer rentals of complimentary equipment. I became confused with my own thoughts as I saw this question when walking, I guess I don't realize that living within walking distance of this park is a huge privilege. I continued on the walk and got to the halfway point of the walking path...

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I found this image online of a youth basketball clinic that was able to run its program at the park's basketball courts. From what I see as I look around the park after the lights have turned on, there are many social identities. I see a girls softball game being played and next to it a youth flag football practice and the basketball courts are filled with middle school, high school, college, and middle-aged people. Even though the park is located in a predominantly white neighborhood, people of all races are seen on the playground. Just as I jot this down, a man in a wheelchair drives by me on the path. I couldn't help but let out a smile as I began to realize that this park is more than a couple of hoops, fields, and swing sets, it's a place where everybody can go to take a break from the world and just enjoy life...

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There are various signs posted explaining the rules of the park, however, one sign that particularly stood out to me on my walk was the sign that had a time posted along with a statement explaining that the park lights turn off at 8:45. This may not be a super strong sense of social control but it represents how the park is in control of when the people can and cannot use the park. It started to get darker out and I started to make my way back to the entrance on a different path...

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As I look on the ground and in the fields, there is little to no pollution on the ground. Either the community is great at throwing out their garbage and the people are not lazy, or the park workers who go around picking up trash are very good at their job. I think it is a mix of both. This shows that the people care about the maintenance and quality of the park as it is important to the environment and overall appearance of the park. The park does a great job at providing several recycling bins and garbage cans around the path and park. The tidiness of the park is what brings people to it, a clean park is a beautiful park...

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I grew up around this park and my family and I and our friends have all been to this park a lot. I spent a lot of my childhood here and I still go to this park a lot during the spring and summer. Based on this, my interpretation of this space is that it is a park for people of all ages, races, genders etc. I think that people make memories here, meet new people here, and overall have a great time in the outdoors here.

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A bias that I may have is that I grew up going to this park every weekend and I have never really had a bad experience here.

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Some possible methods of research one can conduct include asking questions at the offices of the park workers, looking up the history of the park online, or maybe reading a book or article on the history of this town. Also, local newspapers may give details as to the renovations of the park and the events held at the park. For this project, I looked up the history of the park and found that there have been many renovations since this park opened up.

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The local communities influences this park by voting on certain people that make changes to the park. Also, the events like concerts and fundraisers that are held at this park are sent out in the newspapers, social media accounts, and are posted on local community boards

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In my uptake report I go further in depth into this. The experience I had completing this project and going on this walk is something that I would like to do somewhere else again. I like how enhanced my observations skills as well as increased my level of thinking surround the overall message that the park sends to people. I will think about this walk every time I go to this park now.

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Intricate Details, Uniqueness of this Park...

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Intricate Details, Uniqueness of this Park...

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The website resource, Walking as Research, was very helpful in completing this project. I enjoyed how the author of that explained their experience, particularly his explaniatioms on walking in certain environments. I love how he describes that walking allows one to feel and be present in the moment, pause and close eyes, observe and think, and tap into one’s non-visual senses. I agree heavily with this as I used this idea to help answer the questions presented in the project. I really liked how he explained that while walking, researchers can acquire different perspectives of not only diverse individuals and communities but also the broader setting that they are part of keeping the environment in mind. This played a big part in my research as I observed many different people in the park.

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Qualitative researchers often navigate methodologies to conduct fieldwork based on the space they aim to explore. A robust research method ensures meticulous analysis and various ways of expressing the data gathered during fieldwork. Thus, the method plays a significant role in any successful research strategy. In this article, I discuss walking as an applied research method based on my experiences of incorporating it as part of several research plans and some of the merits associated with this approach that has been illustrated by walking scholars. In doing so, this article introduces walking as a research method and the kind of rigour it contributes to research output based on literature and empirical evidence. I argue that the inclusion of walking as a research methodology can enhance research findings and contribute significantly to understanding local geography and knowledge systems.

Various scholars have posited walking as a research method differently based on their subjective understandings (see Ingold 2010; Pierce and Lawhon 2015; King and Woodroffe 2017; Duedahl 2020). There is no one way of walking as a method has been theorised. According to Stephanie Springgay and Sarah Truman, in their book Walking Methodologies in a More-than-Human World published in 2018, the four major themes in walking research are place, sensory inquiry, embodiment, and rhythm. When one considers the environment also part of the larger research setting and goes beyond humans, as the phrase "walking in a more-than-human world" by Springgay and Truman (2018) narrates, there are other themes to consider such as land and geology, affect theory, and movement. Land and geology, and affect theory is important in walking research as it breaks away from the humancentric approach to research and understands the connection between the environment and its effect on humans. Movement is pivotal because the conventional assumption is all humans move equally, but often that is not the case. There are factors such as race, gender, and disability that one must take into consideration while studying the movement of individuals in a certain geographical region (ibid: 21).

Place performs an integral role in walking research as it is imagined as a particular location, activity, or incident. Scholars argue that by walking in a place one can activate modes of participation that are situated and relational as walking can connect bodies, environment, and the sensory surrounds of a place (ibid: 19). For instance, when one walks in an urban space, one can observe various elements such as residential buildings, commercial shops, restaurants, individuals passing by, and so on. Through walking in such a space, one can interact with diverse individuals doing different kinds of work - sanitation workers, students, businessmen, tourists, amongst others. The larger setting in which they are a part of, food, sartorial choices, the way they are walking, the direction towards they are walking, or the type of the buildings and the way they have been built can voice a lot about the local culture, identity, memory, and the environment. By sensory inquiry, scholars refer to one's inherent senses, i.e., how the researcher or research participant attunes their sensory abilities (ibid). For instance, the sound in an urban city and a rural setting can give two distinct sensory experiences or the pavement in an urban commercial complex and a rural field. Walking allows one to feel and be present in the moment, pause and close eyes, observe and think, and tap into one's non-visual senses. This allows one to be present in their immediate setting and learn the local ways of being - how one interacts with one another, indulges in their day-to-day life, and interchanges ideas. By embodiment, scholars refer to an "embodied way of knowing" wherein the researcher or the research participant inspects the lived experience of what it means to move in a geographic region (ibid). For instance, the overall experience of moving around a busy urban commercial area - what it feels like, and how those around perceive this experience. The "pace and tempo of walking" is the fourth characteristic that is important in walking research (see ibid: 20). For instance, how fast is one walking, i.e., the way the pedestrians are moving in a geographic region. This is known as a rhythm of a place. The way individuals walk in a metropolitan city is distinct from individuals walking in a remote village. It shows the nature of their livelihood and what it entails.

As an AIF Fellow (2020-21), walking played an important role in understanding my host organisation's location in Tejgadh, Gujarat - the significance of the geographic location, how it has been historically perceived, and its relevance in the collective memory of its inhabitants. For instance, a walk to the Tejgadh market and interacting with a couple of small business owners with shops helped me understand the local demographic, i.e., who the people are, what they eat, what they buy, and how they interact with each other echoed the larger sentiment of the region which is embodied in all these aspects of everyday life. My article titled Photo Essay: Fieldnotes from Tejgadh Market, published on AIF Blog addressed my analysis of this region. This walking observation helped me strategically to engage with my fellowship project which was to focus on the Adivasi Academy's 'Museum of Adivasi Voice'.

Furthermore, I continued exploring this method as a part of my ongoing project with the Travellers' University (2021-22), where I had the unique opportunity to conduct fieldwork in varied locations in India. I walked by the Brahmaputra tributaries outside of the Barpeta town in Assam and interacted with the Miya community who reside beside the riverbanks. Individuals from the Miya community are descendants of migrant Muslims from the erstwhile Bengal province who had migrated to the Brahmaputra Valley during the early twentieth century. Their experience of facing the loss of livelihood because of flood and erosion, the discriminatory behaviour that they endure on a regular basis owing to identity politics in the region, and their overall experience of being in the region has caused grief, deaths, detention, and in some cases displacement of many members of this community. Walking helped me to be at ease, be present in the immediate setting, and interact with several members of a community in a rather unfamiliar landscape to understand their challenging predicament. As I was walking, I remember interacting with various individuals related to their work and my project. Most notably, a ten-year-old boy named Bahirul had come up to me and stood beside me while I was interviewing a local Miya poet Kazi Neel who voices opinions of his community and runs a community media platform known as Ango Khobor (meaning: Our News). As I completed the interview, Bahirul echoed some of the issues that we discussed as part of the interview, and he felt confident to participate in the discussion. I argue that walking as a research method allows the researcher and the research participant to be present and form intimate connections in a foreign landscape. This leads to knowing personal narratives and at times issues that may be sensitive to one.

Another example would be while I was walking inside the Cotigao Wildlife Sanctuary in the South end of Goa. Many residents in the nearby regions were not aware of the indigenous communities that have been living within the forests for generations. As I walked within the dense forests and interacted with several individuals from the Velip community, I learned about their way of life, culture, worldview, and some of the continuing problems that they face. Despite not knowing the local Konkani language that is prevalent in the region, walking helped me form deep connections with the locals. These connections that I developed without intermediaries helped me get a first-hand understanding of people, places, and communities. For instance, many residents in a remote village voiced that the lack of roads in the region prevented them from fetching water from the closest waterbody. They would have to walk for kilometers or ride a bicycle on dirt roads at risk to reach other villages for fetching water. As a researcher, walking helped me to go beyond my immediate setting and reach out to these communities and learn about their everyday challenges.

To conclude, the inclusion of movement in research is a great way of attaining a richer understanding of a space based on rapport building and empowering the research participants. Researchers on the move can effectively acquire various perspectives of not only diverse individuals and communities but also the larger setting that they are part of keeping the environment in mind. This would provide a holistic view of the unknown research terrain. With the use of methods such as walking interviews, otherwise referred to as "go-along" (see Duedahl 2020), alongside other ethnographic methods or forms of participatory research such as in-depth interviews, surveys, and analysis of public records, one can acquire a consolidated understanding of the field.

References
Duedahl, Eva. (2020). To walk the talk of go-along methods: navigating the unknown terrains of being-along. Published: Taylor and Francis Online. Accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15022250.2020.1766560

Ingold, Tim. (2010). Footprints through the weather-world: walking, breathing, knowing. Published: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol 16. Accessed here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40606068

King, Alexandra; Woodroffe, Jessica. (2017). Walking Interviews. In: Liamputtong P. (eds) Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences. Published: Springer, Singapore. Accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2779-6_28-1

Pierce, Joseph; Lawhon, Mary. (2015). Walking as Method: Toward Methodological Forthrightness and Comparability in Urban Geographical Research. Published: Taylor & Francis Online. Accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00330124.2015.1059401

Springgay, Stephanie; Truman, Sarah. (2018). Walking Methodologies in a More-than-Human World: Walking Lab. Published: Routledge. New York, United States.

Sneharshi is serving as an American India Foundation (AIF) Clinton Fellow with Bhasha Sanshodhan Prakashan Kendra in Tejgadh, Gujarat. For his fellowship project, he is conceptualizing new collections, presentations, and displays for the 'Museum of Adivasi Voice' and contributing to the issues on education, arts, and culture at Bhasha. Sneharshi recently graduated from the Manipal Centre of Humanities with a Bachelor's in Philosophy and Humanities. He completed the summer programme on Political Theory and International Politics from the Department of Government, London School of Economics (LSE). At Manipal and LSE, Sneharshi worked on assignments dealing with issues related to caste, class, identity, marginalisation, material memories, and political philosophy. He also presented a paper on visual anthropology at the World Class Day organised by the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. Prior to AIF, he was an Archives and Outreach Intern at The Partition Museum in Amritsar. As an intern, he recorded, transcribed, and documented oral narratives of people who migrated to India during the 1947 partition. Sneharshi also worked as a youth worker for a platform based mobile app - 'Meaningful' based at the University of Cambrigde, UK. He was selected as a part of the Global Leaders programme by Exeter University, UK, and Heritage Walk Calcutta where he presented his work on heritage buildings in Kolkata. Sneharshi enjoys graphic designing, photography, filmmaking, and theatre.

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Understanding Walking As A Research Method - AIF

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Qualitative researchers often navigate methodologies to conduct fieldwork based on the space they aim to [...]