On the edges of encounter: walking, liminality and the act of being between

Using Tim Ingold’s (2011) assertion that walking provides the opportunity for 'mobilising all of our senses of smell and touch as well as vision' (42) this chapter presents a series of three case studies that explicate the role walking plays as an embodied, but deeply reflexive point of encounter. A series of walking case examples, drawn from the authors’ collaborations, are used to argue a case for a walking method that takes account of the sensory, liminal, but ultimately uncertain encounters walking provokes. We outlay within this chapter what Anita Sinner et al (2006) have identified as a 'localised and evolving methodology' (p. 1224) that positions walking as central to its conduct. The act of walking opened opportunities for encounters that otherwise would not have been possible, and in taking this cue from the case examples, we connect walking with the possibility of the liminal; of being on the threshold. We will position walking as that which is quintessentially in-between, a space of disruption and uncertainty, but from which might emerge a 'topology for new tasks toward other places of thinking and putting to work' (Lather, 1997, p. 486).